Michelle Wrighton Fine Art and Photography

Its unbelievable how fast this year has gone, it seems like I blinked and suddenly its Christmas!  I have a ton of new artwork to add to the blog and to my Zazzle and Redbubble giftshops as well as having a new streamlined designs for both my photography website and this one for my art and pet portrait commissions.  I am definitely being over-ambitious to think I can get all that done in the immediate future, so for the time being will just update this blog with recent artwork and a number of awards that I received at a recent art show that I entered (which I am very pleased with;)

Going back to my original comment about it nearly being Christmas, Pet Portrait Paintings are a unique and memorable Christmas present for animal lovers! I will be able to accept a limited number of Pet Portrait commissions for delivery before Christmas – and to really get into the Christmas spirit, I am offering Christmas Special for the following traditional and digital portraits (cameo portrait, one subject with plain background):

Traditional Charcoal/Graphite Drawing:

Drawing supplied matted and ready to slip into a standard 11”x14” frame.   Normally $250.00 Christmas Special $150.00

Digital Painting Portraits:

Small digital file delivered by email suitable for printing up to 8”x10”, unlimited personal reprint permission, non-exclusive print rights: normally $200 Christmas Special $100.00

Large digital file suitable for printing up to 16″x20″, unlimited personal reprint permission, non-exclusive print rights: normally $250.00 Christmas Special $150.00

Exclusive Digital File: printable up to 16”x20” Exclusive print rights: normally $300.00 Christmas Special $200.00

Digital Portraits Printed on Gallery Wrapped canvas (30mm or 40mm profile) and hand finished by artist:

11”x14” normally $300.00 Christmas Special $200.00

12”x12” normally $330.00 Christmas Special $230.00

16”x16” normally $380.00 Christmas Special $280.00

A 30% deposit, one or more photographs for me to work from and a brief description of the subjects personality is all that is required to secure a place on my waiting list!

Please order early to ensure delivery prior to Christmas.  Additional pets in  portraits $50.00 digital, $80.00 traditional graphite/charcoal drawings.  Detailed Backgrounds, tack, equipment, costumes from $40.00

Unfortunately traditional acrylic and oil paintings on canvas are not available for Christmas commissions as there is just not enough time to complete them.

Please contact me for additional information or to book your Christmas Pet Portrait commission.

My Thoroughbred gelding provides me with endless amusement and artistic reference material.  He was being a goofball (as usual), but his pose reminded me of the power within the horse that is ready to explode at any moment.  Painting him with a stormy background was a perfect setting for “Sudden Thunder”.

Sudden Thunder by Michelle Wrighton © 2010

SHOP FOR CUSTOMIZED “SUDDEN THUNDER” ART PRINTS, T-SHIRTS & GIFTS

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Michelle Wrighton: Animal, Wildlife & Landscape Fine Art & Photography

Contact Michelle: by email

FACEBOOK: Michelle Wrighton Artist

TWITTER: artistMichelleW

SHOP FOR HORSE LOVER CARDS, MATTED, LAMINATED AND FRAMED HORSE ART PRINTS: Redbubble Giftshop

‘Horse of Colour’ is a new digital oil horse painting in which I have again gone for a contemporary look, focused on the colours rather than detail, using soft pastel hues of violet, lemon, mint and baby blue highlighted brush strokes floated over the blended colours to express the soft romanticism of a much loved kind and gentle show pony.

Horse of Colour - modern horse painting by Michelle Wrighton

Close up cropped image to show detail

A few people have asked recently how I create my digital paintings so I thought I would write a post with some work in progress images to show how I paint.

There are a number of ways to create art in a digital format, there really is no right or wrong way, it is all up to the individual artist.  My background is a lifetime spent working with traditional art materials – graphite, charcoal, colour pencils, pastels, acrylics and oils – and I utilize all this experience and knowledge I have gained working with traditional art mediums to paint digitally.  I use a Wacom Intuos 4 digital graphics tablet and electronic art pen and the powerful real media emulation program Corel Painter XI to literally paint just like I do with traditional mediums, just electronically.  The Painter program allows me to choose the type of medium (charcoal, pastels, watercolours, oils etc), the size and type of brush and blenders I wish to use, as well as the support I want to paint on such as canvas, sanded pastel papers, watercolour papers etc.

