It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many millions of faces, there should be none alike.

--Thomas Browne

I finished another pig this week. Pigs are tough to paint. Their essence is hard to capture. Why? Is it the snout? The pale pink, almost transparent skin? They are certainly cute enough to be painted, and the favorite of a lot of people. This is the fourth pig I've painted -- and two of those I threw away. I love the challenge, so I keep trying. Here's the first one:

Numbers 2 and 3 didn't make the cut.  This is my method:  Sometimes I have an animal in mind that I want to paint, but more often I have a group of colors in mind that I want to work with, and from there decide on the animal. Here is the color palette I was attracted to, which I put down and mixed:

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Then I render the image, usually paying close attention to the face, giving human expressions.

 wanted to make reference to the pink of the pig and make reference 

Next comes the hardest part: where to add the paper to best enhance the piece. It's hard to decide how much is enough and how much is too much. There is a quote I love that I actually based a painting on, "Happiness is a place between too little and too much," (Finnish saying).



I wanted to add paper with a little bit of sparkle to reflect the way a pig's skin sometimes look transparent and paper thin, so all of the paper had a little bit of glitter on it. Bessie looks pretty happy about the way she looks, huh?