“You said you’d never paint animals!”

“I never said that.”

Actual quote from the Jackson Hole News & Guide, “There’s this notion of Western art and these traditional scenes with cowboys and Indians and I feel like the same bear and wolf have been painted maybe a thousand times,” (Borbay) said. “I love signage. I’m a city guy at heart. I want to bring my vision here. I’m not going to go and start painting just a bunch of straight-up animal scenes to cater to the market.”

Mmmm, those words are delicious. And so is the mythological Jackalope.

https://www.facebook.com/borbay/videos/1345718422178473/

Let’s get back to square one, and watch this baby come together in time lapse… another beauty of a soundtrack from MH the Verb! Oh, and do read on for the hop-by-hop recap.

A warm underpainting… for a change. Kidding, every painting begins here.

This sky has the blues. Get it?

Bang out them shadows. Foreground, middle ground, background. Hmmm… why isn’t middle ground one word? This is like driving on a parkway, and parking on a driveway. We aren’t meant to understand.

Oh, the fire within the Jackalope begins to burn.

And the highlights. In order to paint details, it must be done within the collective tonality of the painting.

Nailing those couloirs. This seems like a great moment to send some thanks to Joseph Meloy for the title…  and to Dave Coulier — your goalie gear on Full House inspired me to play hockey. At no point did I judge you for living in that basement bruh.

Craggy times in Idaho.

Getting into them there trees…. lots of marks, lots of greens.

Articulating the shadows… bringing jack form to the jackalope.

Creepiest eye ever. He’s looking at us like he is out for blood…

Banging into the foreground… painting snow, painting shrubbery, tis’ merely a flesh wound.

And with some reflective blue highlights, the Jackalope is complete! Does it count as an animal painting if the creature is fictional? You decide.