Just in time for Halloween!

I met Christina at a Small Business meetup group last month and a few weeks later, she contacted me about painting her cat, Ella. I haven’t met many professional trombone players and her love of jazz makes her cat’s name a perfect choice.

This is my first time painting a cat, and since Ella is entirely black, I knew it was going to be a challenge!

I normally like to use black paper, but in this case I went with a neutral gray so I could play up the lights and darks in her fur as needed.

She gave me several photos, but Ella’s eyes are entirely white in the pose I liked best, so I found a few photos of cat eyes that look very similar as well as some closeups of Ella’s eyes to use when I get to that part of the painting.

At this point in my painting process, I am filling in her body and head with blacks and dark grays, trying to emphasize different parts of the anatomy using subtle value changes.

More progress to come…

This Saturday was SchnOctoberFest and I managed to give away several business cards as well as help raise money for the NC Schnauzer Rescue.

I was pleased to see quite a few raffle tickets in my bin! They also added a link to me from their contributor’s website, so now folks can find me through there as well.

After I colored in the sky, I wanted to get the base color of the landscape filled in.

For the rock, I mostly concentrated in the main colors and blended using my fingers without too much attention to detail. The main focus is the arch, so I spent a little more time in the beginning defining the colors around this area.

Then I did the same thing with the foreground. The vegetation is actually very similar to South Africa in that it’s mainly brush and shrubs with very few trees and grassy areas. I wanted to show that there were many green areas broken up by the brownish soil and rock.

I don’t have a lot of experience with painting landscapes, but from what I’ve seen it makes the most sense to work from the sky down into the foreground.

My initial sketch is just that, I like to block in the main lines with vine charcoal. My main objective is to identify the big shapes so I don’t waste pastels by going over the same areas with different colors.

I started by putting in a thick layer of blue on the sky and suggesting the shapes of the clouds. I actually combined two photos from our trip in Photoshop for this painting… the original sky was a very flat blue and I wanted a little more drama.

Once I get the overall color in for the rest of the painting, I’ll add more detail to the sky as needed. I also darken it up some depending on the tonal range of the rest of the painting.

The Pastel Society of North Carolina is sponsoring a show at The Upstairs Gallery in Blowing Rock, NC for two weeks in early November. I’ve decided to show the Riesling portrait, titled “Riesling the Wise” (thanks, Eric) and a landscape I am doing of the Great Arch in Zion National Park. I don’t typically do landscapes, but I didn’t do pets at one point either. I’m committed, so it’s now or never. Progress coming soon.