The Process of Painting a Rabbit

I know that many of those who follow my blog are other artists, so every now and then I like to show how I paint with step-by-step images.  This little oil is a 6" x 6" that will be one of about 35 paintings I'll be showing at The Southeastern Wildlife Exposition in Charleston, South Carolina, February 17-19.

Step 1:  I colored my Ampersand gessoed board with a thin, turpy wash of permanent rose then let it dry for about 30 minutes next to an electric heater in the studio.  The only drawing I do is with a brush....there is no preliminary pencil drawing.  I 'knock in' the basic lines then correct them as I'm painting.  If it were up to me, I would have called this preliminary oil sketch 'finished' and framed it as is.  There's something about oil sketches that I really like. 

 

Step 2:  Background color.  I usually consult my color wheel, often choosing a complementary color (opposite on the color wheel) which in this case would have been blue-green or thereabouts.  But I was curious how the bun would look with an analogous background color (colors that are adjacent to each other on the color wheel).  Bleh.  I didn't like it so wiped it off.

Step 3:  I settled for a purple/blue with a bit of green added, so the background is almost a complementary color to the rabbit.  I don't like painting cute as it is almost as bad as doing a painting to match someone's couch...but there's no way of painting a baby bun without it being cute, especially when painted as a portrait.   

 

Step 4:  The finished painting, framed.  (the frame is not quite this shiny)  When it is completely dry, I'll add a few highlights to the bun, that are the same color as the frame and a few other bright highlights, such as a stronger pink on the ears.  I call this 'crossing my t's and dotting my i's'. 

Step 5:  A title.  I'm still working on it!