Recently I spent a week on a narrow boat along the Oxfordshire canal. The views were beautiful and vast with green rolling hills, dry stone walls and very characterful houses along the way. There was a real abundance of wildlife obliging us with their presence. Watching a barn owl hunting around the hedgerows of a field was the most incredible experience, having only really seen glimpses of them in the wild previously. A superb hunter, it was wonderfully inspiring to watch this master at work.
On stopping for the night beside a field of water buffalo, I got up early to watch them. With their curvy, pointy horns and large, angular shoulder muscles, they’re an interesting subject to depict. I watched as one stood beside a very old, scrawny tree. The buffalo had its head held upwards, appearing powerful in comparison to the tree. They seem to walk in this manner and this made them intriguing to me.
I made a couple of quick sketches whilst I was there. However, I knew if I wanted to paint this subject, it would be best to do while the image was fresh in my mind.
On arriving back I set about creating a scene, placing the trees and water buffalo in various places on paper until I was happy with the composition. Then I primed a sheet of ply wood with gesso.
Once dry, I drew the various subjects in before using acrylics to produce an underpainting to inform shapes and tone.
Afterwards I used my oil paints to mix a sky blue colour then applied this along with white oil paint using the technique of scumbling to produce cloud-like formations.
I then worked on the landscape. Trying to make it appear more like these creatures’ natural habitat before being bred for farming. I wanted to create a bit of atmosphere by blurring the horizon line, merging the sky in with the grass. Additionally, this helps draw attention to the foreground.
The sky received a few more purple tones along with sandy off white areas to reflect the grass below.
The next, very important step was painting the water buffalo and the trees behind them. I looked at photos of water buffalo to remind myself of their anatomy as well as the various colours within their dark coat. I later found some photos of old gnarled trees to help inform my depiction of their texture. Dry brushing with a very pale blue off white was used to gently push back the distant tree that was initially a similar tone to the one in the foreground.
Once again, I couldn’t resist adding further detail to the sky scumbling and merging it even more with the landscape below.
I then painted the water buffalo in the background, before trying to create a distant impression of them by using the dry brush technique to push them back. I subsequently created harmony within the landscape, using the same colours, tones and brush strokes throughout. I allowed specks of warm ochre to show from beneath. Lastly I worked on the horizon merging the land with the sky, adding a few dashes of subtle purple in the grass to balance with the sky.