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

.I answered the phone several weeks back to find myself talking with a prominent art gallery owner.
"I'd like to talk to you about being permanent in the gallery". 
That sounded promising, and the next words out of his mouth were "I'd like you to paint something large".
"I'm working on a 30"x40" right now" I answered.
"No, I mean something like six foot by seven foot" were the next words out of his mouth......leading to
my recent project, which if you follow my blogs you have seen a video of the blank canvas being delivered.

I know what six foot is, seven foot, and imagined what this meant.  Sounded like a great fun thing to do,
folks let me tell you, when the canvas arrived I was wondering if they had made a mistake, and made them
too large!  But no, they are right on the money!  Thank you to John of www.giantcanvascompany.com, a San Diego local custom canvas company, for making these canvas special.  This is going to be an epic project and
I am very, very excited about it!

More to come on this project, but meanwhile, here is the painting I had been working on when the phone call came in

oil on canvas
30"x40"
Currently Untitled, if you have a suggestion feel free to comment with it!
This is a Black Baldy youngster, the reference photo was taken by me in Ramona, California,
at one of my favorite ranches.  I had to paint this, I love the look in the eyes and
the posture of this individual, it really caught my eye.  There is a lot more color
in this original oil than you can see in the photo, as usual the photo doesn't do the artwork justice.
(A secret known especially by buyers of my work, who consistently tell me the
artwork looks even better in person.)

I've got an exciting new project I'll be working on, this doesn't mean I won't be working on my other works in progress, but it does mean I won't be taking on many more for the next few months. I'll be giving more information as time goes on, so be sure and sign up for my newsletter! Just a hint, there will be a total of three paintings this size, which is 6'x7', or 72"x84", really, really huge!!!

So a little inside information about transporting mega-huge canvas in an open trailer...
tie them down, they might just become a huge sail attached to nothing and end up taking air and
landing on the edge of the road.  Yep, one of 'em has to be done again, they seemed heavy enough
to hold their own, we were wrong! 

I've run two contests this year, one in spring and one in summer.  You can see the posts earlier of my spring winner, who wanted a painting of her pet Gracie, which she got!  My second and current contest winner was through facebook, I let all of the fans choose the winner from photographs entered. 
This is the winning photo, although I had a lot of excellent entries I'm sure you can see why:


You can't compete with Kids and Animals, although there was a very close second,
you guessed it, also kid and animal!  In this case, the photographer/winner of the contest
is a photographer too!

This is a work in progress, here is the progress so far:


This photo was taken on the easel in not perfect light, when I get closer to finished I'll start
taking the photos outside in natural light.  I love this 'future of agriculture' slice of life!
This piece is 12"x16".  Congratulations again Christina!  I'll have it finished by xmas as promised.

I get a lot of funny looks when I say I'm working on a painting of cows on the beach.  You might not
think of the beach as a natural place where cows might be found, and you might be right, at least in my
experience, but my client has a vision, and it's my job to try and bring it out in full color on a canvas.

I've done a few studies for this piece that you can see in previous posts, which helped narrow down a
tighter plan of what my client's vision was, this is a photo on the easel of the current stage of the painting, still in progress.  She loved the idea of the cows looking like two women walking on the beach, talking.


I love it too!
This piece is LARGE, 30"x40".