Thursday, December 6, 2012

and the cows get in the way........

No photo today, just a story.  I went to the park to paint today. I hadn't been there for about 10 days. Of course I knew I would have to take time to greet my cows. They were lazily lounging under the trees and barely moved as I came  up to greet them. Having finished my hellos and seeing that they were staying put in their reclining state, I thought I would take advantage of the situation and paint them. No sooner did I get all my gear set up then one by one they started getting up and coming over to investigate. All 9 of them surrounded me, sniffing and licking my setup and me. Of course I could not start painting yet - couldn't even get the pallet with the paint out yet. They hung around for 5 - 7 minutes then slowly started moving on .....but then turned and came back again.

Three of them were surrounding me, their massive heads, me and my painting gear could have fit inside a 41/2 foot ring. I had to take hold of their horns so they wouldn't catch on my pochade box or my stool or on me. They were so close I couldn't get into my bag to get the camera out. One took a step away and peed. One didn't take a step away and left a fresh and steaming pile of poo a foot away from me.

So I gave up on painting there and decided to walk to the other end of the field where they were showing no interest. Half way to this other end I turned around and they were all following me. I sat on my stool and just let them do more of their usual thing until they finally got bored and wandered off. They eventually came back into the scene but not until I was able to get a painting done. I will post it soon.

Later on in the day I was working on another painting in my studio and could not figure out where all the long hairs on my pallet were coming from. Hmmmm......

Love them cows!!