Dall Sheep:

Jan does lots of research. This includes sometimes painting in the field to train her eye to think in terms of three dimensions rather than just the two you see when working from photos only. It's also important to smell, hear and feel the environment - including in this case - the cold of an Alaska morning. This painting is going to be of a Dall sheep. She has been to Alaska three times and seen Dall sheep on each trip.

Jan experimented with several ideas for the painting. She knew she wanted to do a Dall sheep coming down a rocky slope so she did several "thumbnail" sketches to decide which idea she liked best. She decided that she wanted to do the painting vertically to give more of the feeling of the sheep descending. She finally decided on doing just the single sheep feeling that the standing sheep did not help the composition nor further the idea of downward descent.

The background has been done and the masking materials have been removed from the foreground rocks and the sheep. The snow on the far off slope has been purposely designed to enhance the feeling of the downward motion of the sheep.

This photo shows a trick of Jan's to create "texture". She puts the paint on the panel very wet, then "scrunches" cellophane into the paint. This gives an organic base that can't be achieved with a brush. She also uses this technique to do bark and in this case has also already done it to the horn of the sheep.

This photo shows the rocks almost done. The drawing has also been transferred to the sheep.

Closeup of the under "drawing" of the hair coat in off white paint.

Here the unifying brown wash is done on the sheep preparing it for the final detail work.

Here the horn is finished and part of the sheep's coat has been finished.

This is Jan's palette - notice that even though the sheep is "white" there are all sorts of subtle yellows, greens and blues that go into doing his painting his coat.

This is the finished painting - "Descent" 20 x 16".