Coffee And Cows

Have been having an interesting time mixing the color on the surface of the coffee; turns out it combines the colors of the beverage itself with white and the blue of the window light.

Two Spoons, Guilty Pleasures Series, © 2019, work in progress (click on image for larger view)

Now, however, I plan to search for a slide photo I took years ago. We were out in the country and driving home around sunset when we passed a farm. A single-file line of cows was making its way home to the  barn for the evening, and the procession was led by a cow wearing a bell, which you could hear from where we were, away in the distance.

In the last couple of days I've been looking at the painting of the farm at dusk, and it seemed to me that something was needed to balance out the barn. It's like the focal point of the lower part of the piece is pushed all the way over to the right; sometimes I get so wrapped up in presenting what was in the original photo that I forget about good composition. 

A Farm At Dusk, © 2019, work in progress (click on image for larger view)

I didn't want to just wipe out the barn and move the buildings to the center; that was just too boring an idea. It needed a line of something along the horizon. Then I thought of those cows, long ago meandering home. At dusk! It seems like the perfect marriage— I've had that image of the cows in my head for a long time and wanted to paint it, but now I have to find the slide, somewhere among the thousands of them that I've taken over the years.