Lamb(s) to the (s)laughter

The painting is coming along as expected. I have to build up the thin layers of paint until a rich, full colour is attained. After focusing on the sky which is essentially the background, I moved toward the central figures, the sheep and the wolf. It occurred to me that the sheep is in a kind of masculine position if its location is construed as that of a mounting mate. Weird, because the car would then be in the female position, leaving the wolf in the womb of the car as some kind of perverse offspring. This is the crap that goes through my brain while I’m working on a piece. I never intended on this but there it is for someone to detect, if they’re tuned into that sort of interpretation.
 

 
The sheep could be pretty dynamic as a compositional figure because of the high-contrast from shadow to the highlights of the whiteness of its wool. I think it’s going to have  a lot of punch. The contrast of the smoke cloud in the background has also started to show some dramatic effect. I also think the candy-striped chimney is really going to pop and will add to the playful thematic contrast of  light (happiness factory and cloud) and dark (decay, deception) imagery. The cloud needs at least another layer of paint and then I’ll start working in the little smiley face elements and sharpening some of the chimneys.
 
The wolf has eyes without pupils, which lend to a sort of demonic appearance. The ambiguity of the sheep’s gaze also works for me. Is he freaked by the wolf, the skull, the meat or the eyeball in yarn (which has yet to be drawn in)? I always enjoy that kind of uncertainty because it will feed both sides of an interpretation, positive or negative.
 
I still haven’t given much thought to the ground and how to handle texture, colour or detail. I’ll keep it in mind as I go and will try to integrate it with the rest of the composition. I did just now think of molten slag, cooled and hardened into a sort of globby mass…we’ll see…