Wildlife Painting of the Week

The best of wildlife art

Wildlife is reflected through the season with this collection of fine-art paintings. This post is updated every week so keep checking to see what's new.

Click here to look back at my wildlife painting spring choices.

September 18th, 2019

Blue Tit On Lookout

Wildlife Painting of the Week

Blue Tit on the Lookout | Limited Edition Print | More Info

Have you noticed how many haw berries are out at the moment? The hedgerows here on the Yorkshire Wolds are aglow with these deep red jewels. I like to use hawthorn berries in my compositions and many of my winter compositions also feature birds posed on these beautiful berries.

September 11th, 2019

Yellowhammer

Wildlife Painting of the Week

This painting of a yellowhammer perched on blackthorn is an old favourite. Yellowhammers are often seen perched right at the top of small trees or bushes. As winter approaches they join mixed flocks of buntings, finches and sparrows to feed on seeds on farmland.

September 4th, 2019

Courting Pheasants

Wildlife Painting of the Week

Pheasants always look their best at this time of year, their russet-coloured feathers complementing the autumn countryside. This painting features a male and female conversing.

August 28th, 2019

Badgers at Twilight

Wildlife Painting of the Week

This acrylic painting was inspired by badgers at a sett close to my gallery in Thixendale. I visit this badger sett every evening and have now almost become accepted as one of the clan.

Click here to read more about the badgers in this painting

August 21st, 2019

Three's Trouble

Wildlife Painting of the Week

Three's Trouble | Limited Edition Art Print | Click here for more Info

I tried to capture the inquisitive nature of these three fox cubs in this painting! Click here to read about the story of the cubs in this painting.

August 14th, 2019

A Splash of Colour

Wildlife Painting of the Week

Kingfisher Splash | Limited Edition Print | Click Here for More Info

It's been such a wet week I've chosen this watery image to reflect the mood! To get this pose I placed a shallow dish of minnows into a stream and left a camera trap out. I painted directly from the photograph I got.

August 7th, 2019

Roe Fawn

Wildlife Painting of the Week

Roe Fawn | Click Here for More Paintings Like This

Roe deer are beautiful creatures to watch. Their gold-brown fur is also satisfying to paint. In this composition, I wanted to get across that moment when you come across a fawn in a field and it looks back at you for just a moment before it bounds off into the distance.

Click here to read about how I once found myself in the middle of a roe love dance.

July 31st, 2019

Barn Owl on Lookout

Wildlife Painting of the Week

Barn Owl On Lookout | Limited Edition Print |Available Here

Barn owls are one of my favourite subjects to paint and for me there is nothing more magical than the sight of a barn owl gliding over grasslands. I painted this in acrylics using muted colours for my backdrop. To give the effect of the long grass I actually taped some grass stems onto my board and airbrushed around them so that when I took the stems away it left the colour below. I also painted some grass stems in for detail.

July 24th, 2019

Courting Puffins

Wildlife Painting of the Week

Courting Puffins | Limited Edition Print | Buy Now

With their smart black and white plumage, comical walk and bright orange beaks, puffins are just asking to be painted – even their orange legs and feet are so bright they reflect a tango glow onto their pure white bellies. Now is the time to see them here in the UK and in Yorkshire, at Bempton Cliffs, a colony of puffins are already raising to their young pufflings.

Click here to read my tips on where to how and how to watch puffins

July 17th 2019

Tawny Owl On The Lookout

Wildlife Painting of the Week

Tawny Owl on the Lookout | Limited Edition Print | Shop Now

A pair of tawny owls have nested in my garden for more than a decade and I've painted their portraits many times. This is an early painting of the male. This male and its mate are excellent parents - so much so that I have used them to foster foundling owlets. The arrangement means that the young owls are raised in the wild which gives them a better chance of survival.

Click here to read about how I foster tawny owl chicks into the wild.

The video below explains the process:

https://youtu.be/RxmUOxpOig0

Click here to watch the latest from my tawny owl nest camera.

July 10th 2019

Dalby Fox

Wildlife Painting of the Week

I chose to pose this fox in a field of wild flowers, including clover, bedstraw, wild carrot and pincushion, or scabious. I've chosen it for Wildlife Painting of the Week in honour of National Meadows Day. Wildflower meadows are crucial for wildlife, but they are also beautiful to look at.

