This is the start of a portrait Willow who is destined to join her friends Eddie and Jess on the red wall of fame. I started by cropping all he various photos to see which one might work best on a 12 x 16” box canvas and decided the one of her showing her tummy might work best. I sketched a detailed drawing of all her markings and moved her tail to a different position so it wouldn’t go off the canvas and would curl around her a bit. Then, using a mix of payne’s grey, mars black and a bit of yellow ochre the cast shadows were painted in with a big brush, followed by the darker markings using a fine brush. White was mixed with blues, purples and greys to form the shadows on areas of white fur and a few of the mid-tones were added. This was left to dry before the background colour was painted over the shadows, around the cat and down the deep edges of the canvas. This colour was tricky to mix as I want to match it to the other portraits previously painted, to tie them all together as I can’t remember exactly what I used. I will probably rebalance this later on but I wanted to see how this would affect the colour of Willow’s coat. Next, I mixed a variety of cool and warm browns and greys and applied them as washes over the tabby markings, leaving some layers to dry and others to merge. The last two images show the most work but not a lot appears to change or is terribly apparent in photographs as layers of different colours and tones are applied with small brushes to build up the depth and density of the coat. I also deepened up the cast shadows and played with the background with a big brush, which took less time and gave me a break from the detail. I’m nearly finished… I just need to balance the lights and darks and paint those all-important whiskers!
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