Studio Log: Color Swatches and Hare Studies

This month I’ve continued working on expanding my painting subjects to include animals and plants. One hurdle has been how to adapt my color process that I have used in my paintings of people, to include and reference colors of plants and animals. Over all I have found I need more variation, but I quite like my color layering process and the shifting perspective it creates (see my yearbook portrait paintings for an easy reference). So I’ve been mostly experimenting, in an attempt to retain the mood and movement in my style while incorporating maybe a slightly more diverse range of final colors in each painting to be able to better portray texture and variation of flora and fauna.

I have also purchased a few new brushes and been testing out various ways of bringing in new textures. Textures above were created with dry mop brush, wet sea sponge, and flat brushes.

And then I started drawing hares. I love their mischievous and chaotic energy, at any moment they might scurry away.

It took a few to get a feel for their anatomy and structure but once I did, I tried a little study applying the color and texture experiments I had been working on.

I’m quite pleased with the result and am now in progress of applying it to a full painting.