This is my first cow art on Scratchbord®. My two previous cow paintings, Eat Chicken and Cow’s In The Corn, were both very colorful, created in watercolor on paper. A poem from my childhood gave me the idea to create a purple cow this time:
I never saw a Purple Cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I’d rather see than be one.
-“Purple Cow” by American writer Gelett Burgess, published in 1895
I chose a 6″ x 6″ Scratchbord® panel and used a reference photo I took of a black and white dairy cow. I had photographed her through farm fencing below two strands of barbed wire, so I simplified the image. I like the ‘mystery’ of leaving parts of a scratchboard as untouched black, and my closely cropped sidelit view would allow me to capture the cow’s black head.As with my most recent black scratchboards, I created the values primarily by my white scratches into the black india ink surface with an x-acto knife. The barbed wire was especially challenging, defined primarily by the highlights on the top of each twisted section.
Except for excess scratching on the eye, I was happy with the artwork in black and white – but my gut said that a purple glaze would set this painting apart! I decided to use watercolors; if I didn’t like the added color, I could simply wash the watercolor pigment off (acrylics or Claybord inks would be permanent.) I created a rich purple tint, mixing Winsor-Newton Quinacridone Magenta and Winsor Blue on my palette. I avoided glazing the eye and eyelashes, the tuft of white fur on her forehead, and the barbed wire, painting a diluted purple over the cow’s highlighted fur. The eyes called out for color so I dabbed a bit of blue for a reflection of sky and mixed Aureolin Yellow with the blue for a green pasture color. I liked how differing the colors added more emphasis to her eye.
When I had finished my painting, I did a search for the Purple Cow poem. I came up with another interesting search result. Author and marketer Seth Godin used the phrase “Purple Cow” for his concept of creating and marketing a product as “intrinsically different”. His book is titled Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable (2003). This snippet sums up the basic premise: “When you drive by a herd of cattle they all look like cows and it doesn’t seem out of the ordinary. But if you drive by a herd and standing in the field is a Purple Cow you have to tell someone because it is so different. When something forces you to remark on it, by definition it is remarkable.” This discovery just added to the significance of my Purple Cow painting – whether my painting is just for me, for a show, or for a competition, I am striving to make my art distinctive… I’d be delighted to create ‘remarkable’ paintings too!
