Ok cheesy title, I’ll accept that.

One of the first animals I painted that I was really happy with was a hare. I tried to avoid them originally a bit as it seems ‘everyone’ paints hares, highland cattle and foxes. I understand why – they are such glorious buggers to paint. Each have their challenges, but they are such fun.

So, from my first hare,I was happy enough but never totally thrilled (are we ever?). I wanted a very colourful hare but felt these ones looked too much like nursery pictures.

I wanted to try to feel I had his form completely so I started with ink line drawing. I was really quite pleased with these, I used walnut ink and then black fine liners. I finally felt I was getting somewhere.

From here I decided to do a black and white wash study.

Monochrome.

I now felt happier to move onto colour.

I finally felt happy with them, and in fact like the whole series.

I used to do this years ago, but lost the habit.