Highland Cow

Somebody local who works with number two son in the kitchen at the Rose & Crown expressed an interest in buying a painting of a highland cow if I ever did one, so that’s what I’ve had a go at today. She was really after a black and white painting but black’s a miserable colour. Instead I’ve gone for the tundra supergranulators, just as I tend to do with most Scottish paintings. I’ve also gone for a low risk posterised approach as I wanted this one to be right first time.

I tinkered around a little with the composition, lowering the the horizon so that it didn’t line up with the cow’s back. I also made sure to have some darks in the background right up against all the highlights on the cow. And I included more darks in the water than there were in my source photo as I needed them to balance against the darks in the hills.

I roughly followed my usual approach to paintings like this, the only differences being that:

• For the initial masking, I used a mapping pen with the masking fluid to draw some long hairs. I also masked out some hairs after the first and second layers, looking for some pink and blue hairs in the final painting
• I charged a little of the tundra orange and tundra green into the tundra violet in the final layer to make the fur look warmer, the water cooler and the hills more interesting.
• I dabbed off some colour on the distant shoreline to give the impression of fog

I’m happy with how this one came out. My compositional decisions over rearranging the darks worked out well and the tundra colours lower the temperature and add atmosphere. What’s the big white area behind the cow though? Water? Snow? Ice? It’s whatever the viewer wants to to be.

And this one was indeed sold to the person who put in the request.