We had company over the weekend, so no painting happened. But I did get out in the kayak and started scouting birds on the creek.

Today, I came back to the Raccoon painting. This one is big for me: 16X20″. That means bigger brushes, bigger paint puddles to mix up and standing up at the easel and backing up a lot more than usual. When I’m seated in front of a small bird painting, I can just lean way back to get the “bigger picture.”

So here are the progress pictures so far. As of right now, I think this beastie looks a bit rabid, but I have a plan. Tomorrow, when this under painting sets up a bit, the eyes will get done so she has some personality and we can communicate with each other a little more.

The first picture shows the greatly enlarged photograph from which I will be working. It also shows a detailed tracing which will help me keep track of important points in the painting. To me the tracing almost looks like a paint by number cartoon. In the second photo, I’ve transferred the main markers to the canvas. After that, I just started painting. In the end, I did a little playing with the palette knife.