Painting a Cow

This was a rapid painting done today of a cow I had photographed south of Santa Cruz.  This is the first cow I've painted, so it's really pretty interesting to get a good look at one. 

The light was warm in the late day and the cow is such a lovely caramel color.  I pushed up the impressionistic colors in this work and found that a bit of a challenge with maintaining the form.  Overall I was just trying to maintain warm plane and cold plane, cold shadow to keep it together.  The neighboring cow was deleted and replaced with some receding ground.  I still owe my brother a duck painting, hopefully the cow is progress towards that duck.  Enjoy!