the bovine ilk

If I'm going to draw or paint an animal it's going to be a cow, just the moo and not the milk. They're fairly easy to draw, simple featured, generally not too furry and I like cows. Last year when I painted a cow I was so happy it was much better than the previous cow I'd painted, the coloring came out just right, the shadow on the ears blended in nicely with the face, it looked a bit flat, the nose was too big and I forgot to leave a white spot where I wanted one but it definitley looked like a cow. This year though I wanted to really try to paint something that had more depth and was correctly proportioned. So since this is a painting class and I wanted to work on color and shadow I traced the cow. Their I said it I cheat on drawing so I can paint. With a correctly drawn picture to start with I was able to really concentrate on the colors, laying down pinks and browns areas, leaving a glint of white light in the eye, creating a soft, pink muzzle. Eventually it got overworked as a lot of my paintings tend to do, some areas too light, some too dark and some starting to look a bit muddy. But for all it's faults it's a vast improvement over my last cow. This is my third cow, and though I'm not naturally artistic and I have to look really hard to see shapes and light, I'm getting better. So maybe I'll go on painting cows, and maybe even spend some time learning how to draw them.