Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays

'Run for Fun'

My blog will be six years old early next year and I want to say thank you to all my friends and supporters who leave comments or simply follow along. You all help to motivate me as I continue on my artistic journey.

So I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Wildlife Artist of the Year x 2 - Call for Entries

I've finally finished my christmas commissions and can get back to the paintings and drawings awaiting completion, one of them being the hare in the above image.

One of my goals for 2012 is to enter more competitions/exhibitions and two of the ones I'm aiming for have closing dates early in the new year.

These are:-

David Shepherd's Wildlife Artist of the year which has a closing date of 20/01/2012, and,

BBC Wildlife Artist of the Year with a closing date of 29/02/2012

'Hot Spot'

My painting Hot Spot was short listed for the David Shepherd award in 2009.

For full details visit Making a Mark the art blog of my artist friend Katherine Tyrrell.
Katherine has written a post covering all the details of the call for entries of both competitions, if you are interested in giving either a try then I recommend you read her post.

Link: Making a Mark - Wildlife Artist of the Year

Back to Black - Black Cat Mixed Media Painting

'Back to Black'

Image Size 12 x 17 inches, mixed media on board.

SOLD

Following the success of my painting Black on Black which was sold at the Society of Feline Artists exhibition early this year I have painted a matching image.
I used coloured pencil and acrylic on mountboard making the eyes the focal point.

Creating A Still Life - For the Birds

The above photograph shows my arrangement for taking more natural reference photographs
of the birds that visit my garden.
I don't like working from photographs of birds on feeders unless I'm just looking at colour or a particular detail so I decided to prepare a more natural resting place.

While out walking the dogs I kept a look out for a nice fallen branch, preferably one that had some moss on it. The one pictured above was ideal so my OH carried it back to the car. We had to put it on the back seat because Cody would have chewed on it during the drive home if we'd put it in the back with her. Although we carefully checked that we weren't taking any small creatures with us we spent the short drive home hoping that nothing was leaving the log to take up residence in the car.

To make the log more attractive to the birds my OH drilled several holes in the top of it which I filled with a mixture of fat and seeds.
I then pushed one end in the hedge and fastened the other end to the rail of the decking just under the feeders.
Although the birds were wary at first they now walk up and down my set up quite happily which gives me great photo opportunities.