Dawn of a Texan Dynasty

"Dawn of a Texan Dynasty"  (pastel, 36x36 inches)  sold

I actually finished this one 10 days ago, but hadn't taken a good photo of it when it was done. So I had to get the scans put together before I had an image I could post. I scan all my artwork before it's framed, so I can have a good 300dpi image file. Since my scanner is just an ordinary desktop size... yea. You get the picture. This one was about 25-30 sections to be connected up in Photoshop. I have a feeling there might be some program that could do that for me, but who has time to research that?? I'm too busy on my computer, uh, I mean PAINTING! I'm too busy painting. Yea. (Lol)

To continue the techie aspect of this post, I thought I'd show you my compositional thought process. This one was composed from 3 photos - the three cows:

They were all from the same herd on the same day (the same "photo shoot" I call it) so that the light matched. I remember these were on my way up to my workshop in Kansas last spring, somewhere in the north Texas panhandle.

I had a lot more pics from this herd, but as I played with the composition, these three settled to the fore. I also found a webpage online by a guy who talked about composing in a square and using mathematical formulas and circles very similar to how the golden rectangle uses 1.618 and the spiral to create the aesthetic ideal.

After spending more than an hour last night looking for that webpage because I had neglected to bookmark it, I looked again this morning with different keywords and found it! It's a mathematical essay by artist Janusz Kapusta, called The Square, the Circle and the Golden Proportion
A New Class of Geometrical Constructions. You can see it here:

https://archive.bridgesmathart.org/2000/bridges2000-247.pdf

 
Here's one of his square design diagrams overlaying my photo composition:

I did end up tweaking the positions just a bit more for the final painting.

"Dawn of a Texan Dynasty" will be my other largest painting at my show Beauty of the Beast at the Rockport Center for the Arts in Rockport, TX. Reception is this is Saturday, May 16 at 4:30.

Thanks, and please share!

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