Hutterite Holsteins, Oil Painting, 24X30.

This painting isn't little like the ACEO c ards I've been doing lately. It's 24X30. I wanted to work on something more serious and these cows seemed to fit the bill. I started this a while back, and never finished it.

It isn't finished yet, it's still a WIP, Work in Progress, but I wanted it to look good enough to take to the First Friday show as an example of what's on my easel now.

To create this image, I've been using a palette of three values for each color. Each value blends a little with the one beside it as I lay the colors down, which gives me what looks like, a wide range of values. The light, as it strikes the tops of the cows backs, where the cows are black is a cad orange. Where the light strikes the white of the cows, I'm using a touch of the orange in the white.

The deep darkest color of white on the cows, where they're in shadow, is ultramarine blue and white. I tried to create the cattle by making quick strokes of the correct value in the shape I found it to be.

When I began this painting, I had my photo of these cows, and my memory of them to work from. Now, I've lost the photo! I burned it onto a cd and can't find which one of my hundreds of cd's it's on. :) Wouldn't you know it?

Many years ago, my ex husband and I had a 300 cow dairy. I guess I should remember what a dairy cow looks like. I'll have to wing it. If I get really stuck on some anatomy or how the light looks on these cows, we'll drive out to the dairy again. It's about 80 miles from here.

These are the things that make paintings cost money, we sometimes have more than painting into them by the time they're finished. Hopefully, I can finish this without that extra trip out there but you never know. When you're stuck, you're stuck! You might as well admit it, bite the bullet, do what you need to do to finish the painting and get on with the next one!

As this one gets finished, I'll keep posting the updates.
Donna
PS, thanks for stopping by!