All of these variables respond just as they do with real life mediums in regards to the application, mixing and blending of colour.  The pressure sensitive tablet and pen records not only the movement of the pen (digital paintbrush) as I move my hand, but also the angle I hold the pen at, as well as the pressure that I apply to make each mark – essentially all of the variables that make a particular mark with traditional art materials are duplicated by the amazing technology that I have available to use.

The biggest difference for me between painting digitally and painting traditionally are all positive – the lack of mess, no wasted time setting up, lack of fumes & toxic ingredients (an important factor when you have auto-immune issues), no paintbrushes to clean, no wasted paint, no running out of the perfect colour mix, being able to paint for five minutes at a time if that is all I have available or if I unexpectedly get interrupted.  Probably more important to me personally as an artist though, is that painting digitally has allowed my creativity to flourish in a way that has never happened with traditional art mediums – I put this down to working photo realistically which is very time consuming and mentally draining.

With digital painting I am free to follow the slightest hint of inspiration for trying something new, knowing that I can always go back to the last saved copy if that particular path of inspiration comes to a dead end.  This is certainly not something I ever tried with traditional mediums for fear of completely destroying dozens of hours of work on a painting.  LOL so I should probably add ‘liberating’ to the list of reasons that I love digital painting so much!

There is so much more that I could write about digital painting, but I will leave that for another post!

This is a painting I finished recently of a lovely grey arab photographed by fellow artist, Cathy Sheeter.  I havn’t given this one a title yet, so if you have any good ideas, I would love to hear them!

Finished digital painting of a grey arab horse, © 2010 Michelle Wrighton

(more…)

‘Summer Heat’ is an original painting based on a photo I took of my Standardbred gelding Tommy in our back paddock last summer.  I avoided putting too much detail in the painting and chose warm yellow and orange hues to really capture the feeling of a hot summers day in rural Australia.

Summer Heat - modern contemporary equine art by Michelle Wrighton

Summer Heat - Close up

‘Summer Heat’ is available for sale as art prints and gifts items in my Redbubble and Zazzle shops, and signed prints are available for sale in my Etsy shop Art By Michelle

I’ve always loved working with dark coloured and black backgrounds to create dramatic lighting in a painting.  Colour Pencils and pastels are two traditional mediums that this technique works extremely well with, and I am pleased to say that it is the same for paintings created with digital pastels.  It takes an awful lot of self control for me to stop adding more and more detail to a painting (traditional or digital), but I am loving exploring painting more freely and expressively while still capturing the essence of my subject, so I can see a few more of this style of painting in the future.

The Dark Horse - Michelle Wrighton © 2010

A selected range of quality products including canvas prints, iPad cases, t-shirts, mousepads, notepads and many more gift items featuring the racehorse painting “Dark Horse” can be seen below and are now available for purchase.

 VIEW ALL PRODUCTS FEATURING “DARK HORSE”

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Dark Horse Postcard

I’ve always loved working with dark coloured and black backgrounds to ...

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Dark Horse Greeting Card

I’ve always loved working with dark coloured and black backgrounds to ...

mwrighton

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I’ve always loved working with dark coloured and black backgrounds to ...

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I’ve always loved working with dark coloured and black backgrounds to ...

mwrighton

$26.95

Dark Horse Shirt

I’ve always loved working with dark coloured and black backgrounds to ...

mwrighton

$24.70

Dark Horse Post Cards

I’ve always loved working with dark coloured and black backgrounds to ...

mwrighton

$1.10

Dark Horse Tee Shirts

I’ve always loved working with dark coloured and black backgrounds to ...

mwrighton

$20.20

Dark Horse Tee Shirts

I’ve always loved working with dark coloured and black backgrounds to ...

mwrighton

$30.35

Dark Horse T-shirts

I’ve always loved working with dark coloured and black backgrounds to ...

mwrighton

$22.45

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Thanks for visiting my blog  and sharing my art and photography with your family and friends!

x Michelle

Michelle Wrighton: Animal, Wildlife & Landscape Fine Art & Photography

FACEBOOK: Michelle Wrighton Artist

TWITTER: artistMichelleW

BUY CARDS, PHOTO PRINTS, CANVAS ART AND FRAMED ART PRINTS: Redbubble

Digital painting of a Quarterhorse after working cows.

Cutting Cows Quarterhorse painting ©2009 Michelle Wrighton

100% crop to show detail of Quarterhorse painting

Greeting cards, laminated, matted, canvas and framed prints of “Kookaburra” can be purchased from my Redbubble shop: