Grumpy Cat

So, I've been trying to get better at painting animals.  I love cats, so it made sense that I would paint a few of them.  I've tried to paint animals in the past and have always been disappointed in how I painted fur.  At that time I was trying hard to make photorealistic paintings.   It was all ok, but thats not really how I want to paint.  I want to give the impression of a thing.  When you look at one of my paintings I want you to get the emotion and feeling that I put into it out of it.  If the painting looks exactly like the object it was taken, great, if it doesn't so be it.

So, here I am painting this cat, and wanting to convey to you a bit of grumpiness from this cat without explicitly painting a perfect cat.  I think you get a bit of that from this cat.

Want to see how I painted it?  Check out the video below.  Want me to paint something for you?  Curios how someone would paint something.  I'd love to take a crack at whatever you can dream up.  Leave me a comment or shoot me an email. Thanks for the quick read, and enjoy the video.

Kittens and Cats

Today  I give you two felines for your viewing pleasure.  I'm trying to figure out fur, but it's proving a bit difficult  I know it has a certain texture, but getting it just right is tough.  I want to paint a million little lines, but in addition to taking forever to do, that really isn't the style I want to paint in.  I want to be a bit looser than a literal interpretation of a cat.  An getting too loose just makes the cat look like a blob.  Im working on it and will get there soon, but it might take me a little bit.


For those of you who want to see how I painted these two, I'm attaching two videos below.

What Does The Fox Say

First attempt at painting a fox.

I had absolutely no idea how I was gonna do this.  I was worried about color, shape, fur.... I really didn't know what to do.  So what I did was this:

I dropped on some basic color.  Red/Orange for the face, leaving a little white on the chin and chest, and then some green in the background.

I came back and just started putting in fur in one place then another, then another.  Just little bits here and there.  Patches no more than a quarter to a full in width and only the length of a few hairs.  I perhaps did more under the chin than any other place.  Then when it was totally dry, when back over it with another coat of base color.  It kind of smoothed it out enough that it doesn't look too staccato, but not so much that it doesn't look like fur.  For a first attempt that I made up on the fly, I think it turned out pretty good.

The eyes just turned out to be black spots.  Thats not what I was going for,  I may have to go back and lift out  a little black to give a little more color and drop in a highlight.  

Hope you enjoy it.

Test Sketching

Ok, so I've moved past truck.  What do you think the next thing I would paint is?  Well, it's kitties.  Here are two that I have quickly done.  They are just quick sketches to give me a little indication of how I might paint them.  I never really know where to start with each painting so these sketches are valuable in helping me figure it out.  I think these came out kinda cute.  Be sure to look for bigger better ones next week.

I was a bit unsure of how to paint fur with watercolors.  I originally thought I might not need that much detail, but as it turns out, I don.  But it looks like there is so much going on in the tail that if I were to paint the fur on the entire cat, it might be too much.  My solution, detail on the closest part, much less detail on everything else.  It kind of worked.

This cat is sleeping in a blanket.  I tried a bit of the same technique:  more detail on the head, less as you go back.   Again I'm not sure I really got all of it, but it's a start.  At least in this one the blanket looks like it has some folds to it.