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Winter Cows 3

16" x 20", oil on canvas, private collection

While shooting reference photos of the farmers for my Field to Canvas series, I also took a lot of pictures of their farms and, those that had any, their livestock, planning to paint some of them later. The cows in this painting belong to Blaine Way, a third-generation farmer in Prince Edward County, who also raises pork and ducks.

Tight pencils.

After tightening the pencils I decided to keep going and fill in some values in the cows (stay tuned for the other two). I left the big areas in this one clear, but had some fun rendering the faces, legs, and and some of the background. Not entirely necessary, but fun.

Also a little different.

Instead of starting with my usual olive green blocking-in of darks, I went with raw umber in this one because I wanted to browns to be as rich as possible and olive green would've given the cows an oddness.

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