My favorite new thing is hog hair brushes. Except they aren’t new and I’ve had a pile of them sitting in my studio unused for years. For a long time I wanted to paint finer details and couldn’t really achieve that with hog hair brushes so I turned to soft synthetic brushes. I think I’m over the super fine details for now though. I’m sick of fiddly little details with teeny tiny brushes. It’s like a breath of fresh air to use larger, courser brushes and have a much looser look to the painting. Plus, biggest benefit of all, I can finish a painting sooooo much faster. I didn’t even mean to finish this painting. I sat down to get the sketch on canvas to finish another day and 30 minutes later I had a nearly finished painting.
I photographed this little duckling on one of my many visits to the San Diego Zoo. We were sitting, eating lunch, and this little guy wandered out from the bushes all by himself and wandered around under our table. He was just so cute, I couldn’t resist snapping a picture of him. I also got some good pictures of some big cats, random birds, and an elephant or two, so I may be deviating away from so many domestic and farm animals here in the future.
This week I had an elephant I really wanted to paint, but I thought I should paint it on a larger canvas since they’re such large animals. Speaking of canvas, I need to get to work making some canvases of any size since I’m pretty much out.