cow art | Karen Tashkovski

Penny Santy’s bull paintings are currently hanging on the walls of the Chittenango Middle School library. She will be visiting us on Tuesday, November 15, 2016 for an artist talk during 10th period! In honor of her visit, four of my Art-8 classes created cows and bulls in both acrylic paint and oil pastels.

I have them hanging on the walls of the hallway outside of my art classroom.

The oil pastels are done on black Strathmore paper. Students created the drawings on white paper, transferred them onto the black using graphite paper (which introduces a bit of magic, and you all know I love magic!). Then they painted out the lines in black acrylic and went to town with the pastels – creating rhythm and texture via their own individual styles.

The acrylic paintings went through the same initial process – drawn on white paper, transferred with magic . Students were also encouraged to create their own styles, although I did have a handout to give what I call Ms. Tash Pearls of Wisdom. These are pointers to mixing colors so that one color ends up permeating throughout the canvas. Raw Sienna is that color.

Black outlining was an option. Penny Santy utilizes complimentary color schemes. Most of the pieces she is exhibiting have an orange/blue color scheme. I was pleased to see so many colorful animals, purple cows and red bulls, lol, as well as the rest of the rainbow.

I wonder which ones I should enter into the Scholastic Art Awards competition? I like them all! Thank you, Penny Santy, for being such a marvelous inspiration to my kids!

The Chittenango Middle School 8th grade teachers take our students to visit SUNY Morrisville. We’ve done it for several years now. There are four activities plus lunch in the dining hall (!!!) – to see the automotive dept., the dairy management farm, the equine science program and the aquaponics greenhouse.

I’ve gone on this field trip three times and this was the first time I visited the cows. There I met Assistant Professor Ashley Adams, who loves cow art!

So this blog post is for her. I want to share artwork by my bestie, Penny Santy. Penny is a graphic artist during the day, fine artist by night. You can find her website here.

Penny has this wonderful series of cow paintings. I am totally in love with them. She uses oils and paints in a quaint studio space in the basement of her home in Eastwood, a subdivision in the city of Syracuse, NY.

I love the energy in her brush stroke and the juxtaposition of complementary colors used to create shadows. Not just saying that because she is my friend. I think Penny’s work would look great in the offices/buildings at the dairy science college! They are large scale pieces – really breathtaking in person. I especially love the buttery yellow one!

Students in my ninth period A day class created cow portraits in oil pastel on black paper.

We drew them on white paper, transferred them to the black Strathmore paper with graphite paper (magic) and painted out the lines with black acrylic paint.

I showed students how to build up the color with the oil pastel using a layering technique and encouraged them to create their own consistent style – up and down, diagonal, coloring in circles, etc.

I just love the way they turned out. Each one is 16″ x 20″ – my favorite size for student work! I am thinking of selecting a couple to enter into the Scholastic Art Awards competition, but I can’t decide which ones will be the most competitive. I like them all.