Painting in progress

So I wanted to share the progress one of my latest paintings, which there was a sketch of last week. It's still not quite finished but its almost there. The finished painting will probably be uploaded to my deviantart account next week so check it out then. There's another painting that I would really like to share but it has to wait a couple of months but I will do a WIP (Work in Progress) for it and talk about it when I am able as I think it came out pretty well.


Work in Progress: In a Melting World

So here's the sketch that I showed last week:

So this was creating a basic composition for my painting and the elements I wanted in it. The parallel lines across the bears face are to help keep facial features in proportion.

Here I've finished most of my background. First I did a block coat of blue as a base layer and let it try before another coat of blue and some shading to create some depth under the bear.

Working on reflections can be particularly challenging at this stage. I concentrated on the ice and the reflections of it and the bear. The base shading of the bear is done both with a warm blue for the main body of the bear and a cool blue of the water's reflection.

At this point I had done most of the shadows and highlights in the body of the bear and had just started putting down the base tones of the head.

Here I've worked again adding the cool and warm blues into the face and the darks of the eyes and nose. I've also added bubbles into the water which adds a sense of movement. This is where I am up to today so hopefully I only need to do finishing touches and sign it.

Furthermore, I think this is the only painting I've actually titled long before painting it as a concept, rather than the usual having no idea what to title paintings. I hope it makes people think a little about the other critters on this planet and how they are doing instead of just the bubble of their immediate surroundings.

Hope you like what I have at this stage!

Colour palette for painting wildlife

I thought I would give a few tips to get a starter palette for painting for those who are dazzled by the huge variety of colours there are available. This can apply to both oils and acrylics as well as other methods but is more pertinent to oil painting as the colours are far more expensive.

Some artist's tutorials are very specific on mixing certain colours in certain ratios to use but I think it is much more useful to develop your own colour mixing skills from a base palette rather than buying a vast array of colours you may only use rarely.

Primaries

The vast majority of colours can be mixed from the three primaries: red, blue, and yellow. In painting there is a warm and cool version of each primary which lends itself to creating different shades such as a deep emerald green and a light lime green. The most basic palette in painting that allows you to create a vast amount of colours accurate to what you need to paint would be these six primaries and white - you can create a decent black through colour mixing. Here are the colours I was taught to use back in art college:

RED: Cadmium red (cool), Alizarin crimson (warm)

BLUE: Cadium blue (cool), Ultramarine blue (warm)

YELLOW: Lemon yellow (cool) Cadmium yellow (warm)

WHITE: Titanium white (make sure to get an opaque white to avoid unwanted transparency)

Some artists prefer to mix their own blacks, others find it helpful to have a black around to certain areas though it is important not to overuse. I also find adding a little black and white to colours creates grey/muted colours which are useful in some circumstances. Lamp black is the colour I use.

Wildlife colours

In terms of wildlife painting, particularly with mammals the browns (or earth colours) are very useful as all fur shades are made up of brown or lack of it. The browns that I find are very useful are: 

Yellow Ochre

Burnt Sienna

Burnt Umber

Try these colours out, only then if you find yourself unable to mix the colour you want for your painting should you consider buying it. This should save you a fair bit in both paint and money as oil paints can be particularly expensive!

I have started some new artwork here's a sneak peak at the sketch stage for the start of one.

Sneak peek:

The benefits of not cutting your lawn

One of the biggest losses of our countryside in the last hundred or so years has been our grasslands. For example, in the UK we've lost around 97% of our lowland meadows. Some have been built but the biggest effect has been through agriculture and chemical enrichment of the soil. This 'improved grassland' brings increased grass yields for livestock but at the expense of the diversity of many of our wildflowers who are easily outcompeted. This and the consequential loss of the seedbank mean restoring our meadows and grasslands often takes decades to achieve.

One of the best and largest areas of grassland we have in the UK is Salisbury Plains. This is due to the land being property of the MoD (Ministry of Defence) and as such it missed out on the agricultural intensification that has happened since the 1950s. But other areas have missed out on this too. 

Our roadside verges and many of our garden lawns are untreated and cut regularly which removes nutrients from the soil. This creates 'semi-improved' grasslands which, if managed, can create small wildlife areas which are great for our wildflowers and many of our insects, especially bees. 

How to do this? - Simply though cutting your lawn less and later on in the summer (July onwards). This takes out nutrients which allows flowers to compete better with the grasses (make sure you remove the cuttings) and allows flowers to blossom and set seed providing food and nectar for insects. Furthermore it saves you time and money. Just make sure you don't cut in spring and early summer when the plants need to grow and flower.

This is the first year I have been able to do this with part of our front lawn. So, using the Wild Flower Key by Francis Rose, I had a little bio-blitz of the lawn to see how many species of plant I could find. I'm sure I missed a few but I counted 24 different species from the beautiful Oxeye daisy, the bee-friendly Red clover, to the tasty Wild strawberry.

List

1) Black medick
2) Bristly oxtongue
3) Bulbous buttercup
4) Cat's ear
5) Cocksfoot grass
6) Common mouse-ear
7) Common sorrel
8) Common vetch
9) Couch grass
10) Creeping buttercup
11) Daisy
12) Dandelion
13) Germander speedwell
14) Ground ivy
15) Lesser trefoil
16) Oxeye daisy
17) Prickly sow thistle
18) Primrose
19) Ragwort
20) Red clover
21) Rye grass
22) Spotted medick
23) St John's wort
24) Wild strawberry

This is already much more diverse than the rest of the lawn and I am looking forward to doing the count next year when it will have had its first full year of being managed in this way.