A sneak peek

Here's a sneak peek at the painting I'm working on now. You might recognize the horse from the photo I posted a couple of days ago. This is only a small section of the painting. The full canvas actually shows the horse's entire body...swishing tail, raised hoof and all.

I can't decide whether or not to add a fence behind him. The horse is tied to a post and is about to be saddled to go on a trail ride and I'm not sure if adding a fence will enhance or detract from the over-all painting. I guess I'll just have to wait and see. I can always hold off and add a fence as the final detail.

The Mangy Moose

I've been looking forward to getting this painting up on the website.
This image is only a small detail. In the actual painting the bull's entire body is shown. Those who are familiar with this species will quickly see that this fellow seems to be a little confused over exactly what season it is....He's shedding his winter coat and the velvet off his antlers at the same time, which doesn't happen in real life. The reason I painted him that way is because this painting was commissioned to hang in the lobby of "The Mangy Moose Resort", so they wanted the moose in this painting to look "mangy" as well.
The entire painting can be viewed on my main website and prints will be available at CafePress after August 2.

Trail Guide Model

He's a handsome fellow isn't he? This horse is one of the gentle trail horses at Custer State Park and the subject of the first painting in my Trail Guide series. I chose him as the first horse in the series because of his eager pose. Swishing his tail and raising his hoof he looked like he was ready to be saddled and hit the trail.

Trail Guides is dedicated to all of those wonderful, patient western horses that carry tourests through woods and mountains...many of those rides have never been on a horse in their entire lives and these hard working horses need to be depended on to quietly follow the lead horse and carry their often inexperianced riders.

I was working on this horse's painting before the Mangy Moose painting was commissioned and had almost forgotten about it. I was going through my elk photographs and getting ready to start a new painting when I suddenly recalled this one that had to be put away several months ago so I could work on the moose painting. At the moment only the background is completed around the horse's body. Tomorrow I plan on painting in the color and details of the star of the painting...the horse itself.

Welcome

This blog was only created today so obviously there isn't very much to read, at least not yet. I received emails from those who have visited my website of artwork asking what I was working on or when I would be posting a new painting and I thought this would be a wonderful way to keep my visitors up to date on what can be expected from The Amber Lion Wildlife Studio.

For the last few years I've worked as a moderately successful Tarot card reader on Keen.com but the past few months I've felt myself burning out and wanting to go in a new direction. Then one evening while going through some of my art books, a tiny slip of paper fell out. It was from a fortune cookie and said "Follow the dream that keeps coming back".

So that's what I've decided to do.

Now for a shameless plug. Because I can't seem to part with my original paintings, I've opened a shop at CafePress and will soon be offering prints of my paintings for sale. The duck painting at the top of entry was just completed yesterday and prints will be available in the next week or so.

The duck in the painting is one of the friendly neighborhood Mallards that I frequently see playing around the stream that runs past my backyard. On the main website you can see a photo of the duck who modeled for his painting. He was willing to be immortalized in acrylic in exchange for some crackers.