Abstract with Grays to Mixed Herd

Here is the abstract with grays as it was on Thursday. I came home from a long emotionally complex trip to Georgia on Thursday - tired out and bottled up. I threw myself into painting Friday evening and it felt GREAT.

I'd been thinking of bonsai lately, with a stop in Atlanta at a sushi restaurant that had them in shelves above the sushi chefs, and with my daughter mentioning the roadside bonsai salesman near her dance lessons. So this tree photo caught me, and I got out an orange pencil and put it's graceful arched shapes in the abstract. Like antlers or horns. So then cows needed to be under the tree, and I added a small mixed herd of herefords and longhorns with a blue pencil and then white acrylic. I love the bones that show through cows' backs. It's the first thing "bovine" brings to my mind. The tree came into more focus, and more trees emerged in the background - huge trees with diffuse light coming through them. More contrast, more color, some yellow and orange on the white acrylic to tie the cows into the landscape a bit more... Green grass for the cows...

I don't know if I like it or not - but I thoroughly enjoyed letting it run away with itself.

Saturday evening we had a family gathering of siblings and their families at my youngest sister's house. Her husband built the enormous place, and we had a big bonfire out in their pasture, where a friend raises a mixed herd. The cows came lumbering purposefully towards us, spread out so they'd all arrive at once, to check out the fire. I thought of my painting - and I waited to see how close they would get and what they would do. Then my eleven year old niece jumped up and ran them all off. They turned and fled over the hill and out of sight.