Part 23—Vignettes and Nuggets

You might start to notice that Barnyard Adventures has many little vignettes—animals gathered together in their own little scenes.

Here, I wanted to make the tractor look old-fashioned, complete with a little rust and, of course, a goat driving it! Just another attempt to bring a little whimsy to Barnyard Adventures.

Above the tractor is another vignette with the hens talking and their chicks following, as I mentioned in an earlier post. You’ll see several more vignettes as I continue painting.

Each one creates a little place for the viewer to stop and look for a few seconds before moving around the artwork. With so much happening throughout the scene, I want there to be lots of these little moments to discover.

Another little nugget of information I want to point out is the turkey.

The turkey is a good example of two things that happen while I’m painting.

First, the initial tracing of an animal doesn’t always remain solid enough for me to follow when I’m ready to paint. When that happens, I have to redraw the animal directly on the painting.

Second, the color of the animal can determine how I approach painting it. Especially with a light-colored animal, I often need to paint a base color over the entire animal first. That gives me a consistent surface so that when I add the actual color, it looks the same across the whole animal.

There are a lot of little steps that go into painting these animals—and sometimes the process changes as I go.

Watch for more vignettes to unfold as I continue painting Barnyard Adventures!