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.

Sketching

Ok, so, I've been doing some more quick sketching.  First off, here you see a pair of eyes.  I don't know why I am fascinated with eyes, but for some reason, I am.  Just did a quick draw, and then paint.  The left iris grew in size slightly as I was painting.  But I am happy that everything seems to be in proportion.   I'll keep trying.

I've recently gotten a small commission to paint a few birds.  Time to brush up on drawing and painting them.  I think that you all will be seeing a few of them over the next few weeks.  Probably a few different styles until I find out how I really wanna do them.

Well, anyway, just a few quick sketches like I said.  Hope you enjoy them.

Sunglasses

I still don't think I've mastered hair, but I definitely think I'm getting better at it.  Ok, ok, it's a slow go to get better, but as Dr. Leo Marvin said to Bob Wiley, "Baby Steps."

My big regret with this painting is that the shadow on her cheek looks a little to linear.  I tried to fix it, but it didn't quite work out and I didn't want to futz too much.

Face, Finished

Stop me if I've said this before.... I hate hair.  Hair is so hard to paint.  I feel like I am never gonna get it.  I thought I might have been onto something with the hair on this painting, but then.... no.  What you see on this is mostly done with watercolor pencil.    I put on a basic color of the hair, then tried putting in some detail with the brush. Err, grrrr, huh.  Terrible!  So then I tried to fix it a bit with watercolor pencil.   I guess that it isn't too bad, but I wouldn't say that it's good either.

Ok, lets get off the hair and try to look a little more critically.  I tried to get a little color in the whites of the eyes.  and I guess I did that, but they still look flat.  The lips fell a bit flat too.  Maybe a bit of highlight with my favorite white pencil would help that.  I don't know.  I do like how the ball of the nose is.  Can't believe that that is my favorite part of the painting.  LOL.   I  just think thats kinda funny.
Well, hope you enjoy it.

Laura

This is a portrait of an on-line friend.  She had posted a sepia tone portrait of herself, and for whatever reason (probably that it was in sepia tones and easy to see the highlights and shadows) I really felt that I could paint it and do  a good job of it.

I used VanDyke (I don't think it's named after Dick) brown, yellow ochre, alizarin crimson, raw umber and burnt sienna.  Starting with a sketch of her, i started adding color to her face.  A LOT of layers.  I basically put on a tiny bit of paint, then smoothed out the edges so there wouldn't be any hard edges.  Then move onto another spot and do the same.  Once an are dried I went back and did another layer.  I think at its deepest, there are 6 layers.  It makes for a glowing painting.  I did it this way because in the past I have put the colors on in thicker layers and it has just looked flat.

I did use colored pencil on the hair.  Hair is really tough for me (and probably for everyone.  I guess the only way to get better at hair is to keep practicing.  My only regret with this painting is that I used such soft paper, and it didn't like the constant washing.

All in all I think I did a pretty good job.  Laura I hope you like it.  Everyone els too.  Enjoy.

Ellie

Here is my final painting of Ellie.  I tried something new with this painting.  I'm always having trouble with fine lines around eyes.  Seems like I either don't get the color I want on my brush or I don't get the intensity right, or more usually, I don't get the thickness of the lines right.  Well, in this painting I tried using colored pencil to do the detail work.  You know what?  It works.  I've watches lots and lots of videos of people doing it, and kind of thought to myself, I should try it.  But like using masking or white paint for highlights, I have so far resisted.

Well, I thought with some of the hairs on Ellies snout and geting the lines of her eyes right, that I would give it a shot.  As it turns out, it works great.  Why not use watercolor pencils you ask?  Well the answer is simple.  Watercolor pencil color runs a bit when it gets wet.  Regular colored pencils don't.  You can see in some of her whiskers that straight lines are easy.   If I had tried to put on the white whiskers with white gouache, I would have had a horrible time with it. How runny do I make it?  Do I even try to thin it at all?  How long a stroke can I make with it.  With the pencils, one stroke and done.  Brilliant.  I am definitely gonna use colored pencils in the future.

