April 30 - Lesson painting on the African Series, Springbok 48 x 60 Oil

Oh Goodness! What a marathon day of painting! I hit the inch and a quarter filbert and went to town on the backdrop for the herd of Springbok that will be bouncing and running across this sky. I'm so pleased with how much I have gotten done, and will be looking to plant those mammals tomorrow. I'll do some correcting on the sky as well when the final layers go on.

I have looked at every Springbok in my files and on the 'Net to where my head's spinning. I know the proportions of leg joints to body thickness, and of course having drawn hundreds of ungulates in my career, pulling off a herd of them from sketches ought to be, well, not quite a piece of cake.

On another note, I received in the mail the Del Mar Race Track's 2007 Turf Club Pass with my painting on it. Every person who purchases a pass for the Del Mar Thoroughbred Racing season this year will have my painting in their hand when they go through the gates! How fun is that? I'm honored to have my image (and name!) on every card for this season.


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April 29 - Starting the Big One, 48 x 60 Oil

Time to begin the big one, and I can already see it finished in my mind. That completely takes out any trepidation. The canvas is a 4 x 5 FOOT gallery wrap, which means the canvas goes all the way around the edges. I'd mentioned that I'd wanted to do the more common African mammals--the lions and the zebra, but I remembered the Springbok, and how elegant they are! Combining that with a tumultous cloud backlit sky, and I think I'll have my painting!

So here I've taken an image of my studio setup, with this huge canvas on my Hughes easel, and it has the tone to get rid of the white canvas already on it. I've sketched in the cloud structure lightly, which makes up the abstract framing element to bring attention and eye direction down to the group of Springbok that are going to be backlit. It's a bit hard to see from this angle. Goodness, photographing this will just have to happen outdoors!
If you have any questions about the easel setup or the taboret shown, please ask. I'm so used to it, that I might overlook something you'd enjoy knowing more about. The hanging covered trash receptacle is a nifty device available from simplehuman.com and it uses ordinary grocery bags. No fumes from paint towels!

Congratulations to new collector Anthepy Nelson of Timonium, Maryland on purchasing "The Red Barn" from the dailypaintings site from June of last year. Thank you so much!


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