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Watercolour wildlife art
My watercolour wildlife art gallery where you will find my portraits of wild animals, most of whom have a lot of attitude! My special favourites and latest creations.
When I am painting an animal in watercolour I am painting their portrait and the experience for me is just the same as when I am painting a portrait of a person. It all begins with the look in their eyes and the story that they want to tell.
A gentle giant
My largest watercolour yet - on a full watercolour sheet at 100cm x 70cm - and fittingly so for this gentle giant who is keeping his thoughts to himself. Until the right moment when what needs to be said is said.
My watercolour hare paintings
And when it comes to looks and telling, one of my very favourite animals has it in bounds. The hare.
There is something magical about hares. A rare glance of one, or, if you are really lucky two in the glorious light of an early summer's evening, is one of those special moments in life. A privilege.
When painting them I cannot but think of their place in legends and of their existence "twixt earth and sky".
"Nobody's fool"
Find out how this particular hare got his name and how the painting developed - the fight got dirty at the end!
And see all of my watercolour hares here.
Watercolour foxes
And where there are hares, there are foxes too!
My first watercolour fox and the perfect gentleman for a super granulating pigment.
Watercolour stags
Just a hares are magical, stags are magnificent. I was very fortunate to grew up minutes away from a park where they roam in large numbers close to the footpaths. And here, if I'm lucky, I'll spot one along the edge of a field of an early evening. Often keeping company with an extended family of wild boar.
This stag is one of my very early watercolours that I've kept because I had such fun and learnt a lot painting him.
He was photographed whilst reaching for an apple on a tree that he wanted to eat, by WWF Coordinator Fabio Cianchi, here in Italy. You can follow the development of this painting, step by step, and of a second, here.
Angry bees
And, when I don't have the time to paint a large painting - or, as in this case, I had some new pan watercolours to try out (always exciting!) - then I'm apt to paint the odd angry bee!
Frogs and toads
Or a frog or a toad, or two.
In this instance a pen and ink wash with my young daughter's brand new Windsor & Newton Dioxazine Violet. I did ask first! I'm very lucky that she's happy to share her new art supplies with her mum :)
On a hot summer's day there is nothing like mixing wet into wet Phthalo blue (Green shade) and Phthalo green (Blue shade) - the ones I used here are by Daniel Smith - to paint cool hiding places and their resident frogs.
