New art for May, Cows.

New art for May, Cows.

I have recently finished a couple of children’s colouring books which have been surprisingly time consuming (I’ll be posting soon about how to buy these as they are released.).

Now I am back in the studio, which is situated on a farm, and am painting cows again. My preferred medium if oil, followed by acrylics and then charcoal. The problem with charcoal is that it is messy and not easy to store or send, (being on high quality paper I want to avoid it being damaged).

Oils are fantastic to use and ‘easy’ to manipulate into the effects I want, which is a sensual finish and slightly textured fell whilst maintaining some degree of realism. You can manipulate the oil paints to work with each other whilst they are on the canvas/ board in a way that is difficult with acrylics. For this reason I tend to make acrylic paintings a slightly more precise way so that the paint is in it’s final place the moment it hits the board with blending done on the pallet or by use of layers.

I am currently working on a set of small paintings of cows and cattle which are oils, or acrylic and oil over, or just acrylic.

the acrylic painting are smaller usually, with top spec acrylic paints and in a style I am dubbing ‘cave art’. In fact they are exciting me more than I expected so expect to see a selection coming soon.

A precursor to the style is the painting above (‘Three Cows in a Row’, oils, 2014.) which employs a similar style, but with darker backgrounds. That one was painted a number of years ago and remains one of my favourites.