In My Favorite Murder, Episode #162 (Prom Queen), Karen and Georgia jokingly told people to paint this picture McKenzie Brelyn posted on Instagram. I’ve been practicing watercolor for a while now, and Rachel and I will be seeing them live in Pittsburgh on Friday, so I decided I’d give it a go.

Here’s a link to the episode.

This is a light-hearted painting, almost a joke really, and you can tell that I thought of it that way in the painting. Unfortunately. It’s a shame because the source photo really is interesting and well composed, its just that my version here is awful.

I started by sketching it out, but did not pay nearly enough attention to the scale or lines in my source photo. I wasn’t careful enough, and as a result the perspective is way off.

I then masked the plants, and then decided to try pouring water colors. I recently got some glass pipettes in the mail, and wanted to try them out. I have never poured water color before, so (perhaps unsuprisingly) the result wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted this painting to be neutral in color, somewhat loose, and provide the interesting perspective of the source photo. Because the source photo was square, I added sky because I felt like the hill would have terminated shortly beyond the height of the photo.

When I went to paint the farmer, he ended up flattened on the ground. I didn’t want to over-work it, and I was pretty confident that this painting was a lost cause anyway so I decided to leave it alone, hoping that somehow he would become more lifelike, and look less like roadkill as it dried.

It did not.