Outdoor pronghorn painting: First Friday Art

Here’s an outdoor pronghorn painting I did in our backyard. It’s the first Friday of the month so it’s time to share your First Friday Art. If you have artwork you would like to share, use the First Friday Art tag.

We have an 8 x 16 foot shed in the backyard and it had a boring blank west-facing wall. It needed something to make it more interesting. I thought of painting a pronghorn, one of my favorite critters.

I developed an appreciation for pronghorns many years ago when I did fieldwork at Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge in southeastern Oregon. Pronghorns, AKA antelope, are native in parts of western North America and they’re common at the refuge.

Steps taken to create the outdoor pronghorn painting

First I brightened up the side of the shed with some leftover light blue paint. Then I sketched out the pronghorn from pictures I had taken, supplemented with other source materials.

For some people doing the initial sketch is easy, but it’s not for me. Do you know what the picture below is?

Eraser dust! I did a lot of erasing and redrawing.

The next step was back painting the silhouette of the pronghorn. I used an off white paint – more leftovers – to help the colors pop.

Next I sketched over the white paint.

Then I painted in the big blocks of color and added shading. The last thing I paint is the eye. It can give a painting life.

A dead juniper branch and igneous rock collected from my property helped the painting fit in with our High Desert setting.

There will be more High Desert creatures added to this piece. I’ll start work on a badger, black-billed magpie, and golden-mantled ground squirrel.

I filled up some of my empty space (and empty time) creating this outdoor pronghorn painting. Hope you are finding time to be creative!