Gloucestershire Old Spot. 20x28, oil on linen. 2016
It's becoming a tradition that I start off the new year with a farm animal painting. In all honesty, I haven't seen any farm animals in Seattle yet, but I have enough reference photos from Virginia to let me do this for the next several centuries.
The idea behind this painting is a simple lit shape against a darker, abstract background. I tried to keep the design as bare-bones as possible, eliminating nearly everything in the surroundings.
After blocking-in in the pig I immediately started to paint the background. I was actually trying to recreate the background color from an old portrait that I admired. However, when I finally looked at the painting on different monitors it became clear that I couldn't be certain what the original color actually was.
The reason I mention this is that I let the color choice for the background be the starting point for my palette selection. From there I added colors that allowed me to do the rest of the painting: burnt umber, cad orange, violet grey, ultramarine blue (in the darks) and some yellow ochre (in a few places).