Mixed media painting of horses at water trough

A watercolour and gouache painting of horses and foal, queueing up at the watertrough. I hope to do this scene in oil, as the composition and light makes it an interesting picture.

Painting of rural landscape and terrier dog

A winter scene on neighbouring farmland late in the afternoon. I used a photo for the composition, and used the  'Paintbox' app on my iphone to record the tones and values, particularly the greens, blues and orange-brown on site. This worked well, and much better than relying on the colours in the photo.  I studied several of Constable's paintings using the very useful 'zoom' facility on the National Gallery website, to see how he painted the bare trees. No shortcuts unfortunately, just painstaking painting each branch, receding in value towards the ends. The terrier is 'Bess', who made a living trying to torment rabbits, without much success.

Terrier hunting!

Mixed media painting of light beam

This painting started off as a watercolour of a photo I had taken  recently in the early evening. I had over cooked the colour of the foreground and clouds, and the composition was poor, with a large foreground and nothing in  it. I don't like to give up on a painting, so I attempted to rescue it by adding the figure in pastel, general pastel highlights and some detail with fine tipped coloured pens. The photo looks better than the original, but the light is good I think.

                                                     'Light beam' - 2012            
                                                       Mixed media

Painting of Horse eventing Broadway landscape

This was done from a photo of my daughter eventing, with the glorious Vale of Evesham in the distance. I found it very difficult to get the values correct from the photo, especially with so much green in the scene. It makes me more convinced that colour notes or a sketch needs to be done with this type of landscape.

                                                        Eventing, Broadway
                                                          Oil on canvas 2012

Horse painting head portrait

Portrait of my daughter's horse 'Rosie'. I painted this from a photo, and therefore the colour values are not as they should be, but the likeness is fair.

                                                                  'Rosie'
                                                        Oil on canvas  2012

Landscape painting with horse

I am finishing several paintings that I started over previous years. This one depicts my young daughter (now 22 years old!) on our mare (long since deceased) in a fictional background. The oil has been re-worked so much, it appears quite flattened, but it's going on this blog anyway.

                                                                  'Late home'
                                                       Oil on canvas board 2012

Painting of horses and foal

Unfortunately, my OCA drawing course fell by the wayside after the second assignment, due a lack of time and commitment on my part.

But I have started painting again and I hope to continue this blog and in doing so, will produce new stuff. 

                                                         'Foal - 10 minutes old' 

                                                                Oil on canvas 2012

I focused on the mare in this painting, to try and portray the sudden rush of maternal instincts following the hard efforts in producing her first foal. 

                                                        'Shelter from the flies'

                                                         Watercolour on paper 2011

The same mare and foal, about four months later, with a hunter, in the heat of the summer.

I don't think I managed to show the depth of the field shelter adequately.