Buck with a white ring!

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Looks like it had sat on a freshly painted toilet seat! And when it got up, there was a white ring on its rump!

Check it out:

I took several photos of it that you can see for yourself:

Notice how they stop and stand still and look at us. The one looked like it was looking down at us like, “Oh no, not those humans again!”

The waterbuck:

Like their name, these large antelope (about 204kg) are generally found near water, where the grass is tender and juicy.

The herds are normally small with one bull in charge. The males are very territorial and polygamous. The waterbuck’s coat has an oily musky secretion. The female are smaller than the males, and don’t have horns.

Its main enemy is lions. When hunted, if possible it will try to hide in the reeds found alongside deep rivers, submerged with only its head above water.

What’s next?

And next thing were saw when we moved on with our car, was a scene of a river. It nestled quietly in the folds of the Kruger bush. It seems somewhat secret because you come across it so suddenly and expectantly.

Here is an oil painting I did of it:

You see, every time our daughter stopped the car for me to take the photos, she wasn’t always in the perfect position to get a perfect composition. So I had to re-construct the scene in such a way that I got a full view of the scene.

How I painted it:

As usual I had previously had done a light overall wash of raw sienna. And when it is completely dry, I blocked in the basic shapes of the composition… using under-colours of the objects and areas.

No detail at this point. Just getting the basic shapes and general placement of the main objects and elements like the sky, to balance the composition. It’s like setting the stage and where the actors (details) will come onto it, later.
You build up your tone values so you have fresh transparent undertones. And your level of the tones are set right like a good foundation.
That is: light, medium and dark tones. Building tones a little darker than actually reality of your photo, so you can add lighter colours later.
You see in oil paints, if you have a darkish background, your lighter colours and highlights will show up better, when you come to add them later.
Putting down a good foundation makes it easier and quicker to finish your painting. Because there is less work to do later in the process and its completion.

In this case:

The dark background sand was painted with darkish brown with a touch of purple here and there. The light grass and twigs colours were added to it later.

The grass under-colour mixture was raw sienna with a touch of white, making a yellowish basic foundation to work on.
And because yellow’s complementary is violet and blue, the completed painting needed a little of soft violet and blue to enhanced it.
The dry winter grass not been really a yellow straw colour, I had to play the under-colour down with lighter colours. That is: adding varieties of soft tinges of pink and mauve grass to set the mood and gives the impressions of grass seeds, etc.
Yet having the raw sienna under-colour previously laid in place, helped the grass to show up more aesthetically in the finished painting.
That shows you, you must look more carefully to judge what under colours and tones to use, before starting on your painting’s composition.

Also notice:

Even though I wanted to catch the bushiness of the scene, it could have looked very busy with too much detail. So I made sure there were less busy areas.

Like making the sky area bigger than what the photos showed and less complicated.
And the water smoother, with less reflection detail and ripples crossing it, than there was in the photo, as well.
And to lighten the painting a little more, I made the lightness of sky area in the river water, to subtly blend and flow up into the grass area, to the right.