It’s going to be lovely to get to paint a cat in my rainbow watercolour style. I am really looking forward to it. I normally just paint head portraits, but this is a full body as you can see from the sketch.
Daisy is a black and white cat, so I am thinking indigo’ purples, blues, pinks and maybe some dark greens. I am going to have to ‘ground’ her so he looks like she is sitting on something as opposed to floating. That is where some green may come in, an then I want to tie it in with Daisy. Anyway, we shall see how it works out. Often I have ideas for them and they change an develop as I paint! Watch this space….
I have painted Daisy now, I woke up this morning and had planned to do it then, but I really nee to concentrate on the watercolours when I paint them and we had a shopping order turn up and homework to do. It’s much harder to pick up an put down. I need to get each layer done in one setting if possible as I like to do a lot of wet in wet work. This is when you on’t let the watercolour dry between each colour application. It leads to some amazing patterns and effects. This I do particularly on the first layer.
My watercolours are made up normally of two or three layers. Then the pen after. This one was I was happy with after two. The first was mainly the wet in wet and the second was picking out some finer details, such as Daisy’s eyes and paws and fur around the edges.
See if you can spot the difference. The portrait is now drying waiting for the final layer of pen!
Today I managed to add the pen detail I think really sets off these pieces. Funnily enough I actually quite like Daisy’s portrait without the pen and I think she would have worked well without this detail. However I have added it and it certainly never detracts from the painting. I am really please with how this has turned out, and some of the patterns the watercolours have made are gorgeous, so I tried not to cover those up with the pen detail. I have added some close ups for you as well.
I have finished another portrait today, if you want to see how Meg turned out please visit her blog page.