Practising Brush Strokes

Foxes painted with brush strokes

Hi there how are you?

I saw some video of foxes jumping into the snow to catch rodents to eat, it had me mesmerised so when I saw pictures of them doing the same thing I decided to paint them. They are quite tiny (roughly 2 or 3 cm in size)  I was trying to paint them with as few brush strokes as possible.

I have some new paint brushes to try out and this was the perfect project to try them and out see what kinds of marks I could make.

New rosemary’s brushes

I’d heard about Rosemary’s Brushes and wanted to try them for a while. I bought a #6 series 33 and a #5 series 22. The beauty of this company is they give precise sizes of their brushes in millimetres; I picked these two brushes because the ferrules are similar sizes but the bristles on series 22 are longer. They are both sable.

Not sure which I prefer yet I’ll have to do more painting to work it out but I like the way these little foxes turned out.

The top brush in the picture is a #8 sable/synthetic blend travel brush. The handle comes off and the brush fits inside. I love it, haven’t taken it outside yet but it has a good point. Holds plenty of paint and makes some very nice brush strokes.

At the zoo yesterday, we decided to check out the greenhouses. They’re not huge but they have plenty of tropical plants in there and they are open to the public.

Normally we draw the orchids but for a change we drew cactus. The first is a view from the top of a cactus that hasn’t flowered yet. The second is a cactus that had flowered and was now growing round, bright red seed pods on the top. I love cactus, they are one of the few plants I seem able to grow!

Drawing cactus at the zoo

Half an hour in the greenhouse was enough; it was very humid and hot.
I held the book in front of the cactus I had drawn like some plein air artists do just for fun and instagramed it hehehe

Thanks for taking the time to stop by today. Till next time, have fun x