Barnyard Friends and Fowl

How Now Brown Cow?

Here is a snapshot of  my latest cow in progress. I am feeling under the weather, so I have stopped working today at completion of the background in this piece. This stopping point is a good thing because it has prompted me to take a photo in progress and explain where we are at this point. After all, I promised to keep you in the loop on the progression on these new pieces.

• The Cow is still in the under-painting stage, she has been quickly painted with acrylic (directly on unprimed panel) to give me a color sketch to adhere my paper over.
  
• The background is the first part of the Paper Painting I work on, this way when the edges of the cow meet the background, they are laid on top.
  
• Since I am not feeling up to all the details of my cow, the background sky was something I could work on for a few hours this afternoon while I watched the kids bouncing on the trampoline from my studio in the back yard.
  
• I have used my favorite free art medium, Starbucks bags, in the green foreground
  
• My daughter's school sent home a great damaged book from the library for me to use for collage materials, you can see evidence of it in the small branch art at the top left

Stay tuned to see how the cow and her nose (my favorite part!)  progresses, her friend in the pasture has just enough detail that we know she's a cow, without making her a focal point. I chose to darken the pasture underneath the cow so that the part over to the right stand out more. Right now the contrast might be too much, but I will wait until tomorrow to decide for sure.