Summertime and the living is easy

It has been warm of late so waterside locations have been attracting me. Three cows coming to water. Where did they come from? I had just finished painting "Cornish Cattle" and was thinking about other British cattle and where I had encountered them, plus I had just reread "Puck of Pook's Hill" in which The Three Cows feature from time to time. Then there was the memory of an illustration of swallows swooping over a river in "When we were very young" which must have been inspired by swallows that E H Shepard probably had seen near here on the Wey as he lived nearby in Shamley Green.

These cows are probably Friesian Holstein crosses that I tended to encounter in the fields of West Sussex a few years ago.They are not locals but came from a broken down bit of bank on the Arun, quite high up stream but the river is still affected by the tides there and the water levels change accordingly. The cattle know when the water is high and they do not have so far to trample down to get a drink. I imagined the high water running steadily making a sort of mirror in which the cattle would be reflected. Suddenly the imaged gelled.

The bird is not a swallow but a swift, because I have often seen them on the nearest stretch of the Wey Navigation, swooping down for a drink after hunting the insects that swarm over the water meadows. Again, the time of year played a part. From about now they are gathering for their long migration back to Africa so they are very noticeable in the sky. So it seemed grahically logical to bring the cows and bird together.

And the colours? Because of the way the cows fill the canvas I was thinking about calling this "Bluebell and Buttercup go large" Ha ha, taking a deep drink. I started painting in the dark areas of their hides with Prussian Blue, thinking I would move closer to black by adding a layer of VD Brown over the top but then rather liked what I had done. So I painted some Chrome Yellow into the top of the canvas to suggest where light was breaking through the folliage that screens this paticular corner making it a rather private place for the cows, where the farmer might not have noticed the damage to the river bank as he would have done further along in the open field. The white ares of their hides looked too harsh so I balanced the blue with some Naples Yellow Light.