Well, I hope you all enjoy this painting.  I really liked doing this one and the sketches of her previously.

Another Portrait

Ok, here is another portrait.  I think I did ok on this one, but probably not great.  I like some of her skin.  But in other places, not so fond of it.  Hair is always a problem.  It's tough.  This was additionally tough given that she is a blonde.  How do I differentiate her hair enough from her skin to make you notice .

I liked the picture when I originally saw it, and still do.  Face, hand, arms and hair.  All the things I wanted to work on..... And all the things I think I still need to work on.

I do think the eyes are better.  The problem I had with this painting was trying to determine how dark to make the eyebrows and lashes.  The picture that I painted from has dark eyebrows and lashes, but they look too dark for some reason.

Well, I still think it is a good effort and I think I learned some really good things from painting it.  Hope you enjoy it.

Sleeper

I've been working on this for a while.  I've had it drawn for well over a month.  I was determined to finish it today as I've got others I need to need to get too.  I'm happy with it, but looking at the scan, it looks like he doesn't have any whiskers.  They are definitely there in the painting.  That might be one think I have to go back and darken up before it's delivered to it intended recipient.

Here is the inspiration picture.  I know its not an exact match, but I think its a pretty good resemblance.

Well, even if it isn't perfect I had fun painting it.  Hope you all enjoy it.

One Final Portrait

This painting for sale 9x12 $30

Ok, so I think I have saved the best for last.  Trying to pull together all the elements of a portrait that I have learned this month.  The eyes, the hair, the proportions  all of it.  I am certain this is my best work to date.  Laying down a bit of color on wet, or damp paper and blending seems to be the way I am gonna paint from now on.  There are plenty of artists that can user watercolors in only one layer, or two at most, but I think I have learned that that isn't me.  I need to put down a lot of layers in what I am doing.  This painting has a lot of them.  The background itself is two or 3 layers, then in order to ge the highlights on the face, I started out really light, and I bet I've got 5 or 6 on the face and that many on the neck too.

Here is a little bit of an intermediate stage.  Sorry I don't have one where I had just the drawing.  notice that I did paint into the area where the hair will be.  That is so that if you are gonna see through the hair at all, I want you to see some of the background color.

Here is the original image.  You can see and judge for yourself if I've done a good job or not.

Hope you all enjoy the painting, as you know, I had a great time painting it.

The Eyes Have It

So I learned that eyes aren't just almond shapes.  I also learned that iris' aren't solid colors, the whites of your eyes aren't white, and your lid folds into a slot called and eye fold.  All these together make an eye kind of a tricky thing to paint.

Noses on the other hand have two dark ovals (the actual nostrils, and a rounded point.  The outside of the nostrils get shading to give them definition, even if when you look at someone you don't necessarily see it.

I tried to take what I have learned in the past two weeks and paint a better pair of eyes and a nose.  I think I am making definite progress.

Why the big push for learning eyes?  Well, since I've been trying to paint faces, I've learned that if the eyes look good, the painting looks good.  If the eyes look bad, the painting looks bad.  So, if I learn to paint eyes, regardless of what I do with the rest of the painting, the painting will look good.  (at least thats the theory)

Oh, the base for these eyes are green because I was painting a different picture and already had green on my palette and didn't feel the need to mix new.  Enjoy.

Another Head Shot

Well, this one didn't quite turn out the  way I hoped.  I think the problem mostly is with the hair.  Yes, her skin color is a little off, but I don't think that affects this painting in the least.  I was trying a slightly different technique for hair, and..... well, lets just say I think I need a bit mor practice with it.

The main point of this exercise for this painting were eyes.  On the original, I thought the eyes turned out pretty good.  looking at the scan, maybe not quite so much.

Here is the original picture.  You can see that it is a pretty plain picture to start with.  I think I got her nose pretty good.   You all will have to decide for yourself.  Hope you enjoy.

Cyrano de Bergecat

I don't really know why I think this little guy has such a big nose, but I do.  I ran out of time painting this one, and so its a little unfinished.  But I still thought it was good enough to put up here.

