Painting stage by stage

 

There are a number of creative stages involved in the production of each of my cow portraits.  I work collaboratively with professional livestock photographers or take my own photographs as a starting reference for my paintings as the essential first stage.  

 

I then translate the photograph through onto canvas, manipulating the colour, tone and perspective as I go.  This takes a significant amount of time as each painting is built of over 30 layers of paint and glazing liquid, in order to develop the forms.  I use subtle blending effects and exaggerate light and dark to make the flat surface of the canvas appear to contain 3-dimenional elements.  All of this makes the viewer step towards the painting to inspect it further.

Most paintings take me 3-weeks to complete.  I always record the various stages of progress all the way through to finished piece.  In this video you can see the making of "Country Girl" and happy customer Jacki at the end.

If you would like to chat over your ideas for a commission, please do contact me