Two horses on Devon coastal path - oil painting

During a hot summer's day two horses are found walking along a coastal path. They are in Devon, on the south coast of the UK and the location is Westbury. Running into the distance the land ends and falls as a steep cliff to the English Channel. The painting is based on a photo taken nine years previously which featured many more horses, but was simplified for a better composition. The artwork was painted in oils on some mounting board, sized at 20” x 16”. Completed in June 2020 the painting was started way back in November 2020 but halted and basically forgotten while other projects were created.
The artwork can be seen on this 3rd party link in greater detail.

 Working on closeup 86

A small snippet of a cow based oil painting...

Working on closeup 85

A small snippet of a horse subject based painting...

The young Dinosaurs of Avignon after Picasso - digital illustration

Dinosaur spoof of “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon”

Created in March 2021 this dinosaur illustration is based on a famous painting by Pablo Picasso. The classic painting, which was painted at the start of the Cubism movement, featured five prostitutes. This digital pastiche of “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon” features five dinosaurs instead, including a T-Rex.

It was painted in 'Auto Sketchbook Pro', with final touches done in 'Photoshop'.

The completed illustration can be seen in greater detail on this external link.

Working on closeup 84

A small snippet of an oil painting featuring cows...

 

New Forest Highland Bulls at crossing - WIP stages

Four panels showing how the painting was built up.

The oil painting shows two Highland cows by a road in the New Forest, situated in the county of Hampshire. The painting is measures 35.5cm x 20cm and is done on mounting board, primed for oil use.

The picture above shows the creation of the painting in four stages. In the first panel is the drawing, done using brown/ black acrylic paint on a lighter brown base wash. White paint is then added to areas to show where the highlight or tonally brighter areas will be, for instance like the sky.

Once this initial application is done and dried, then the first applications of oil paint are made. The paint is not applied thickly, but thinned with a medium such as turpentine or in this case a paint thinner called 'Zest it' which is a safer chemical made from 'green' materials. This layer gives an indication of the placements of colours and values throughout the scene, but no details are painting at this stage. In the third panel stronger, thicker colours are applied as this is the start of the final painting. Details are added and generally care is taken to paint correctly, while in the fourth and final panel is the finished painting. It should be pointed out that an extra layer has been added which is a coloured 'glaze' applied to some of the elements in the scene. This is used to reinforce colours and add a depth to the painting that only the eye can see. The camera tends to flatten this effect.

The painting can be seen in greater detail by following this link.

New Forest Highland Bulls at crossing - oil painting

Completed painting of the two bulls

This scene features two Highland bulls enjoying the sunshine in the countryside. The location is just outside the town of Brockenhurst where a footpath meets Rhinefield Road. This is within the area of the very large New Forest, which can be found in the County of Hampshire on the south coast of the UK. The painting was done during July 2020 and is done in oils on mounting board, sized at 35.5cm x 20cm.

The artwork can be examined in better clarity on this external site.

 

Animal Supermarket drawing vs painting

Animal Supermarket drawing vs painting

Animal Supermarket drawing vs painting

Above is a  comparison between a drawing (done digitally in photoshop) with the finished painting, also done digitally within photoshop. It can be seen that a series of lines, to indicate a base of prospective indications was planned form an early stage to aid in placement of the interior of the supermarket and animals to populate it.The artwork of 'Animal supermarket' was created in 2010.
The finished illustration can be seen here.

 

Friesian Cow Portrait - WIP stages

Friesian Cow Portrait - WIP stages

Cow portrait - oil painting in stages

The above panel shows WIP in stages of a recent painting, painted during September 2017 of a cows portrait. The first stage is the cows head drawn in brown acrylic paint on a brown wash background, and showing a guide to the tonal values I wish to include in the finished work. The second image now shows basic areas of colour applied, with acrylic paint in darker values than the finished paint levels will be. This stage is the underpainting. In the third picture can be seen that the final oil painted layer has started where the colours, tones and details are becoming more refined. Finally in the last image the fully finished oil painting can be seen of the cows portrait. The artwork is done on mounting board, sized at 16" x 12".
This painting can be seen in greater detail here.

