Yesterday I shared with you a cow painting painted by my little brother.

He documented the process for the blog. The blog that he makes fun of me for. Isn’t that thoughtful (the documenting, not the mocking)? What is happening to my brother? I’m worried.

I’m so glad he documented the process because I would not have realized how much thought and time went into this darling little painting.

Take it away little brother…

It all started when my bestest/only sister asking me to paint a cow picture. I did a quick Google images search and found a cow pic that I thought would be cool.

Now that I was getting going, I thought..I should learn how to paint. Kind of a big deal if you are supposed to paint a picture for your sister for Christmas and you are very skeptical of your skills or lack there of.....so off to Google I went. I searched "how to paint with acrylics" and kablam, I find artisfun.com. So I read some stuff on there like the supply list and the tutorials. I found the photo realism one pretty cool so I thought I would try that.

I enlarged the photo and then did a grid method light box transfer…which sounds fancy but all you do is put it on a light box and transfer the picture and shading lines onto a new piece of paper.

Now it's go time. Can i actually do this?.....meh, let's give it the ol' college effort. Any good college effort includes Monday night football and Coors Light. Thanks Ray Lewis for the pep talk.

I painted for 3 hour the first night. I had no clue what I was doing so I grabbed my picture and put paint to canvas. I started by blocking in the sky then moved to the grass and lastly blocked in the black of the cows. The next night I painted for 1 hour. I didn't like how the grass turned
out...looked goofy to me so I went back over it with a standard flat brush and blotted the paint on the canvas kind of just mixing as i went. I also blocked in the white of some of the cow. I added more paint to the sky due to the fact the lines were slightly visible. The next hour I added more paint to sky and tried to get better clouds. I then blocked the background out and layered another coat of white on the cows and blocked in an off white for the shading effect. The next hour was spent on more detailed work to the front cow’s nose (pain in my arse) I then added more off white, colored in the faces knees ankles and back legs with a little shading . I finished all the background trees bushes fields and shading. I spent 45 minutes more on nose work shading and tree shading tried blocking in the eyes with lighter color. I had to spend 45 minutes more on the nose and the eyes….the EYES, they have souls!!! Lastly, I painted the sides of the canvas and sprayed with a glass finish.

All told, I spent about 10.5 hrs and 50-65 bucks. There are now two cows and a
lot of supplies (8 canvases, countless paint brushes, and enough paint to go a ways) to further continue painting because it was fun.

~lil bro

A guest post from my brother. I never thought the day would come. Maybe he won’t make fun of Décor and the Dog anymore. Wait, who am I kidding?

Any painters out there? Any wanna-be painters? Do your siblings mock your blog?