Initial sketch turned out badly...

This is a little hard to see, but it is the initial sketch for Peggy's Bunny.  It stinks.  The bunny is too high in the picture and there is no room left on top to finish the cute metal garden art tower. 

I do these sketches in watercolor pencil, so that once I start painting, they melt into the paint.  But it makes them hard to erase.  So, it is lucky that this paper has another side, cause it is going back to the drawing board!

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Playing some more...

Peggy has chosen her size, so we are off and running, but first a little more study of the photo. This time I used paint.net to "posterize" the colors at various levels.
The more I study this photo, the more impressed I am with it. Peggy, does great composition come easily to you, or did you have a hard time convincing this bunny to sit in the right spot so that his sunlit fur was framed by the darkest lettuce?

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

play with the photo

Next, we play with the photo on the computer. Black and white, high and low contrast and even inverting the colors, helps to hilight details and depth of color.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com



Next in the commissioned art line is Peggy's bunny. This cute little guy lived under her lettuce leaves in last summer's garden... sounds like a Beatrix Potter story, doesn't it?
While Peggy is deciding on the size, we will go ahead with some of the preliminary study work, so stay tuned!

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Ta Da!

 The bluebonnet landscape is complete. Last chance for Amy to say she wants something changed before she recieves this painting...
I added shape and character to the tree, details to the roof and rock sides of the house, plus the fence, which I carefully placed in order to add another parallel to the Big Live Oak Tree painting that Amy bought and wants to hang with this one.
Thanks for taking this art journey with me!

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHIllCountryArt.etsy.com

Painting the tree in the bluebonnet field

It is time for my annual warning: just because all of the canvas is covered with paint, that does not mean the painting is done!  There is a fence to add, aging on the house and the tree... oh the tree...

I decided not to do the exact tree from the photo, so just started putting leaves anywhere I liked.  It looked like a green lollipop!  I have added some character back in by splitting the trunk with a triangle of sky, but it needs even more.  Perhaps more variety in the shapes of the leaf areas and a scar from a broken branch....

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

An artist's secret

A secret of artists: some parts of the painting go really fast!  The background trees were painted by just rolling my brush around the blues and yellows on my pallette, then rolling it around on the canvas.  No need to watch edges: I overlapped the sky and distant bluebonnets as much as I wanted!  I added a few shadows and hilights and trunks, and the tree line was done!
The house on the other hand, will be a tale of many layers.  All that is done so far are the base colors.  They create a strong geometric shape with size and weight to contrast all the light curvy lines in the rest of the painting.  There will be a lot of detail to add to the rusty roof and aging walls before this looks like the old abandoned German farmhouse of the photos.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com