Paintings in progress and studio notes from fine artist Denise Rich, specializing in cow paintings and commissions from client photographs.

What did the coyote say to the Buffalo?
Please post your best guess in the comments section!

This amazing wildlife snow scene was not created from a set of photos in photoshop, it's from a single reference photograph, and was painted exactly as seen.  Thanks to Jim and Gail for having me paint this unique slice of nature, quite a fun and welcome departure from my favorite cow faces, including the opportunity to break out the number 1 round sable brushes for the detail on the coyote!

If you can think of a caption for the piece, do leave a comment.

Meet Akkie, Azizi and Aussie!  Three dogs from the land down under.  Their people commissioned me to
immortalize them in oil, and what fun it was to study these faces closely while working on their painting.
This is painted on portrait smooth canvas, which I chose because of the fine detail necessary to render their
glorious locks of hair.  The reference was taken outdoors on grass, but what they really wanted was a painting of the dogs at the beach where they visit and play.  Although it proved difficult to get the reference photo at the actual beach, I used my artistic license and put them on the beach anyway.  I loved this project, many thanks to
Bob and Sheryl for entrusting me with this commission!

One of my favorite things is when the people who know cattle the best speak favorably about my work.
Jim Fisher, a rancher from Texas wrote to tell me "Your art work is breath taking for any cattle lover..."
Music to my ears! 

And Jim knows cattle, he works with them every day as evidenced by his "About Me" description on his blog which says "I have been ran over, knocked down, kicked, stepped on, hooked, pissed, pooped on, hung up, head butted, charged at, punched, and slobbered on, all before lunch on most days."

Check out what he had to say about my work on his blog "A Rancher's View"  a Blog about and for ranching, raising cattle, feeding baby calves, and doing ranch work.. 

The other night I dreamed of finding tiny Holstein cows, and when I say tiny I don't mean like the Jack in the Box commercial for mini sirloin burgers,  with mini cowboys "herding cows the size of Schnauzers but they're cattle".  I mean tiny cows... like insects.  In fact I wouldn't call it a herd of tiny Holsteins, it was more like a hive, I could scoop ten or twenty up with one hand.  Teeny, tiny perfectly anatomically correct black and white cows swarming around!

Wondering at first if I was losing it, cows were now taking over my dreams, and not just any cows but bizarrely small ones until it occurred to me what I had been doing right before I went to sleep.  I have a commission to do a painting of cows on the beach, and my client has a very specific thing in mind.  Working on this involves carefully studying my hundreds of photos of Holsteins in search of the perfect cow composition to fit her vision, hundreds of tiny thumbnail images of black and white cows parading past my eyes.....legions of itty bitty bug sized bovine etched in my brain.  Makes perfect sense to me.

These are the first two studies for cows on the beach.  The cows are the only consideration here as I don't want to put time in working out the beach scene until I have the cows that fit my clients vision.  I do like both of these compositions however and suspect that I will eventually do large paintings of them sometime in the future.