Across the Miles - Step 5

I have now blocked in the entire canvas with colour.  Finishing the snow-cover changes the mood and the look of the painting quite drastically. This gives me a really good idea of how the finished painting will look.  The contours, light and shadows in the snow requires a subtle touch.  It is important to create the illusion of an undulating plane, falling away from the foreground to the mountains in the distance.  The roadway must also appear to 'sit' into the snow rather than on top of it.  The fence now appears to stand up from the snow, three dimensionally.

Painting and refining the white lettering on the side of the postman's sleigh is meticulous work and requires patience.  There is more work in this painting than I expected!

Across the Miles - Step 4

I continue the process of painting from back to front.  I render the barn in the distance, then proceed to the farm house in the middle ground.  Once again, I am choosing warm colours to keep this winter picture from becoming too 'cold'.

The next thing I tackle is the horse pulling the mail sleigh.   This is a critical element in the painting, essentially the center of interest so I must take great care in how I paint it.   I choose to make the horse black to create a high contrast with the white snow around it.

At this stage, I have left out the snow in the middle ground and started blocking in basic colour and detail on the rail fence in the foreground.  This helps me to keep a visual balance throughout the painting.  I have included the rail fence in the composition in order to add 'weight' to the lower portion and to guide the eye back toward the center of interest.

Across the Miles - Step 3

Usually I like to do a quick underpainting with acrylics on top of my toned canvas, but occasionally I will start to paint directly on a toned and shaded drawing.  I have decided to take the latter approach this time, starting from the sky at the top (furthest away from the viewer) and working my way down and progressively closer to the viewer as I go.  This allows me to build an illusion of depth into the work.

To keep the work from being too 'cold', I add warm yellows and pinks to the clouds, suggesting late-day lighting from the left.  I block in the snow-covered hills and move forward through the heavily laden spruce trees.  The last thing I do at this stage is to begin adding more form and colour to the mailman's sleigh and the mailbox where he has just made a Christmas delivery.

Across the Miles - Step 2

Now I start my under painting by priming the canvas with a mixture of acrylic made up of burnt sienna, cadmium red and a generous amount of mat medium to make it very transparent.  I apply this evenly over the entire canvas to give it a warm ground for me to paint on.

Once that is dry, I use a mixture of the same colours, but with less medium and I wash in some tonal areas to establish some basic form.  I work up some darker areas using the same colours and I delineate some details, such as the rail fence, sleigh, the horse and the buildings.  I place dark tones on the fir trees to establish a pattern of snow on the upper side of the branches.  Things are starting to take shape!

Across the Miles

Here is the beginning of another new 'horse and sleigh' painting.  These pictures are especially popular with my clients for such things as Christmas cards and puzzles.  This one is called "Across the Miles".  It is a depiction of the mailman making his delivery rounds by horse drawn sleigh.  The scene is a snowy landscape in rural America, just before Christmas.

This canvas measures 16 inches high by 20 inches wide.  Once I have worked out my initial drawing, I transfer it to stretched canvas, then spray it with workable fixative.   Once that is done, I'm ready to start painting!

Arctic Summer

I created this painting when wildlife art was in high demand.  That wasn't the reason that I painted it, but  that market has fallen off drastically, so I paint much less wildlife now than I did then.  Art subjects are cyclical and like every business, you need to pay attention to what the market wants, at least some of the time.

The Arctic wolf lives in a tough environment, above the treeline.  Summers are very short there, and the tundra bursts into bloom for only a matter of weeks before temperatures begin to drop once more.  These pups are enjoying the mid-day sunshine while the mother wolf keeps a watchful eye on them.  There is little cover for them, should a predator happen by.

I painted this picture on stretched canvas using alkyd paints.  The painting measures 16 inches high by 22 inches wide.  I used a circular composition to direct the viewer's eye from the pup in the foreground, up to it's mates, and then to the mountain peak in the background before flowing to the she-wolf and back to the pups again.  The colour scheme is warm, which fortifies the feeling of mid-day sunshine.

You can find this painting and archival quality prints on paper or canvas at my web site www.richarddewolfe.com or my publisher's web site http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/richard-de-wolfe.html

Running Horse

This is something new I am experimenting with for art licensing.  I am working with computer software to create the entire illustration.  I bought a drawing tablet and got CorelPaint software with it.  I have been experimenting and here is one piece of art that I have created as a result.  I am using it in conjunction with PhotoShop software that I am more familiar with.  CorelPaint seems to be a really great tool, so I may decide to purchase a complete and more current version.  Both CorelPaint and Adobe PhotoShop are great tools both for creating art and manipulating digital files for today's graphic artists.  If you haven't tried CorelPaint, I highly recommend it.