Animal studies from my visual diaries

By Gillian Valladares Castellino

My visual diaries - and I have many, are my place to study, explore, experiment and have fun. The next few posts will contain excerpts from them, based on different themes. The first is animals, so here goes....

My first 'animal' painting was off a seahors (below) - though technically a seahorse is not an animal, but we will let that pass. It was done using gauche and watercolour on paper.

One of the early animal paintings - using gauche and ink...

Studies on feline anatomy (not quite sure how, but a human face crept in too)...

Canines... and some of the big cats...

A foray into Sumi painting - Waterbuffaloes in pen and ink

An attempt to learn form the masters...

A hare (left), inspired by Albrecht Durer's watercolour and gauche image (right) created in 1502.

The images below were used to study the structure of a rabbit, before attempting to copy Durer's watercolour.