My own personal barnyard

I learned something today.  I painted the background for a new painting yesterday and left it to dry overnight.  Well, it is so damn cold in here the paint cracked as it dried.  Huh.

Anyway, it was a very productive weekend.  Helped that I had Sunday off, so it was a two-day weekend.  Roxie and I shoveled the deck upstairs, did four loads of laundry, changed the sheets on the bed, put away all the clothes, washed some dishes, read a book, went for two walks, built a wreath for Eletra, finished five wee copper trees and painted four more roosters, plus the background for a fifth.  Maybe one or two other things that I'm not remembering right now.  I'm not going to post pictures of the wreath yet - I want Eletra to see it in person first.  It is quite lovely.  So, on to the barnyard.

I am once again going out on a limb here and I am going to show you all of the roosters.  Starting with my least favorite.

Is that a weird head, or what?  I like this part:

This is the painting where the paint cracked.  You can sort of see it in the second picture.

The next one I painted on a panel I started ages ago, for a word painting, then I couldn't decide what words to put on it.  I was thinking of MEDIUM RARE, but the panel turned out more well done than rare.

The first picture is a more accurate color representation.  Very dark red and some browns and copper.  His tail explosion is some bright yellow green, which I am discovering is a color impossible to photograph.

Here is number three, which I love.

What a face, eh?  The last picture is at a bit of a different angle in an attempt to reduce the glare on the left side of the panel.  And yes, the painting is resting on the sprayer of my kitchen sink.

Last but not least, this is another canvas I had painted a while ago.  It is a gallery-wrapped canvas, so won't need a frame.  Actually, I've painted the background twice - didn't like how it came out the first time.  It was also going to be a word painting.  I'm glad it turned into THIS instead:

Ditto to everything I said about the third rooster, starting with "I love it" and ending with the kitchen sink sprayer.  Moral of the weekend rooster experiment:  sometimes you get it right, and sometimes you kinda don't.  But I feel pretty darn good about the results as a whole.

So there's my barnyard so far.  When I figure out how to successfully paint a cow, I will be beside myself.