Commissioned Sheep Painting: Love View
I was asked by someone who got married on Skye this summer if I would create a sheep painting for her in which the weather was sunny and the Cuillin were in the background. A few other details in the composition also relate to the occasion. This animated .gif is a sequence of photos taken while it was in progress:
Here’s the almost-final painting, and a detail from it showing the tiny flock on the hillside. The title the in-house critic and I agreed on: “Love View“.
Commissioned painting
Work-in-Progress: Sheep Trio
These four photos show this painting-in-progress I was working on yesterday.
Photo 1: Though you can’t see it in the photo, the sheep in the foreground and the cliffs in the distance had been ‘sketched’ in with texture paste, which is why I had put down colour on the sky, hills, and sea only. This having now dried, I started by adding yellow to the foreground, knowing the blue under this would show through, shifting it towards green. I applied the yellow directly to the canvas, then used a brush dipped in clean water and then some glazing medium to spread it around.
Photo 2: Without cleaning the yellow from my brush, I picked up some blue from my palette and let this run down, creating green. I added dark (perylene green) for the sheeps’ heads and legs, and applied a little to the distant hill. Then I started adding white for the sheeps’ wool.
Photo 3: I’ve added more colour to both the foreground and the distant hills. Permanent rose mixed with the leftover blueish colour on my brush/palette, giving a range of pink-purples, suitable heather colour. Then another round of white added to the sheep.
Photo 4: I’ve applied more dark to the faces (running the brush along the texture of the horns), and greens to the background. This wasn’t tube green, but created by mixing quinacridone gold with leftovers on my palette. Now it needs to dry completely before another round, which I’m hoping will get me to the “is it finished yet?” stage.