Friesian Cow Portrait – oil painting

Friesian Cow Portrait – oil painting

Friesian Cow Portrait – oil painting

This oil painting features a portrait of a cow. It is painted possibly in a 'romantic and sentimental' mode, with softening of the details that oil paint allows you to do, and is based on a photograph.
It is sized at 16” x 12” and painted on mounting board. The board itself is covered in gesso to stop paint from soaking in to the paper fibers, after which an acrylic under-painting is done of the subject. Then the final oil painted layer is done on top. This portrait was completed during September 2017.
This cow portrait art can be seen in greater detail by following this link.

Working on closeup 33

Working on closeup 33

A small snippet of a cow portrait..... 

WIP cow painting close up

 

New Forest horses with light and shade WIP stages

New Forest horses with light and shade

'New forest horses with light and shade'  painting- wip stages

This new Forest themed painting was done at the end of June 2017. It features two typical horses standing on open ground within the national park, to be found in Hampshire, UK. The horses were not in the setting originally, but I felt the setting with the horses would make a nice picture, and is based on a location on the outskirts of a small town called Brockenhurst.
In the first panel can be seen the drawing, done in brown acrylic paint on a brown base wash. The second panel now shows the under-painting applied, done again in acrylics. The colours are darker than intended to work well with the final paint application on top. Moving to the third panel, it can now be seen that some of the final paint application has been done in oils, mainly on the top part of the painting. Finally the last image shows the completed painting, all done in oils on mounting board, sized at 16" x 20".
The finished painting can be seen here.

Henson Pig Trail 2017 Gloucester blog 04

Henson Pig Trail 2017 Gloucester blog 04

initial start on the 'Pigs may Fly' pig

first painted areas

The time had come to start work on the last pig, named as 'Pigs may Fly'. The design features various sizes of pigs, as silhouettes, and all done to the same basic design, flying upward through a blue sky and in to the night. The first stage was to draw out the design using a pencil, basically carving up the surface in to 'areas'. After that it is a simple task of then filling these areas with the predesignated flat colours as marked on the plan. However a single layer of paint is never enough so it is expected that two or more coats are to be needed. To help make the colours work I took time paint the sky around the silhouettes of the pigs so that they would take the colour better, rather that paint the pig colours over a sky colour.

Some pigs now painted

A few extra details and some fresh painting had also been done on the 'Floating Floyd' pig, namely the cords running between the large pigs and the power station on either side and a small rope coming of the little pig floating away.

'Floating Floyd' with details added

Henson Pig Trail 2017 Gloucester blog 03

Henson Pig Trail 2017 Gloucester blog 03

The project is to create three painted pig 'sculptures' as part of a street art/ trail project for the City of Gloucester, UK. The trail will be open to the public during the summer months of 2017 and then auctioned off for the benefit of several charities. Further details can be found here.

'Piggy bank' with painting almost completed

Work has continued to finishing off the 'Piggy Bank' pig and tidying up details. The pink coat of paint, a premixed 'Reeves' paint colour has worked well straight out of the pot. Originally I had thought about mixing it using other paints but in this case it worked well, as did the 'metal' paints used on the coins, again from Reeves. The black lining is a Daler Rowney system 3 heavy pigment paint. Now I was able to return my attention to the 'Floating Floyd' pig, based on the 'Animals' cover by the band Pink Floyd. This uses more colours than the other pig and some are premixed paint, and some mixed paint by myself. The pigs/ designs give the impression that is is just an application of one simple colour. However it is quite common to have to paint several layers (brush painting) to get a dense enough colour but unfortunately sometimes the colours are not flat, even after several coats, in particular when using ones own mixed paint. So I have found myself having to slightly change colours, using purchased mixed paint to an approximate shade, to get over this problem but I don't think that it would detract to much from the intended design.

