The Making of the End of Year Picture

 So, towards the end of each year since I was in my teens I have tried to make a special picture and I use this picture as a greetings card for friends and family. 

Over time this odd little ritual has moved from cartoons to something usually based on my favourite wildlife encounter from the preceding months of the year. Sometimes these pictures have just been sketches. Some have been drawn in pencil or pens but, when I have had some more time, I actually get my paints out and attempt something more serious! (Well, I think it is serious.)

This last year of the great lock downs, I was very fortunate to discover the deer living near by (described in earlier blogs), which if it had not been for my daily exercise walks I might never have seen. 

So, for the 2020 picture I knew it would have to have a roe deer focus. The background idea was provided by the golden light of a local woodland in the Autumn when the light was low, but bright, and the malingering leaves shone on the young beech trees rising from a carpet of  leaves and dark green ferns.

I decided that the deer would be based on one of the beautiful does I had 'met' and I wanted to try and catch the calm, quizzical but careful manner that she had used to watch me. I wanted her to look out of the picture but also to be at an appropriate distance from the observer. If necessary, she can get away!

These were the essential elements and in the photos below I show my work bench (the kitchen table) and how the picture came together. The medium was water colours.

First, stretch the paper and tape it wet onto the board. Next, some washes of colour as background; in particular to make sure that the blue of the sky would shine through the trees. Add the main trunks; dark shapes from which branches will flow.

Layers of details follow... twigs, leaves, ferns and a small blank space for the deer,

Finally, the doe. Her image is quite small and my thinnest brush was deployed very carefully to try to get her shape and colours, including the two distinctive white spots on her otherwise black muzzle right.(I am pretty happy that she is recognisable as a roe deer doe and she is looking out of the picture from a distance. (Her distinctive, big fluffy ears caused some problems but there is a limit to how many times you can repaint in water colours.) 

More skinny trees, more twigs and leaves and ferns and some highlighting later, the final picture emerges and the doe is fully there. She does not dominate but she is central and in the blinking of an eye she could just elegantly bounds away, as they do!

Here is the final thing.