Click here to read about how a wildflower meadow I planted in my garden has been the inspiration for so many paintings.

I followed this fox through Dalby Forest one wet summer day and was struck by how vulnerable it looked as it slunk through long grass and wild flowers of the forest clearings. It was a vixen and was busy all day looking for food to take back to its cubs.

Click here to read the full story behind the painting and see the reference photographs I took.

July 3rd 2019

Mrs Two Spots Mousing

Wildlife Painting of the Week

Weasels are tiny, but tenacious. I chose to paint this scene to offer a sense of scale. Even a mouse is a mouthful for a weasel! It was seeing this weasel making off with a wood mouse more than twice her size, that inspired me to begin my intensive garden studies of weasels.

Click here to read the weasel study behind this painting find out what I learned about their tenacity

Mrs Two Spots Mousing | Original Acrylic Painting | More Info

June 26th 2019

Badgers: Two of a Kind

Wildlife Painting of the Week

I have built a hide in a tree five metres above a badger sett and I visit every summer evening to watch and photograph them. The badgers have become so used to my presence that these days I can walk among them - and even feed them from my hand. The painting below features two badgers from last year's sett posed close to a branch that I have 'artfully' left on the ground for them to clamber over.

Click here to read more about my badger watching.

June 19th 2019

Glance of a Peregrine

Wildlife Painting of the Week

This is a portrait of the female peregrine living at Salt End Chemical Park in Hull. She and her mate are raising four chicks on the industrial site run by Vivergo Fuels. I am particularly fond of her because she has such a steady gaze. In this painting I wanted to capture the intense way she looks at me when I’m in my hide. It’s as if she can see through the camera lens.

Click here for all the latest from my live Peregrine Nest Camera

Glance of a Peregrine, Original Acrylic Painting | £3,625 Image size: 14.75" x 9.25" | Framed size: 24.5" x 19.5" | More Info

June 12th 2019

Fidget Standing to Attention

Wildlife Painting of the Week

This is a portrait of Fidget, a pert weasel I hand-reared. He was a real character. The painting tells the story of the time I had asked a friend to hold up a titbit to encourage him onto his hind legs so that I could photograph him. But Fidget was too clever for us. In an instant he jumped onto a sideboard, then leapt onto her shoulder and ran down her arm to snatch the morsel right out of her hand!

Click here to read about how I raised Fidget

Original Gouache, Acrylic & Pencil Painting | £2,350 | Image size: 8.24" x 10.25" Framed size: 17.5 "x 20.75" | Buy Now

June 5th 2019

Stoat Portrait: Crackle

Wildlife Painting of the Week

I've just finished this painting of a stoat ready for my summer art exhibition, which opens at my gallery in Thixendale on June 15th. This is a portrait of Crackle, a young female stoat living in my garden. Painted in acrylics, I think it captures her stoic character. She is currently sharing the territory here in my garden with her mother, Bandita, and the two of them have proved themselves polite, but distant neighbours, as they both gear up ready to give birth and raise families next door to one another.

Click here to watch a short film about their relations on my Stoat Camera Stories blog

Crackle Standing Proud, original acrylic painting. More Info

May 29th 2019

Stoat In The Balance

Wildlife Painting Of The Week

I'm working on a new exhibition showcasing my collection of stoat and weasel paintings. The event, due to open at my gallery on June 15th, is the culmination of a five-year intensive research project focusing on the mustelids living in my garden. I used a network of surveillance cameras hidden in the shrubbery and built specific habitats to ensure the animals held their territories. It was incredible to have the opportunity to study these little-known mammals closely. I discovered that stoats are remarkably agile. The painting below highlights their incredible climbing prowess. It will be among the new pictures on exhibit.

Click here for more information about my forthcoming exhibition.

Stoat In The Balance | Fine Art Print | Shop For More Like This

May 22nd 2019

Fox And Dandelions

Wildlife Painting Of The Week

Nothing spells summer more than a field full of dandelions. Or perhaps a fox and cub posing in front of a field of dandelions! I watched this vixen with her cubs one very wet summer's day at Dalby Forest in North Yorkshire.

Click here to read the story and see the photographs that inspired my painting.