New Portrait

I just finished this portrait that I've been working on for the past couple of months. I really love doing portrait work despite the fact that it can be stressful. This is the first painting on canvas of three people together that I have done so I enjoyed that challenge. We spent some time taking family photos one chilly fall Saturday morning so I would have plenty to work from. And I only ended up having to blend two photos to use for the painting. I still kept a traditional pose but tried to add a lot of color and texture in the background.

"The Cow"

This is a painting I just finished of a cow. I haven't painted a cow before but I did really enjoy it! It is large - 3' x 4' which I love to paint large but I forgot just how much paint that uses! It took me a while to find just the right cow - driving all over the county trying to find cows within sight of the road... in a county full of pasture land I saw goats, horses, miniature horses, some kind of flock of large birds but the cows were hiding. I found some that posed perfectly but after looking at the shots looked a little too young for this particular painting. Luckily I ended up finding some and had to hop a fence and slowly sneak up on them as that group of cows was pretty skittish. They were in the perfect place and when they saw me they promptly moved back around a barn and out of sight!

Tractor Painting

I saw this tractor at a Christmas tree farm for our family's annual Christmas tree trip... so of course I had to take lots of photos.... and my little niece just had to "drive" it, which was of course adorable. It is a little 8 x 10 painting on stretched canvas. I worked on this painting as warm up and breaks between painting a couple of large commission pieces. It's always good to have something to go to when you just have to put the other paintings aside for a moment.