It's overcast and cold again. Dark in the studio, despite the fact that my large windows face south. I was however, able to give my cows some love this morning and I'm happy with what's going onto the canvas at this point.
When painting something this big, it's good to set goals for each session. Today, my goal was to do the underpainting for the cows and begin to add their individual facial characteristics. At first glance, cows may all kinda look the same. But as any other mammal, dogs and people included, they have unique coloring, tufting of hair, texture of exposed skin, and the like. Even lips are differing colors, which I've always found interesting. If that weren't true, then there would not be thousands upon thousands of colors of lipstick. There may only be hundreds.
I'm posting two photos, about two hours apart today. I got in a good four hours before needing to move on to another project. The paint needs to dry now that the under layers are laid down. Many painters prefer wet on wet technique, and sometimes I do, but for acrylics I prefer doing layers of color that have dried in between, to give the effect of depth when there really isn't any. In my opinion, oils work better for wet on wet, or watercolor for that matter.
Anyhow, I started the morning with some Zac Brown. I think he's one of those guys that sounds a heck of a lot better in person, so his live albums are superior in my humble opinion. There's a song, "The Wind" that sounds amazing live. The talent of the musicians really shines and you can hear the instruments individually. It's classified as country music, but that song has so much to offer, I'd probably classify it more as a crazy fun bluegrass. I just love the fiddle with a heavy banjo. After all, I was painting cows...although I suppose they like to eat bluegrass more than listen to it.
Anyhow here are some new photos. Thanks for looking!
Used unbleached titanium underneath a layer of titanium white here.
Happy little background cow...I began adding some red oxide and burgundy to the unbleached titanium for the colors of the cows. Will do some eyes next, then move onto the fence, although I really like it in turquoise...