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This week I'm getting started on a commission for a client who wanted a painting of a fox done. Over the years she's enjoyed having several of them living in the woods near her home and as she is making plans to move she thought having a painting done of the foxes would be a good way to preserve the memory of her time at this location. She told me stories about the foxes and gave me a few parameters for the painting, but pretty much left it up to me to come up with the composition. The fox will be laying on a bed of pine needles at the base of a big tree. This painting is going to have a lot of texture (tree bark, pine needles, fur) in it that should be interesting and fun to create.

I start, of course, with a basic drawing, my road map of components. Then I start blocking in a few areas in the background.

The trees on the left are going to be indistinct and pushed to the background. I want them to be soft focus and create depth. To do this I use my airbrush. Another way to accomplish this would be to use a technique called "scumbling" which is essentially a dry brush technique of scrubbing on paint and blending it to create soft edges. This is challenging to do with acrylic because it dries so fast and it does create a certain amount of texture. Since the rest of the painting is going to have a lot of that I chose to use the airbrush to keep things softer.

You can see how well it works to create indistinct patterns of light and shadow coming through the trees. My next step is to mask off the fox and part of the area I airbrushed so that I can start to create the texture of the pine bark. I start with a dark base color then I use a piece of crumpled paper dipped in white paint to start adding the texture. It looks quite messy in the beginning and it is! I had white paint all over my hands as I re-scrunched the paper to create different patterns.

At this point I start to use transparent glazes in various shades of browns and grays to create depth. It's essentially a layering technique. Add texture, glaze, add texture, etc. After the paper texturing technique I switched to a piece of household sponge to create finer patterns with the white paint. I also used the sponge to create texture in more opaque colors and slowly continued to build my layers.

I'm starting to add shadows and continuing to refine the bark. Finally I switch to small brushes and start to paint in crevasses and cracks in the bark and continue to glaze areas I want to recede and add more color to areas that I want to come forward.

This was my stopping point today. I'm pleased with how things progressed and had a lot of fun creating these textures. I'm excited to see what happens tomorrow!

Balin's portrait is finally finished! It only took me four months, but that was because I had to put it on hold while I completed the commission for the Washington Duck Stamp. Once that was behind me I jumped back on this piece for myself, but it was slow going for a few days as I tried to remember what my plan was from four months ago. Eventually, I was able to find my way, but I did end up changing the position of the duck in his mouth. My reference photo showed him carrying a gadwall which looks nothing like a wood duck so I had to use a lot of imagination, a mounted wood duck which I had and photos of a deceased bird in order to recreate the pose. It somehow all came together and I'm very pleased with this painting of my boy!

Now that this is behind me I am on to other things. I have several commissions waiting for me and I'm hoping to find some time to enter a few more duck stamp contests. Looks like I'll be busy most of the summer!