Another one of my animal paintings in the bag.  I finished my merchant pig and haven’t decided yet if he is a wine merchant or if he is a bit of a smuggler.  I’m sure at some point the environment will drive me one way or the other.  I’m leaning towards wine merchant right now as he seems pretty pleasant… not that a smuggler couldn’t be pleasant, I just am not getting that vibe.  It is interesting how the animals speak to me with respect to their individual stories so when it comes time to piece together the story of the artist’s journey, it will be in some ways writing itself.

This one wasn’t too challenging a painting except for the fact that once I put the gel over the charcoal and the dark blue washes to unify the shadows and background color, it was really difficult to see what I had before.  Sometimes I was bouncing back and forth from the scan I did of the charcoals just to figure out my landmarks in the painting.