Abstract Buffalo

Home of the Buffaloes

This was a commission I did for one of the teachers at my school. She asked me to paint something to give life to her small classroom since the walls were very barren and white. She did not ask for anything specific but instead told me to choose, but at one moment in time when we were talking she had said something about maybe showing school pride so I took that idea and ran with it. Our school mascot is a buffalo so I looked online to try and find inspiration and I came across a more stylized buffalo and decided I would do similar but in my own style, and she loved it. Though blues and oranges aren't the school's colors I thought that it would look nicer since they are complementary colors and our school's colors would make a little bit too bland of a piece in my opinion. I like the use of texture I used on the head, its as if you could reach through the screen and be able to feel the puffy fur of the buffalo, it is personally one of my favorite parts of this piece. Even though the same colors are used throughout the painting I feel the composition is good enough that the buffalo doesn't blend into the background but rather your eyes go straight to the emphasis of the buffalo, especially with it being the only emphasis of the painting. Which leads me into the unity. The piece doesn't have anything that directly leads your eyes to stay in one place but rather flow through the entire piece. And of course, we can't forget my use of value to create the depth of the piece, so the buffalo isn't left looking flat.