Two plus Fifteen

Wildlife composite

Just waiting for a little daylight before getting back to painting so wanted to post some photos from yesterday.

The fox was back again along with a mate perhaps? Anyway, there were two of them this time. I had a hard time getting a photo of one of them as it hung back in the treeline to the right where the shadows were too deep to see it.

Then, later in the afternoon, a herd of deer wandered into the same place where the foxes had been. We see the deer all the time, sometimes too often, but the herds are getting larger and larger. Not all are seen in the photo but there were about fifteen deer there yesterday. Sometimes we see herds with thirty or more deer in them.

Oh, some news and I'm not sure whether it's sad news or not. I haven't seen the rabbit since the last photos I took of it. It had let me photograph it from just a few feet away several times so I wonder if one of the foxes got it or if it just got fed up with me pointing the camera at it so much. I hope it found a better hiding place but I do miss seeing it! Maybe it will come back one of these days.

I got some really good shots of the one fox but, again, my poor little camera just couldn't zoom in close enough to get any detail. I'm saving my money for a new camera and if anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

I need a versatile, point and shoot camera since I photograph animals from quite a distance away and also photograph flowers very close up. I wouldn't have time to mess with changing lenses and fiddling with f-stops, etc. which is why I'd like a simple camera. However, it needs to zoom in very close and take good, sharp photos! And, a great price wouldn't hurt either! lol

OK, back to the easel!

Hope everyone has a great day!

Do You See What I See?

This is just some of the wildlife we see here from time to time. I'll let you know what they are in just a bit, but first, I want to apologize for not posting for a while. My mother in law is in the hospital and I'm scrambling trying to juggle a bunch of stuff that needs to be done. I'm also working on the commissions I have and want to get them done as quickly as possible but still do the absolute best job I can.

Ok, what do we have here? (You can click on the first one for a larger view, the second one has been cropped from the original photo and is about as big as it can be.)


Still can't tell what it is? It's a good-sized rabbit that hides under the barn shed. It's very hard to see but it's there almost every time I go to the barn. The water faucet for my horse's tank is located in this shed so I see it nearly every day. It has let me take many photos of it but none of them turn out very well because it's so very well hidden.


And many of you still won't be able to tell what this is either. I took the photo from the barn which is quite a ways from where this animal was hunting for something in the grass. It's times like this that I'd really, really like to have a great camera! Oh, it's an adult gray fox - do you suppose that rabbit was hiding from him?

Bunny Rabbit

Bunny Pastel
copyright
Jan Gibson

I don't know why, but I've been wanting to paint a little bunny for some time so I finally finished one this morning. It's only 5"x7" but it took as long as a regular, large-sized painting. I guess it was all that "ticking" in the bunny's fur. It was a matter of going back and forth with one color then a second or third color then back to the first color then repeating the process a few times. I've been told that pastels are painted like oils going from dark to light, but I found it much easier to go from light to dark then back again for this bunny. I do think I'd like to work on the background some more though as you always see things to change once a piece is posted online!

I'm still trying to find more information on framing pastels without glass and emailed someone who has been experimenting with framing colored pencil paintings without glass. The artist, Gary Ruuska, was kind enough to email me back very quickly with information he had presented in an article in FMP, Ann Kulberg's online magazine for colored pencil artists. It would be wonderful to find a method that works well and doesn't darken or change the painting during the sealing process. I had planned to use this bunny for experimenting but since I waited so long to paint him and actually like the way he came out, I think I'll wait to experiment on another painting that I don't like quite as well!