Starry, Starry Night

Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul

I thought about Don McLean way too much while I worked on this painting. My mom said it's got "shades of Vincent Van Gough." 

I've been working on this canvas since my son was born. Maybe a little before. So it's been about a year. In that time this canvas has had at least three different rabbits and at least five different backgrounds. When I started working on the background I couldn't help but think about the skies at night over the Big Bend area - it's an international dark sky and you can see the Milky Way! Initially, I'd wanted to paint this rabbit in front of a sunset, but when I came in to work on it and began working on my starry sky, this felt right. 

I became worried that with a sky that was so vivid and detailed having a detailed landscape and a very detailed subject were going to be overwhelming. I did, though, still want some different dimensions in my landscape - which I accomplished with purple tones, dark grey, and black. The jackrabbit also needed to be muted. Yes, he's the subject, but he can't be so colorful that he clashes with the sky. The sky is...a lot. 

I also realized that I had a serious problem. The brown that I love using when I paint rabbits has been used up. It was a devastating realization. So, I mixed my own browns from different yellows, oranges, blues, and black. I'm please with the colors. When it came time for me to mess with the tail I realized that it was part of the old rabbits showing through and I left it alone. It was part of a leg, once, and it is so perfect the way that it is in this piece (and I like that it's a nod to the past bunnies of this painting). 

The sides of the canvas are gold. I think it's perfect with the stars. One of my friends said that this painting made her think of the story of the Velveteen Rabbit, when the fairy took him into the forest and he looks up at the stars before he becomes real. I love that. I've decided that I'm going to hold onto this painting for a little while. I like the idea of staring at it in my living room. It's very nice to look at.