Suffolk Sheep

September 23 1997
Oil on Canvas on Panel

I could not have devised a more convoluted method for making a painting than the one I employed on this piece:

At the county fair I video taped sheep as they moved about the show ring. I digitized the video and loaded it onto a Windows 3.1 computer which I set up in my studio. There was very little in the way of video playback options back then. I wanted to display several videos simultaneously looping on my screen. By watching these as I drew I hoped to get an appreciation for the form of the animals that would enable me draw them in various positions. I could find no software with this capability so I decided to write my own custom WIN32 application. Ten days and 26 pages of C code later I had a working tool. I drew my sheep. Soon after the painting was finished an update to a Windows .dll broke my application and it was never used again. I think I will count that as a blessing