Earlier this year, I was commissioned by a couple who live in London to paint a wedding gift. They requested an Nguni bull in a London cityscape for their lounge after seeing my cattle on display at The Eatery, and here is how the London Bull started life:
I painted him in my parents’ kitchen during the afternoon when there’s good natural light and enough counter space for a large piece of board.
I like to collaborate with clients to create something meaningful, and the texts they chose for this work included a quote from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin as well as their wedding vows.
This painting represents a couple of firsts for me: I’ve never painted London before; I drew the bull using a grid and went straight to the final version after initially assuming that I would paint a smaller sketch. In the end, I was so excited about the possibility of all that white space – nearly A1 in size – that I went straight to the full size version.
The next stage will be to have the bull mounted and then sent to his new home in London. I’ll be a little sad to see him go after having him around for a couple of months, but I’m hoping his new owners will enjoy looking at him as much as I loved creating him.
