Friday, December 9, 2011

39, The Parting

The Parting 8x10 oil/panel

This is based on another old historic photo. I'm going to guess that these friends are either Navajo or possible Apache, based on the dress and where the photo was taken.  There was something about the way that
these two old friends reached out to shake hands in parting that touched me.

That nice feeling was quickly forgotten in trying to paint them from an old, grainy, black and white photo!
I finally kept saying to myself "simplify, simplify"... the entire background was done with a palette knife and I tried to keep the figures themselves very painterly.  Those poor old Indian ponies look pretty forlorn, don't they?

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