Large cartoon pig design closeup

Battersea power station on rear

'Floating Floyd' under progress with the finished 'Piggy bank' to rear

Henson Pig Trail 2017 Gloucester blog 02

Henson Pig Trail 2017 Gloucester blog 02

  The project is to create three painted pig 'sculptures' as part of a street art/ trail project for the City of Gloucester, UK. The trail will be open to the public during the summer months of 2017 and then auctioned off for the benefit of several charities. Further details can be found here.

The first image shows the pigs after delivery and placed in the work space. I will initially work on one design (Piggy Bank) with some work on the second (Floating Floyd), just to have something to work on while awaiting paint to dry on the first. The third will be left as is for a short while. The designs can be seen in an earlier post here.
The first process is to pencil out the design, using my 2D designs created in Photoshop, as a good guide to placement of the elements on to the 3 dimensional form of the pigs. Once all the elements of the design fit satisfactorily on the sculpture, I then tidy up the drawings, following which I mask parts of the design using masking tape, the reason being it helps to make painting sections easier, in this case the coins and lettering are masked out so as to make applying the pigs, pink base colour, easier to do.

Masking tape on some areas of the pig

From then on it is a case of straight forward painting each section across the sculpture, using acrylic paint, though it should be noted that all the painted areas typically needs 2-3 coats of paint for a full bodied colour, meaning that each sculpture is painted a number of times. For the painting of the coins originally I was going to use ordinary yellow/ gray colours but then came across the 'metallic' acrylic paint in a shop and thought that would make a nice addition to the paintwork.

'Piggy Bank' and 'Floating Floyd' at the beginning of painting

Metallic paint added for the coins on 'Piggy Bank'

Rear of  'Piggy Bank'

'Piggy Bank' coin painted

 

Cows Sitting By Hill Relaxing - acrylic painting

Cows Sitting By Hill Relaxing - acrylic painting

Cows Sitting By Hill Relaxing - acrylic painting 16" x 12"

This 16" x 12" acrylic painting is painted on paper. It features a countryside scene during the summer with three Friesian cows resting on the grass, during the midday sun. In the background is a small hill with an old fence and worn path. The painting depicts a location in a part of the New Forest, near to the town of Ringwood, in the county of Hampshire.

The artwork was done during October 2016. 

http://martin-davey.pixels.com/featured/cows-sitting-by-hill-relaxing-martin-davey.html 

#Hampshire #art #cows #Newforest #countryside

Working on close-up 08

 Working on close-up 08

A small snippet from a new painting of some cows resting in the New Forest, Hampshire, in the works....

WIP of cows sitting in new forest art

New Forest hill with cows and horses WIP

New Forest hill with cows and horses WIP 

This image shows the creation of a painting showing a hill in the New Forest, Hampshire. Within the composition are a number of cows at the bottom of the hill and a few horses halfway to the top. The first panel shows the drawing, done in brown acrylic paint on an orange ground. The second panel shows base colours applied and the third, the finished painting. The final painting is 20" x 16" and painted in acrylic.

#artist #wip #newforest #countryside

WIP of New Forest Hill with cows and horses painting

Working on close-up 07

 Working on close-up 07

 A small snippet from a new painting of some ducks on a quay side in Dorset, in the works....

Work in progress of acrylic duck painting

New Forest Lyndhurst Hampshire

New Forest Lyndhurst Hampshire 

This painting was created during October 2015 and was loosely based on a photograph taken during the summer of 2014. The scene a small hill near to Lyndhurst, a small town in the middle of the New Forest, Hampshire, UK. Many horses and ponies are to be found in the forest happily wondering around quite freely around the landscape. For the painting some of the animals were rearranged in the composition and one or two exchanged with other photographic examples. This painting measures 20” x 16” and is painted on canvas using acrylic paint.    
http://martin-davey.artistwebsites.com/featured/new-forest-lyndhurst-hampshire-martin-davey.html

#horses #painting #hampshire #art #newforest

Horses on Hill, Lyndhurst, hampshire