The commission agreement has been signed and the drawing approved. This is the drawing I emailed my customer for approval. Normally, I just make my drawing directly on my canvas, but for a commission, I draw it more detailed on paper for my client's approval. It's still not overly detailed.

I then blow it up to the size I need and transfer the drawing onto my canvas using pencil carbon under the drawing and tracing the image.

I am using approximately six different photo references to paint this. Originally the horse/rider in the foreground was much farther back in the photo and the rider was a man on a buckskin. I moved them to the foreground and changed them to a woman on a paint horse.

The rider in the background was also a man in the photo, but now is a woman. The cows were black Angus, but now will be Herefords. I took a dog biting a cow's tail from another photo and changed the dog. The background is more like my client's area and I added some fall aspens in the background. The only thing I didn't change is the time of day/light.