Halloween designs

To celebrate the upcoming Halloween season, my shop now has a Halloween section offering products featuring Limited Edition drawings.
The first is my Headless Horseman ink drawing. The popular Sleepy Hollow Spook is seated on a rearing black, Friesian horse.


The second image is "Scary Cat" which is my pencil drawing of a scary black cat, hissing as it stalks towards the viewer.



The third image is my "Spooky Scarecrow", which is another pencil drawing featuring a scarecrow with a scary grin, breaking loose from his post and getting ready to take a walk on Halloween night.



Along with the shirts, these images are available on cups, mugs, light swtich covers, mousepads, totebags, stickers, pillows and postage stamps. And of course prints of the images are available.

The items featuring these images will only be available until November 1st and can be found here: http://www.cafepress.com/theamberlion/833865



This will be my last entry for a few weeks since I will be going on vacation. During my trip I plan on taking plenty of photographs of bison, elk, moose, bears, hopefully wolves and other American wildlife so during the winter I'll be able to add more paintings to my gallery and shop.

Elk Expressions

One of the most difficult parts of creating a realistic wildlife painting for me is the animal's facial expression. In most of my paintings, the animals look like they are going to turn their heads towards the viewer and make a snide remark. For a little while the elk bull in Autumn Monarch had the sarcastic look but it's amazing how adjusting shadows and highlights can change things. This bull no longer looks like he's going to talk to you. He simply looks proud and is ready to challenge any other bull who tries to steal his harem of cows.

Elk Antlers

I thought I would take a moment to update on the progress of "Autumn Monarch". Although the background isn't entirely done, enough of it is completed that I am able to start working on the elk bull itself. Yesterday I started on his antlers and was able to complete them this morning. I was also able to paint his eyes and this afternoon will continue work on the nose as well as highlights and shadows to indicated the shape of his face.

I've very pleased with the way the antlers turned out. Of course I had much better photo references now than I did the last time I did a painting of an elk. What a difference having a zoom lens on my camera has made.