Originally this painting looked a little too bare for me. Every time I looked at it, I thought it needed something.
Why not add a bluejay? I thought. The first bluejay looked like a Disney cartoon bird! Wiped it out. Struggled to find a good photo of a bluejay to work from. I painted this over several times. Note to self: next time one of the cats catches a bird, confiscate it and paint a couple studies!
It still seemed a bit bare. Why not a chickadee? Painted one in. Then I added a second one. Hmmmm. It still looked like it needed something higher up, to the right. How about another sheep? I started mooshing one in. Went to check the mail; came back, wiped the whole thing out and called it quits for the day.
Next day I came back, bound and determined to put a sheep up there. A proper sheep, though, just the right size, right place, looking the right way. Rifled through my photographs of Rusty’s sheep. All were facing right. Alas — I needed one looking to the left “for the flow of the composition”. Don’t ask how I know these things — I was a music major. What I ended up doing was holding the photograph of the sheep up to the light, viewing it from the backside of the paper to see the angle I wanted. From there it was just an easy matter of “putzing with the flowers”. I think it’s done. Probably….
Margie Guyot Art 