Belted Galloway Cow Paintings

I've been drawn to painting Belted Galloway cows again of late, and although a familiar subject for me, I've enjoyed experimenting with technique. This first picture is titled "Against The Fiery Sky" and depicts a single cow, painted in loose broad strokes, stood in profile while backlit by an orange sky created using interference acrylics. This gestural piece has an atmosphere that I like and, for now at least, I've decided to leave the details out, not even including eyes, as I feel the image has a sense of mystery. As with all the images on this blog, if you click on them, you can view a larger image of the painting, and if you click on this you can zoom in to see the detailed brush work.


Next up is "This Way To The Beach". I often take walks along the Devon coast, including the beach at Exmouth. At times, the sky and light playing across the distant hills has a quite otherworldly quality that seemed in keeping with the unusual look of the Belted Galloway with it's single white stripe. Placing the animal at the edge of some terrain that defines the local area yet is alien to these animals makes for an interesting juxtaposition and the landscape is really a simplified abstraction, much more about mood and light, that also provides an interesting contrast with the more realistically-painted animal.


Painting "Hidden By Stone Walls" I really enjoyed making use of the versatility of acrylic paint, the background paint being rendered using dilute washes in the way watercolours are traditionally used in contrast with the thicker, light-impasto-with-visible-brushstrokes used to create the foreground cows. These different applications of the paint, along with the background cow, help create a sense of depth and scale. The brushstrokes on the foreground cows also help create a sense of the hair on the animals' coats.


"A Purple Patch" shows Belted Galloway cows on Dartmoor grazing amongst the purple heather and yellow gorse. The sky was painted using thin layers of paint, including interference colours to give some shimmery light. The distant hill was created by mixing the paint "in-brush" which is a quick way to create interesting blends. Having blocked in the foreground with thick acrylic, interactive acrylics were then used to paint the final layers and add texture.


Finally, "Misty Moor" actually has a jet black Angus cow in the foreground, knee-deep in the gorse and ferns of a Dartmoor landscape. Off in the misty mid-distance are a group of Belties, while hazy distant hills complete the scene.