I Love Painting... No Bull!

I've been painting a lot of backgrounds lately, being inspired by the process and just really getting into the details and having fun. Suddenly, between the pasted papers, oil pastels and brush strokes there emerged a face of sorts! And... no bull... I knew just what I was going to make of it!

Combining recent discoveries from workshops by both Mindy Lacefield and Jesse Reno — as well as my own tried and true techniques — I created this primitive yet whimsical pretty pink bovine piece.

I really enjoyed getting into the details and puzzling out how to make the painting work as a whole. I was loving the battle of chaotic elements inside and outside the figure and used different techniques to balance them out. I brought the face together with a light wash of pink. I added red to some of the feathers, but kept some of the imagery in others...

I'm very fond of that seredipitous peek-a-boo stuff! And I love all the texture that was created from the many layers beneath. Rubbing out the oil pastel outline really helps emphasize that.

The body was a little trickier. I wanted it to be pink, not just because the face was... but because it was also a nice contrast to the blues and teals of the background. But the pink looked really dull and plain. I had taken a soft shade of blue to re-paint some of the flower elements inside the bull and it gave me an idea... to fill the body with scribbles, doodles and graffiti of the same shade! I now love this technique and will definitely use it again!

The elements outside the bull were the perfect contrast and so I didn't mess with them very much. Adding a slight dark shadow around the animal was all it needed to stand out against these delicious, obnoxiously bright swirls of color!

Alternating shapes on the painting — like these squares here —really helped balance out the overall piece. I definitely have a tendency to go on and on and on with a single shape and try to break out of that habit whenever I can.

I am overly ecstatic with this piece and wish I could make another one just like it! But my process is so organic, I don't know if it would ever come out the way I intended. I guess I'll just have to play around and see if that ain't no bull!