Deer Encounters - Two New Stag Paintings

Every encounter with a bird or animal is magical, but imagine coming face to face with a majestic deer in the wild! What a breathtaking, exhilarating, special experience it is! A connection with a wild animal, however necessarily fleeting, is one of life’s great moments.

Wild animal encounters - a special privilege!

The two new pieces on my website evoke these feelings and are painted in gorgeous uplifting colours which seem to change according to the light. These are both oil paintings, in my usual expressive style. Check them out here

A new Kingfisher painting in acrylics!

I love Kingfishers and they are a favourite painting subject of mine. This one is big at about 30” square, and very brightly coloured with shocking pink and teal blues. Im exploring acrylic painting right now, using brushes, fingertips and paint pens to add details and textures and pushing the colour to create work with a high visual impact. Shocking pink and orange work really well against the bright teal and orange of the bird, I find these colours truly heartwarming!

Highland cow Painting with Flowers

This new Highland cow painting with flowers has been on and off my easel for several weeks. She is finally finished - there are a lot of colourful layers in this piece and some quite textured areas. I have named her Dunbar, for that interesting and artistic town, and she is now for sale on my website here.

Highland Cow with Flowers

This new Highland cow painting with flowers has been on and off my easel for several weeks. She is finally finished - there are a lot of colourful layers in this piece and some quite textured areas. I have named her Dunbar, for that interesting and artistic town, and she is now for sale on my website here.

Barn Owl Paintings

I am working on Barn Owl paintings this week, one of my favourite birds to paint. Check my ‘Originals’ page to see this gentleman when he is finished!

So far, I have been building up the layers quite slowly, next step is the darker feathers and a little more shading and detail.

Work in progress

Highland Cow Painting Course.

Enjoying the day

This was the first time we had a workshop at this venue, which is the village hall just near my home. It was a lovely day, we had half the group who had a little experience with different painting media but who were new to acrylics, and half the group were total beginners. It was a bigger group than normal as we had a few reschedulings from another date. A very positive and jovial group of lovely ladies! Here are some photos from the day, and the lineup of moo-g shots at the end of the day.

Book your workshop here

We went step by step through the painting, with mini demonstrations throughout the day and guidance and encouragement given at every stage. Everyone went home with their own beautiful and unique work of art. Friends were made, laughs were had, techniques were learned and the cake was eaten! Everyone was marked safe from the terrors of the ‘exploding jar of black paint’!

Beautiful new paintings

The next Highland Cow Workshop is on March 4th at Sharpes Museum- places are still available, there will be a max of eight places at this one.

Sharpes Pottery Museum is a lovely cosy venue with a wealth of history and heritage. We are in the Glazing Room, a nice comfortable space. The cafe will be providing a lovely buffet lunch for us and as always there will be homemade cake! Book your workshop here

step by step tuition

Which paint do I use?

I have had a few requests recently asking which paints I use in my workshops. So far, all of my workshop days have been using acrylic paints, because they dry really fast and this allows artists to easily take away their paintings at the end of the day. I have used several different brands of acrylic paint, and these Daler Rowney System 3 are the ones that I have found striking the right balance between quality and affordability. The colours are nice and bright, and there is a good choice. They seem to stay usable in the palette for longer than some of the others, too. I use the big tubs because we get through such a lot of paint, but these are also available in smaller tubes. I’ll share links to the places that I buy mine here here,

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Colourful Highland Cow Paintings

multi-coloured brush strokes

I have been working on a set of four new originals, which are now available for sale. These are textured pieces with brush and knife work and in very rich bright and beautiful colours. These pieces will be ready to ship soon, Benavie is now on my website. There are three larger pieces at 80 x 100 cm approx / 30 x 40 “ , and one square format canvas at 76 x 76 cm approx / 30 x 30 “