DOGSCATSANDDOLLS

A bit late starting my latest project, as real life keeps getting in the way, including an accident with a coffee table this morning, that means at least another hour or so to try and fix it! So thought I would post where I am at......

This is a personal portrait of my cat Maisie in her favorite tree, an old Bramley at the bottom of our garden.

I am using the reference photo mainly just for composition, and will adapt the colours to my liking and also to her true colour as the tree shadows make her look greeny/grey as opposed to the creamy /sepia/grey that she really is, and as its my cat, my tree and my picture I can have it anyway I like ;-)

I have spent a couple of days trying to decide what medium/support to use, as I want to give Coloured pencils another go, but I have decided to play safe and use pastels and pastel pencils for this one as it has elements in the picture that I don't usually draw/paint (namely everything except the cat!) and also I would like it to be hung near my portrait of Oskar (my J.R.T) which I did a while ago, also in pastels on mount board (its the one of him sat on a wooden chair on the website)

As the mount board is a grey/brown I have transferred my drawing using white graphite so that I can see it, my main worry at the moment is that the trunk of the tree doesent over power the cat, I originally planned on just a wash of soft pastels suggesting them, but it did not really work so have gone in with stronger colours and a little detail.

My normal way of working in pastels is to underpaint the whole thing with soft pastel and then build layers with increasingly hard pastels, finishing with pastel pencils for details, but I have deviated from this as I want to get the trees in first, so that I can then judge the values for the cat! Anyway enough waffle for now, will update soon.