yellow cow update

here is the update, the third application of paint… another technical painting (sigh)  i’m trying to learn colour theory by doing…but it turns out there are other technical problems other than colour theory.  thank god i didn’t attempt kandinsky!  imagine the size of those problems!

 all i did was paint the lower left of this pic, the rocks and the leaves… that’s abt 3 hrs of my life spent scratching on that small surface… wow, am i anal-retentive or what… but i got to use a fan brush!  hehe 

interestingly, this third application of paint is when oil as a rich medium is starting to show.  i was complaining abt how the cow looks as though it can be blown away, well, that’s cos oil should have a certain ‘gravitas’ abt it, and this is mostly through how you manipulate layers and layers of quality paint.  since i have neither quality paint nor layers upon layers… it pretty much sums up the pic.

the pic is also uneven, as you can see from the cow, the lower right areas and the background… the lower right has 1 1/2 layers of paint… why this odd number, that’s cos the paint isn’t applied very evenly the second time… the brush i was using couldn’t absorb enough paint on it (lack of quality again).  the effects aren’t good or bad, it just isn’t appropriate for this painting, as the original painting has this this ‘flattened’ and ’smooth’ look abt it. 

also, some pple seem to ‘get it’… that is, the feeling of oil as a medium… two of my classmates seem to have ‘it’ with their landscapes… incidentally, the two of them are some of the older folks, retired too.  i wonder if being free of worries is one factor that enables you to paint more freely.

an aside:

the original yellow cow by franz marc has such a carefree and whimsical attitude… it’s so playful… the colours so vibrant, you’d think that the painter was some cheerful chum living in lala land.

his biography is anyting but.