I Wish Every Painting Day Was A Moose

Last weekend, I blocked in a pair of moose. Today, we gave the moose some good detail. ANyway, I had a lot of fun bringing the moose out so it looked less like just a splotch of paint. I enjoyed depicting this clumsy-looking, yet graceful creature as a spot of interest in the mural.

Growing up in Idaho, my father, my brothers and I would often go on a plein-air painting excursion to West Yellowstone, Montana, Jackson Hole, Wyoming or Island Park, Idaho. Occasionally, we would see moose come out of the woods and into an open clearing off in the distance. Not wanting to miss anything, I would put my paintbrush down and quietly watch the creature move about in it's natural setting. Sometimes, I would take off in my car to a bird refuge west of Rexburg, Idaho to study Great Blue herons, Sandhill Crane, Snowy Egrets, Comorants and other bird variety, yet I never made painting wildlife a career. Nor am I a hunter like many wildlife artists, yet I would sometimes put wildlife in my landscape paintings as an accent or to add a little life. Perhaps I could have been a wildlife artist.

In 2006, I put some waterfowl and a paint pony in the Inteliserv (a former Novatek business) mural . A few months later, I painted an elk and waterfowl in the foreground of a mural I painted for Alcoa, inc. I sent pictures of these two mural jobs to Cabelas the week after finishing the Alcoa project and heard back from Cabelas corporate office about a week later. In 2007, Cabelas hired me to paint five habitat murals for their under construction East Hartford, Connecticut retail store. It would be nice to get another Cabelas job someday.

Tomorrow, I will go shopping for some smaller paint brushes than I have been using so I can finish the animals. I hope to have the entire mural looking more finished by this weekend.