Welcoming the Year of the Ox

Chinese New Year is around the corner, and I wanted to paint an ox to usher in the Year of the Ox. My daughter was born in the year of the Ox, so it's special, but this year especially because we need it to shoo away the mean ole Rat which, as you all know, brought about the plague in what has to be the worst year for the world in recent times.

This was what I came up with, using Panpastels and pastel sticks for the background, and pastel pencils for the ox and the farmer. The paper is UArt 600, 9x12 inches.

 
This painting was a gamble for me, because I'm generally bad at drawing people. Somehow they usually end up looking like cartoons. But when I was searching Pixabay for photos of water buffalos, this one stopped me in my tracks. 

Photo: Sasint

I think it was the sheer emotion of the photo that touched me. In Asian society, the ox is very much valued because it's patient, a hard worker and arguably the most important asset to a farmer. However, it's often viewed as a functional animal, and it's rare to see the love and bond between the farmer and what's essentially his partner. 

So even though I knew it would have been safer to simply paint an ox, I decided to tackle this one with a farmer instead. I did the background with Panpastels and pastels sticks from various brands, mostly Sennelier and Unison. Then because I wanted ox to have a brighter undertone, I used dark violet, magenta and blue Panpastels for the underpainting of the ox.

I decided to draw the ox and farmer using pastel pencils because I wasn't confident of getting the details right on the farmer using pastel sticks. Drawing the ox was not much of a problem. I don't know why I  find drawing animals much more intuitive than drawing people.

Then *deep breath* - it was time for the farmer. I was so sure I was going to ruin the picture. But after I'd finished the face, I was pleasantly surprised that it didn't look as cartoon-y as I'd feared, phew! It's still not as realistic as I'd like (if you see the original photo, you'll notice that I transformed his features somewhat 😆) but at least he does resemble a human being.

Then it was filling in the clothes, making slight adjustments to the shadows and background and voila! Peeling off the washi tape to reveal the final painting is always thrilling - it never gets old.

I hope I managed to capture the sweet relationship of the farmer and his ox in this painting. To all my friends who celebrate Chinese New Year, may you have an ox-picious year ahead!