A conversation with Lynn Bishop: Part 11

What advice do you have for aspiring painters?

Learn to draw. Learning facility with drawing materials is the fundamental skill in painting, regardless of whether you want to do realistic or impressionistic or abstract painting - take a look at Picasso's magnificent early drawings. By learning to manipulate the fundamentals of form - line, edges, and values - in gray scale, without having to deal with color, makes the whole process of learning to draw not easy, but a bit easier.

A conversation with Lynn Bishop: Part 10

What would you like to do more of in the future?

More animal drawings, paintings, and photographs. And poetry, another "natural" form of expression for me, but one I've never developed.

Picture credit: "New Zealand Hill Climber"

Click here to learn more about this cow photograph

A conversation with Lynn Bishop: Part 9

Do you ever have goof ups or work you don’t like?

Oh, yes! I'm impatient by nature, so I tend to tackle a painting without doing a detailed underdrawing or underpainting. Often a fast simple sketch on the canvas is sufficient, but sometimes I get part of the way through a painting and find I need to change the composition or make other corrections. Fortunately oil paint is a rather forgiving medium so it's generally possible to scrape off mistakes, but it would be much better to start with an accurate foundation so as not to waste time and effort. And, yes, sometimes I've abandoned a painting entirely because I can't make it work.

A conversation with Lynn Bishop: Part 8

What else do you do besides painting?

Recently I decided to take photography more seriously as an art form in itself rather than just as an aide memoire for places I've visited or as reference material for my paintings. I love taking photographs of birds, especially the larger wetlands birds such as egrets and herons, but am looking forward to photographing many different subjects. Another exciting canvas is our garden, which my husband I have been rescuing from years of neglect by previous owners. After 8 years of organic attention, it's finally providing more pleasure than exhaustion, although there's still plenty of work yet to do, but it's worth it to be able to eat fresh tomatoes and apples and enjoy cut flowers out of our own garden.

A conversation with Lynn Bishop: Part 7

How long does it take you to get an average painting?

I've completed a 3' x 4' painting in 4 days while some 16" x 20" paintings have taken a month or more, so there is no "average" time. The length of time it takes depends a lot on the complexity of the subject, how well I'm focusing on the process, what else is going on in my life, and, sometimes, a lot of luck in having fallen in love with a subject that just has all the right elements in it that make a good painting.

A conversation with Lynn Bishop: Part 6

How do you decide what to paint?

The subject seems to choose me...that is, something about the subject strikes a chord in my heart and I simply have to express what I feel through painting.

A conversation with Lynn Bishop: Part 5

Where did you learn your technique?

Well, I'm not so sure I have a consistent technique. It seems I never approach two paintings in a row in exactly the same way. I've learned a lot by taking classes and workshops in university and art school settings and by studying books about art. The single most important influence, however, was a six-week stint with Charles Cecil at his academy in Florence, Italy, where he teaches classical techniques of drawing and painting. He taught me the sight-size method of working - positioning the drawing surface such that the image observed is the same size as the drawn image - and that helped me solve some major problems I'd had with my drawing. All that aside, it's the innumerable hours at the easel that have taught me the most.

Picture credit: "We Three Sheep", oil on canvas

Click here to go to Cow Art and More to learn more about this sheep painting

A conversation with Lynn Bishop: Part 4

Where do you get your inspiration?

Life! Something I see - usually animals or people - grabs me emotionally and creates the urge to capture and express that emotion in a painting.

Picture credit: "Oshosh", charcoal on paper

A conversation with Lynn Bishop: Part 3

What is your technique?

My paintings are realistic/representational, done in oil paints, often mixed with Winsor & Newton Liquin, which dries overnight, facilitating reworking. I have a poor visual memory, I love detail, and I love to portray an "instant in time" so my paintings are based on photos I've taken. For most of my career I used a non-electric slide viewer to look at slides of the subject as I painted, but I've now entered the digital age and view images on a laptop computer set up near my canvas. Although I rely on photographs as the basis of my paintings, I freely move subjects around and combine images from multiple photographs. In one large triptych of horses, I combined images from more than 2 dozen slides.

Picture credit: "Team Plus One", oil on canvas Click here to learn more about this horse oil painting

A conversation with Lynn Bishop: Part 2

How did you get started?

I drew a lot as a kid and my mother, who I suspect wanted to be an artist, encouraged and supported me as best she could, even somehow finding the money for some art lessons when I was in high school in the late 1950's. Unfortunately the teacher wanted to teach abstract painting and I wanted to learn realistic painting, so that experience was somewhat disappointing. Later, when I was an art major in a small college, someone told me I couldn't be "a real artist" and focus on equine art. So I showed them...I quit art and became a veterinarian instead! But the art muse wouldn't leave me alone so nearly two decades later I turned back to art.

Photo credit: "One Horsepower"

A conversation with Lynn Bishop: Part 1

Why do you paint?

Each of us has some form of creative energy that longs for expression. My emotional responses to life are varied, but when it comes to outwardly expressing my response to something I've experienced, creating a realistic image, through painting or photography, seems most natural.

Picture credit: "Greys", oil on canvas

Click here to learn more about this horse painting

Lynn Bishop featured artist for the month of May

Painter and photographer Lynn Bishop is our featured artist for the month of May on Cow Art and More. Lynn received a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from the University of California and originally pursued a career in veterinary pathology. She found the call to pursue art was too great and began painting full time in 1985. Currently, Lynn lives in Colorado and enjoys capturing the realism of animals in many forms. Lynn discusses her art in detail the entire month on the Cow Art and More blog. All of her artwork will have free shipping for the entire month.

Picture credit: "Curious Creatures, Cows!"

Click here to lean more about this cow oil painting

Welcome new artist Lynn Bishop!

Cow Art and More is excited to welcome painter and photographer Lynn Bishop to the site. Lynn is a veterinary pathologist who has pursued her art full time since 1985. She lives in Colorado, yet has exposure over the entire United States. Lynn has a keen eye for capturing the beauty of livestock in her art.

Picture credit: "Curious Creatures, Cows!" giclee prints of original oil painting