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…

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.

My first challenge was to make a definite distinction between the hair on her face and her long ears. The other feature I wanted to be sure to capture was her breed-specific underbite.

After finishing her collar and tags, I felt the portrait was almost done. After much deliberation I decided that I liked it better with a plain background. I added some more detail to her left ear and added some shading under her chin on the collar.

The final product!

When I was nine, my parents finally got us the dog my siblings and I had been begging for, a little Lhasa Apso named Mai Tai. She was super overprotective and barked at ANYthing traveling past our house, but we loved her fiercely. She made it to the ripe old age of 14. I still remember coming home from college that summer with a tremendous sense of loss, something important was missing from home.

I found this photo of her the other day and scanned it in to enlarge the facial details. I wanted to try this next painting on a brown background to see if I liked the plain tinted paper behind the portrait.

Blocking in the nose and eyes were fairly straightforward, but I still had a lot of work to do on her ears.

This was my stopping point for the first day. I extended her right ear and worked a little more on the coloring around her face.

I wanted to make something cute for Riesling to wear to SchnOctoberFest this year, so I picked up some pink yarn and am in the process of knitting a scarf for her.

The knitting part was easy, but how would I feel about purling? As it turns out, I find purling almost easier than the knitting. Go figure. The hardest part is keeping the tension consistent, I can only imagine this takes a lot of practice.

This little bit took me less than half an hour, so hopefully I’ll have it done by the weekend.

Terriers have such a wonderful energy about them, this little guy included. He belongs to friends of ours who live in Seattle and we love hanging out with him, his sister Brigao, and his (bigger) little brother Sebastian when we visit.

Haus is not very furry—he’s got a wiry coat—so it’s even more important to get the proportions of his head, ears, and muzzle correct in my initial drawing.

Once the general colors were added, I went back and added in some white whiskers over his face for texture… he’s an older guy, so he’s going a bit gray. I also widened his left ear and sharpened the detail on his eyes.

At this point, I can see that my next step is to shorten the dark whiskers on his muzzle, further define the area near his nose and work on the fur under his chin.

Once the background was added, I continued to work on Jeter to give him more definition, concentrating mostly on his head. Obviously the face is the most important focal point in any portrait, so I needed to make sure there was enough of a likeness there.

He’s definitely looking more furry!

I continued giving him more tufts of fur on his body and legs and added more detail around the mouth.

At this stage, I needed to figure out how detailed I wanted the grass to be. I decided to go with sharp strokes in the foreground by swiping upwards with three different shades of green. I went back into the foreground grass with some medium brown to root his feet better, as well.

I asked Eric’s opinion and he thought Jeter still looked too “soft” and wanted slightly more detail in the grassy background, so I added more strokes to the background and put in several wisps on hair on his back and legs.

The final product…

My in-laws rescued an adorable, fishy-breathed, 5lb Yorkie named Jeter several years ago. Every time we see him, I am surprised all over again at just how small he is. Riesling looks huge next to him! I already had several photos of him, so he was easily my next subject for my second pet portrait.

Surprise, mom!

I wanted to try a full-body portrait, so while this wasn’t our best photo of Jeter, I needed to learn to work with the whole dog and background.

I started out by making a vine charcoal sketch of Jeter and this is where I can mess up and redraw any lines. (Like his front leg!) Once I fill in the general color, I’m more or less locked into my drawing. I typically like to start out with the mid-values and work my way lighter and darker from there.

Once I was happy with how he was progressing, I added in the background.

In this case, he is standing in the grassy backyard, so I blocked in the value of the grass and plan to add more detail to the foreground later on. Once the background is added, I can start to evaluate the color values in the piece and further emphasize Jeter’s highlights and shadows.

In between tennis and football this weekend, I spent some time working on pup’s portrait. Like a good little model, she is letting me inspect the coloring around her eyes.

This piece is mostly done. I moved her mouth up a little bit and rounded out the right eye. I also added some lights and darks into her eyebrows and beard to make them more three-dimensional.

I want to add a little more texture to her forehead and the right ear. Final painting will be up tomorrow!