All right, here's my first in my new Animal Alphabet Series. Many thanks go to one of my favorite daily painters, Karin Jurick, who has done at least two A-Z series that I know of in the last couple years, and from whom I've borrowed this idea.
I have a couple of self-imposed challenges with this series. Aside from the "all-animals" theme, I decided when planning this series last fall, that I did not want to paint anything I've already painted.
...So, yes, you heard me. No Cows! No Chickens! No Goats! I can't even use a Zebra for "Z" because I've already done one (in oil, in 2012.) So I had my research cut out for me, but managed build an extensive list from A to Z, with a surprising amount of choices for (almost) each letter, of animals I've never painted.
Then came the image search. At first I was concerned with not having many of my animal choices come from my own photos, and having to search out copyrights for images found online. I did start some of that (with Badger and Penguin, and others) but when I was having no luck tracking down ownerships of likely images, I thought "I better just see what I've got in my own files first!" So I started through, letter by letter, and built a master file of animal alphabet images that might make good paintings.
I knew I had an incredible amount of images of all sorts of animals from zoos, aquariums, wildlife ranches, etc. But what surprised me and excited me while searching, is that with the help of online identification photos, I was able to come up with at least one animal from almost every letter in the alphabet in my OWN photo collection! (The only exception was "Y", and you'll see what that is when I post it.)
So now my research is done, My images are chosen and cropped and adjusted in photoshop and ready to paint. I'm allowing myself some flexibility in this project by not posting them continuously; they'll be in order, but interspersed with other paintings here and there. They'll be various sizes to fit the subjects. Some will be offered on auction first, and others will be at retail, depending on size, my own whim, and if it's needed for a show or art fair.
Hope you all enjoy them! Let me know what you think!
(And to start you off, here are progress shots of Angelfish:)
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