Day 14 Bella

Day 14 Bella

Meet Bella, she is one of the sweetest goats on planet earth.

Bella is one of the Nubian goats we raise.

Nubians are dairy goats and she is a great mama and a great milker.

My husband milks our goats and makes many varieties of goat cheese.

We can't sell the cheese because of the USDA and all the regulations involved.

We are a small producer so it would be cost prohibitive to build a cheese house,

install another septic system, 

as well as many other rules and regs,

so we eat some pretty great cheese.

She was named Bella because she has the markings of a Holstein cow

and one of our grandsons wanted to name her Bella after a cow bell.

She is just such a sweet goat but she is not as nosey as other goats.
FYI, goats don't eat tin cans, but they will try to lick out anything in a tin can.
They don't eat every plant, there are plants they don't like, but they will eat the bark right off some, but not all, trees,
They love cedar. 

They all have their own personalities and she's a sweetheart.

I'm really happy with this painting.  

I've been studying other animal paintings, especially the cats done by Diane Hoeptner,

and how she gets her cats to have that velvety look.

I asked her how many variations of gray does she use on her cat Cocoa and she said she starts with three but usually ends up with about five shades.

I studied the photographs I have of our goats and definitely saw a minimum of three shades of black, so I mixed up my black, took half of it and added white, and then took half of that and added more white,

and you can see on my palette where I also mixed some of the shades in varying amounts to get some of the highlights and shadows on all that black.
Naturally I had to do the same thing with white.
Whenever I paint white, I always start with gray and lighten it up in stages.
 

Thank you to Diane for your direction.

Click Here to go to Diane's blog.

Bella

5" x 7" unframed acrylic on a panel.

$50 + $6 shipping.