Moon animals Painting

This is the largest painting I have ever done. I did not measure the width, but it is about 25 inches tall. I started it in summer, then hung it up and worked on other things, and now I am excited to be nearly done with it.

I built it a stretcher

I was so proud that I took a picture of my estimation skills. I picked up a handful of nails, right? And then I nailed all the way around the canvas on the front of the painting at about 5 inch intervals. And then I cut masonite triangles to put in the corners, and hammered 5 nails into each. Then when I got to the last masonite triangle, I realized I had exactly the right number to finish, didn't need to put any away or get any more out. (The nail on the top was improperly formed and is unusable.) I also can estimate lengths of wood to within half an inch. Mostly. I will look at a stick and think it is 18", and measure it and it is near 19", but then again my optimism means sometimes I look at a 17" stick and think, yeah, that might be big enough, that might be 20".

I'll start with photos of each part. This is the moon.
This is the cow skull hill. I wanted to just get it done so I didn't find/use a reference for what bones look like so it looks like a cross between a cow head and a cow skull, but as it turns out the texture is soft and rich, and I like it.
horse-this is my least favorite of the animals pictured and I wish I had found a photo to use. (When i looked up falling horses, they were of course never falling like this so I had to use a photo of a rearing horse)
giraffe- trouble with the legs but the dainty hooves and bulby head make me happy. Also the giraffe is my favorite animal.
cow-cribbed almost exactly from Bosch and it came out better than the other 4.
stag
goat
what I had when I got to art class today. (umbrella is for scale)

I was impressed by how quickly the sunset started to look layered and rich
So here's the whole thing. It was 6pm by the time I reached a stopping point so I should retake this picture in sunlight. I hope I am not required to write an artist statement: Menagerie of spirit animals playfully leaping over their moon. Giraffe and horse freehanded without reference, cow and goat based on Bosch, stag from a medieval engraving. Surreal landscape drawn from objects that caught my fleeting attention: pictish stone, 3 legged ceramic pig (it's upside down), friend's hand, cow skull (from a green t shirt). The hand stands in for the setting sun.

Still to do: carved symbols, scallop edges to mimic stretched hide, paint wood black, find permanent rose paint and layer it over the pink part of the sunset, find sketch of little flying bosch man with a ladder and paint it on the right to balance it, pick a color for the hearts and paint them it.