The Start of my First Painting for 2016

I know the month is half over and I'm just now starting my first painting of 2016.  Seems a bit out of character for me but things have been very hectic.  I started out the year with some sort of respitory virus that really caused me to slow down and then last week I have the start of an ongoing family medical emergency that is requiring daily trips to the hospital.  I also know that the more hours you spend in the hospital your chances of catching some sort of sickness goes up exponentially and so for a second time this month I found myself once again on the sick bed.  So even with the best laid plans to make 2016 my ART YEAR, I'm here on January 21st and not having much to show creatively for the past few weeks.

I was able to add one sketch in my artistic journal while waiting in the hospital surgery waiting room.  I drew a jersey calf because I plan to start a painting.  Sketching details that you plan to add as components in your composition help you to understand the subject and also help you paint it with more accuracy.  This little sketch is only with graphite pencils and a little black ink but my other recent cow sketches are done using Prismacolor colored pencils.

After completing these two renderings, I decided that I really liked how the soft brown of the Jersey calf rather than the little holster looked against the blue of the morning glories.  So a Jersey cow it is with his big brown eyes and soft brown fur.  Now that I have actually started the painting on a 24x36 canvas and am painting it vertically for the emphasis on height, I have decided to add the mother cow to the composition.  I only have her roughly sketched in with a white pastel pencil but I think there was just going to be way too much blank space without her.  This piece is just roughly blocked in at this point and if I can stay healthy long enough I hope to make real progress on it this weekend.  I will share some progress photos of the work in my future blog posts so please keep check back.

If you like my work and would like to see more, check out my website at JulieTownsendStudio.com.  Also consider leaving a comment below.  I would love to hear from you.