New Forest Ponies 2

When I painted New Forest Ponies 1 - a 7 x 5" acrylic on canvas board - it was always my intention to reuse the source image for a bigger, palette knife oil. It took me almost a year and a half to do it, but here is the result.

Avebury Sheep

Way back in 2007, when my daughter was still learning to walk (it must have been spring), I took her to Avebury, with her pushchair. I also took an old-school 35mm SLR loaded with monochrome film.

My photographs weren't all what you'd call stunning; in fact, the source for this painting was a little underwhelming, technically. I think I got the exposure wrong. But the composition worked, I thought; and I loved the two lambs sheltering in the lee of the stone. And there was enough information to make a painting... if you ignored the fact that there were no colours.

So I made the colours up. Based on what I remembered, and what I knew...

I remembered that the stones were reddish. I looked them up: they are sarsens. Sarsens are sandstone (which explains some of the weathering). Sandstone varies quite a lot in colour, but does tend towards the red and the yellow.

This post has been republished with an improved photograph of a slightly improved painting (I have darkened the shadows on and around the foreground lambs).

Oil on canvas, 55 x 46 cm
27 December 2012
For sale

Grey Wethers and Black Bullocks

I couldn't resist calling these beasts bullocks, despite there being no absolute evidence to support this, and me being sufficiently unfamiliar with bovine appearance to say for certain that these are male animals.

Why is this?

New Forest Ponies 1

This is a special not-quite-a-card-not-quite-a-present for my lovely sister, on her birthday. The painting was done on the 3rd (Monday), from a set of photographs. It needed to be dry enough to post in fairly short order, so it had to be acrylics.

Acrylic on canvas panel, 5 x 7"

EDIT (28 February 2014): I used the same set of photographs for a larger oil painting

Cotton Bag: Eager Companions

This is a "special", done on request for a friend, who has a friend, who dotes on her pets. Well, soon she will have her pets on a tote...