"Leader of the Pack" Finally Really Finished!

Remember an earlier post about my newest cow painting, "Leader of the Pack"? Well, I've finally gotten it back on the easel, and the results are in! As in Finished! Complete! I will be scanning for the prints, and framing by monday.

(To catch up on the original progress see this blog post)
Here's what I decided:
I had left it as you see here. Didn't like the tree after all, or the yellow grass on the left distance. An artist friend also commented that the shadows on the calves should have more contrast on the front calf than on the distant calves. I had known that, intellectually, but was too lazy to fix it at the time.
So I wiped out the entire sky and the ugly yellow grass, and some of the calves' shadowed sides.
Put the fresh sky in with careful layers of a subtle variety of blue violets to the right and blue greens to the left, and some darker grass on the left. Thought maybe it was done here (again!) but my eye kept going to the calf on the far left. I realized it was because he had slightly darker ears (my annoying habit of clinging to the photo reference,) and his face contrasted with the dark grass at the edge of his mouth.

SO, my VERY LAST edits were to move the sky down on the left, which I like very much, the left-flowing angle back there. Lightened up his ears, and also deepened the intensity of color on the front 'Leader's' ears to help strengthen his importance.

It's still a very soft, high-key sort of painting. And the points I've mentioned throughout are all very subtle. But I feel that it all works now, so I'm happy.

Whew! That was a long one!

"Leader of the Pack" will be in the American Society of Bovine Artists Second Ever Show and Sale at Cactus Jack's in Gruene, TX, Oct. 23-24, 2010.