This is Buster, a black and white cat with a very cute pink mouth which is being painted in pastel on A4 Daler Rowney Ingres Pastel Paper. I’ve been discussing backgrounds - whether Buster would look best in foliage or as this pose, sprawled on bedsheets. The stripes may prove to be too distracting to the portrait overall so I’m developing the background alongside the rest of the portrait. I started by drawing the outline of the cat onto pastel paper before blocking in the cool and warm hues I could see within the black coat and blending them together. Blacks and greys were added over the top to establish the tonal shapes and shines. Next I tackled hues within the white of the fur which included peach and cream hues in the light areas and bluey greys in the shadows. These were blended with white, at which point I decided to put some of the shadows and folds of the bedclothes around the cat to make him look snuggly and define the edge of his white chest. More layers of colours followed - black and white was applied with pastel pencils in more specific and detailed areas to sharpen the important edges. Then I decided to tackle the background before doing too much fur around the edges and used light blue, grey and white pastel Conté pastels. Initially I quite liked the texture created by the Ingres paper but decided a softer approach was needed so blended everything together to make Buster look snuggly! There’s a lot of work that went into the last two stages but nothing much appears to change on the photos as it’s a case of building and correcting tonal values, shifting shapes, putting tiny hairs and other details with sharp pastel pencils, and softening and punching out colour, so I tend not to take many pics. Lastly I put a mount around it to see how the edges work. I need to check everything in the daylight again, sign it and hope they like it!
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