A little hare oil painting. I wanted to try out this colour combination, the organgey colours in his fur against the blue/greens of the background. I love the contrast, really zingy! And hares are such fun to paint.
Buy it here or contact me direct if you’d like him.
Not quite the Easter Bunny, he’s a brown hare, but it seems appropriate that I’ve finished him at Easter. But don’t you love that face? I adore his big ears and his amazing whiskers! I’ve been wanting to paint him for some time and had this idea floating around in my head. I wanted to have that face popping up over the frame looking out at you, with all those amazing whiskers on show.
Peak A Boo He’s a 16×12 inch acrylic painting on board. Now I just need to choose the right frame for him. Here’s a close up of his face…
I’ve been calling him Peak A Boo in my head all this time, so that’s got to be the title. :-)
I keep hoping spring will come soon! Maybe that’s why I’m so inspired by hares at the moment. This is a sketch for a 16×12 inch painting I’m working on. I just love the shapes and the expression on his face. And all those wonderful whiskers!
Starlings are such gorgeous birds, those iridescent feathers shining in the sun! I watched a small flock of starlings at Camden Lock in the summer, picking up scraps that the tourists by the canal. It’s a lovely place to be on a hot sunny day for both humans and birds.
This starling was a juvenile who seemed to be part way between his brown baby plumage and his fabulous adult coat. He was a glorious mix of colour.
We used to think of them as pests here in London, years ago. There were so many starlings and house sparrows in those days, yelling nosily in the trees with big flocks of starlings flying overhead in the evenings, heading for their beds. We thought they’d always be there. But we were wrong. We lost our sparrows and starlings and the skies were silent for many years. It’s true, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.
Recently the starlings have started to come back to the centre of the city and we’ve even see a small flock living not too far from the house. They’re back and it’s wonderful to see them again. Maybe the house sparrows will be back one day too.
A pair of happy King Penguins with their long shadows stretching out over the ice. There’s something joyful about penguins! I love the poses of these two, it makes you wonder what the little one is saying to the big one. :-)
There are penguin prints of Walk This Way in the shop. Buy them here.
A new painting of a hare. I love hares and I wanted to capture that alert posture, when the hare pricks up his wonderful, huge ears and keeps an eye out for trouble. To keep it as pure as possible I painted him on a plain white background with his shadow stretching out in front of him and the sun coming from behind him.
Hares have beautiful eyes and the most wonderful whiskers! :-)
He is a 40cm x40cm acrylic on canvas board.
Here he is in a lovely white Italian frame.
Find the prints in the animal gallery.
I’ve been wanting to paint this gorgeous black leopard for a while. She’s a real beauty.
There’s just a suggestion of spots through her coat and her black fur glows against the light. Her coat shimmers with different colours and those yellow eyes are very striking! I remember how it felt when she looked straight at me, she’s a very powerful cat and you suddenly understand what the word ‘prey’ means!
A lioness rests from the heat underneath a tree. This oil painting has taken me a while to do. I love the pose of the big cat and she looks quite serene as she gazes out from her comfortable spot on the rock.
When I first started this oil painting there was more of the tree in the picture. The branches sweep down and almost surround her in the photos. But they seemed to be fighting with her for attention, so I took it right back to a small canopy overhead. That seemed to work much better! You can see into the distance to the lake and hills behind her and you get a better sense of scale and the colour of the sky really compliments her coat. Sometimes when things aren’t working in a painting you just have to steal yourself to making big changes for the sake of your subject.
Here’s a close up of her.
This is an 18×14 inch oil painting on board.
Do feel free to email me if you are interested in the painting or a print. Or have a look at my other wildlife paintings in The Animal Art Gallery.
Here’s a little sketch of a blue tit on the wall outside my window.
I’ve been watching the blue tits and the great tits coming to feed on my window feeder. They are so entertaining! The blue tits are cheeky balls of yellow feathers, new fledglings, full of energy, squabbling over the nuts and seeds. They perch on the wall just outside the window and look carefully around for danger. They can’t see in because I’ve put up mirrored film. Just as well as there’s usually and excited cat on the other side! Then up onto the nuts for a good feed. They come so often I’m getting to know the differences between each bird. This one seems cheekier than the others and he’s much rounder too.
I’ve been working on this painting for a while. It started out as a painting of Snowdonia, a truly beautiful part of Wales. Its a very inspiring landscape, full of wonderful colours and I really wanted to get those colours down in paint.
But part way through the painting process it gradually it took on a life of its own. First a hare appeared in the bracken, then two more came to join him. I hadn’t planned on including hares, they just turned up uninvited!
They seemed to take over, and the whole landscape seemed to grow wilder and wilder. I had planned to do something more traditional, the distant mountains painted with atmospheric perspective, the road running through the valley floor and the closer meadowlands full of colourful bracken. But somehow the whole thing exploded with colour and brush marks.
Hares have always been seen as magical creatures and I believe it now. They recreated this Welsh landscape the way they wanted it!
I loved doing this painting and the way it turned out, even if it’s nothing like the painting I had planned originally. I think this one is a keeper. :-)