I look at this picture and it looks like his nose is really bit.  I don't really think that it is, but to mee it looks like it.  For what he is, I think he came out pretty good.  This is another one that I am gonna use as practice.  I think that a few more and I'll be fairly proficient with cats.

Enjoy

Not This One, The Otter One

SOLD

This is a little change from the norm for me.  When I started painting, just about all I did was wildlife in and around my town of Morro Bay.  Then at some point, I got away from it and started painting all sorts of other things, recently its been cars and trucks.  Well, this one brings me right back home.

I found this picture on line.  An otter all wrapped up in kelp.  For those of you who have never seen them do it, the love to.  I don't know what benefit they get from it, but they love to wrap themselves up in it.

Here is the picture I started with.  Just a basic outline of the otter in the water.  (apologies for the darkness of the photo, the flash on my iphone was on, but must not be quite bright enough. )

The next step was to add fur and kelp.  I kept the kelp really yellow at this point.  I wanted it to really stand out when you saw it on the finished painting.  To do that I make it really bright to start with, and then add more colors over top.  Blues, reds and browns will make the final colors of the kelp.

The real challenge is to paint the fur without making it all run together   I chose to make the feet a little darker, and the face a little lighter.  Hopefully it all worked out.

As you can see the finished product has water around the otter and just a bit of reflection.  

I hope you all enjoy this painting.  I really had fun painting it.

Portrait

Ok, so, the art site to which I subscribe holds monthly competitions.  This months topic is portraits.  I've never really done portraits, and as such wanted to give this a go.  I did a quick search for portraits on google and a portrait similar to this popped up.  I hope I did it justice.  There are a few things I really like about it.  One is, I think the shading on the shirt is great.  with just a few strokes of color, it totally looks like there is a collar on the shirt and a few button holes.

The nose was intersting to do.  I didn't really draw a nose, just figured if I shaded everything but the nose, it would have to stand out and look like a nose.  I'm not about to say I nailed it, but I think I had a great first effort.  What do you all think, leave a comment.  Thanks, and as always, enjoy.

Cat 3

SOLD!

Ok, so I am back on animals full time now.  Here is a nice calico cat I've been working on.  With the background colors, it kind of looks like some kind of Oriental painting or something.  I'm really facing a dilema.  How much fur, or detail do I put into these paintings.  It seems as if I put in none, it's way too little, but if I put in what I think there ought to be it's way too much.  Maybe I'll just have to stick with whiskers   I don't really know what to do about it, but I am determined to figure it out.  I guess you all are going to have to get use to seeing some animals for a while I work it out.    Enjoy

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.

Quick Sketches of Statues

Here are two statues from my house.  The first is a painting of a copy of The Thinker by Rodin.  You will recognize the classic form of the man hunched over with his chin on his hand.  I tried to paint it quickly and loosely using only a couple of colors, but varying them enough so that you might distinguish the depth of the statue.  I hope I did it justice















This second painting is one of a woman wearing a necklace and headdress.  Again I tried to keep to a couple of colors only, but while still allowing you to see the shadows and depth of the painting.  At this point I will admit to not being the best at seeing shadows in what I paint.  I try, but sometimes seem to only paint where I think the shadows are.  This is somewhat a mix of seeing and feeling where the shadows are.  Looking back i should have added a little more shadow around the jewelry, and filled in her hollow eyes.

This painting was done on drawing paper instead of watercolor paper.  Thus the warping of the paper that you can see in the scan.

How you enjoy.

   

buffalo wings

Today the Cal Poly Urban Sketchers met in the Biological Sciences Museum to do a little sketching.  After looking around at all the animal heads on the wall, I settled on this.  It is an African Buffalo.  It is really a dark brindle color, but I didn't want to make it quite that dark for fear of it becoming too dark.  I think this way it gets the point across.

As you can tell, it's really just a head.  It is hanging over the door, which i neglected to put into the picture.  From the size of the head, I have to believe that the beast is enormous with the hind 3/4 attached.  I definitely think our group will be back to paint again really soon.