British Wildlife Series – Hare

A beautiful reference makes all the difference
The first of my British wildlife series is a beautiful Hare photographed by Warren Etherington. His work is beautiful and I couldn’t wait to start this piece.

I have always wanted to draw a series. I have had in my head for many many years ideas, themes such as African wildlife, marine and at the top British wildlife. So I am excited to finally get this underway.

Exciting news!!!!
After these originals are finished I have some exciting news and something I have never offered before… More details to come 😀

Step one
I first started by airbrushing the background. I will create a time lapse video of how I did this which will be uploaded to my YouTube channel soon. Last night I uploaded to my channel the airbrushed sunset background which is for my next British wildlife piece.

I couldn’t be without my airbrush now. It is such an important part of my tool kit and I am now considering upgrading my current set up. Although I really don’t want to part with the one I currently have. It’s such a lovely airbrush to work with but I really would like to have the ability to use narrower needles to get more details. But for what I use it for now its perfect. It is a relatively large financial investment and initially I had no idea if I would be able to get my head round how to use it and whether it would be a fit for my style. But I LOVE IT! If you didn’t know already :).

Making it my own..
With all of my wildlife pieces I do try where possible to add things to the reference, change things to make my artwork different. I really enjoying designing my artwork from scratch. I often have a image in my mind of something I want to draw. I then doodle ideas, working with colour palettes in my photo editing software that I think would work well with the subject. A perfect example of this is my upcoming piece in the British wildlife series with the sunset background. That is tomorrows post :).

For this Hare painting there isn’t much I can change because the reference is so beautiful. The Hare fills the frame so unlike my other pieces where I create more of a scene this isn’t needed here. Instead, I have added some colour where I will include daisys and buttercups to the foreground. The subtle yellow and white dots in this update photo are the distant blurred out of focus effect which will be these flowers in the distance.

An example of a painting I design created from a sight I saw during my first trip to Scotland. A majestic Red Stag Deer looking straight back at us with his herd. Owning that space as his domain.

Staying on the seafront in Scotland you see some stunning sunsets. The colours in the sky is just something else. During a walk with the dogs in the woodland that backed onto our accommodation the colours bouncing off the trees and glowing.. That right there I thought .. Wouldn’t it be incredible if a Red Stag was here now. I never got to see it in person so I put my imagination down on canvas.

I adapted the colours of the Red Stag in my photo editing software so that it fitted with the background. Creating this layout from scratch and making sure all the elements worked together.
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