Pet Portraits in Watercolor: Orange Tabby Cat

1. 01 Pet Portrait Ginger Introduction: Thank you for taking a look at this course. My name is Johan Corkalsa. I have about 25 years in watercolor experience and a bachelor's degree in fine arts. This course is going to look at watercolor port pet portraits, and we're going to paint this lovely ginger cat. The work is going to be done more on an intermediate level. We're going to do some hand drawing, as you see here, to get the image transferred onto our watercolor paper. Will give it a more personal touch, and it also helps us to learn to draw more accurately as we're doing images and paintings. And we'll take a look at some different painting techniques. Again, more on the intermediate level, color mixing techniques, textures, colors. Wet into wet, layering, different things. And because of some of these techniques, I would recommend either using a Cold pressed watercolor paper, which is what I use most of the time, or what paper I used for this particular project was at Stonehenge Pescia um, printmaking paper is more of an etching paper, and it absorbs a lot of water like very similarly to watercolor paper. The sizing is fairly similar, and you get lovely results with it, but Cold pressed watercolor is also very beautiful and would work just as well for this project. So also with materials, paints, I would recommend Windsor and Newton or something of a similar grade, more of an artist grade paint or even a student artist grade paint. Stay away from very inexpensive, either cakes or tubes that are sort of hobby grade. Um, I would also recommend a nicer set of brushes, maybe a size six and a couple smaller brushes, a couple larger brushes. I tend to work with a six to a ten and then a couple of smaller brushes, but not much smaller. Um, because when you have high quality paint brushes, they come to a very fine point, and you will be able to use those to do very fine details. Um, so we'll look at details, work, and creating this sort of full composition to display our ginger tabby cat. So I hope you enjoy this course and hope to join us. Um, we will be taking a look now at different ways to determine photos to choose for our project and how we came about choosing this one. 2. 02 Pet Portrait Ginger Choosing an Image: So taking a look at some photos, just to give you an idea of different things to look for, um, the one on the left, the lighting is okay, but most of the lighting, the light side of the body is focused on the body of the cat rather than on the face of the cat. And so to get a good portrait out of this at this kind of awkward looking down angle can be very difficult to make your brain figure out the actual structure of the cat's body, and it can kind of create difficulty in terms of trying to make a realistic painting out of this one. One on the left, could be kind of a meme at this point. But the bright flash right in the cat's face and that sharp shadow in the background will kill any sense of volume in a painting. If you try and mimic that. So you're basically painting just colors and tones, really just colors rather than any kind of shadow and volume that your eye perceives through the different levels of shade in a picture. So those are ones that I would avoid. These next two photos, while they're up close and could give you a full body image of the cat, the one on left, the cat looks a little bit annoyed, in my opinion, and I feel like even though you've got some directional lighting, you could probably make it work as a portrait, especially if you tried to kind of adjust it to where the cat maybe didn't look quite as grumpy. So it's a potential one that could be used. The background is obviously clattered and will make it a little bit hard for your eye to follow where the cat is as you're painting. Uh, can make you feel a little mixed up. And then the picture on the right, the cat is squinting and so you're not going to get a good sense of the eyes. The other issue with this picture is the flat lighting. It's an above above the head lighting from like a kitchen lamp or something. And it's just got kind of a flat orange color shade from that lamp. And so it's giving sort of this kind of fronty look to the picture. Um, the one on the left has window lighting, so at least it has that going for it, even though the body is a little bit kind of difficult to figure out the feet, what they're doing in that picture. While you could, if you know cadenatomy probably figured it out, it might be difficult to make it look sane in a painting. And this next picture, although it's cute, and it appears to have directional lighting. As you look at the bedspread there, it does not have a lot of directional lighting on the cat itself. It's very subtle. You might be able to bump up the contrast in your computer to make it kind of look a little more. Um, like you wanted to see the directional lighting, but that's also going to change the kind of look of it to a kind of strange yellow color and not give you a very nice feel for that image. And so you're going to get a kind of flat painting again. You could be creative with it if you wanted to. And obviously, any picture can be a source. However, I like to pick images that have already a strong sense of contrast. Um, or at least a little bit more of a mood to the lightings to where it creates this point of interest and helps you to understand and model the volume of the animal's face and features. In this picture, obviously, the cat's also laying down. So while you can get a good sense of his paws and tail and body, how it's kind of laying down, his eyes are closed and you can't see that sort of personality coming through the eyes looking at you and getting that sort of portrait feel for it. And so we kind of come up on this last picture. And, you know, the cat in this one also looks kind of a little bit grumpy, in my opinion, but I don't feel like it's grumpy enough to make or break the photo. It has a very sort of cat personality kind of image, and it also has a kind of volumetric lighting to it that helps you to figure out where the body is and how it's sitting. And we'll also use a second picture that is from actually a different cat to paint the lower part of the picture for this particular painting, just so we get a sense of the full body of the cat and we're kind of working on a couple of different pictures to show us how we can use source photos from a few different places to create something that still looks amazing and that, you know, somebody looking at the painting will never know that we did because um, they'll never see the source photos. So it's a technique that you can use to create something interesting. And also the background is created, you know, using other sources as well, where we can use our imagination to create this kind of grassy landscape with a kind of cloudy sky. You know, some people talk about the rainbow bridge for animals that have passed away. And a lot of these portraits I've painted after the cat has already passed. And so, you know, this particular cat enjoyed eating grass outdoors and so having the grass in the painting and the sort of outdoor feeling for a cat that enjoyed being outdoors a lot. It creates more of a personal feel for that painting for the person that it's being painted for, you know, who is kind of remembering this animal that they were close to at some point. So there's some things to think about as you're preparing to paint for a pet portrait, just to keep in mind that the subject is not just an animal, but it is a very specific animal because we are painting a portrait rather than just creating a painting of a generic cat or another pet that we are working with. 3. 03 Pet Portrait Ginger Drawing: Alright, we're going to get started in just a minute. And I want to make sure that your materials are ready. So let's take your board, your paper and make sure that you either have a watercolor block where the paper is already attached down or that you're taking your watercolor paper and taping it down to a solid surface so that it will not warp and buckle as you put a lot of paper water on it. So you want to make sure that you get that watercolor paper drying straight. I use acid free artist tape to do that. Um, and then for your watercolors, we're going to start with drawing so you don't have to worry about the colors first. But it's always good to have your colors already laid out on a palette. I have mine usually in, you know, a metal palette with each of the little wells filled in with a color already. And have some paint brushes ready. We're just going to begin with, like, a regular, maybe a number two pencil or something. You just want the pencil lines to be very light so you don't need a very dark soft pencil, just a very light pencil, a hard pencil. And an eraser just in case you need to adjust the lines at all. And so we'll get started and jump right into the drawing. We're going to start right in and start drawing our cat here. I'm going to look at the shape of the head and get kind of a general shape as we draw. So we're going to look at that and I've already determined kind of where on the page he's going to go so that we get enough space for the ears and a little space for the background. I mean, it's kind of a nice in the middle but not smack in the center of the page. Now we're going to look at the kind of angle of the face where you have the snout in the mouth. And you're going to be able to draw in that face. You can kind of see little details there. I take my hand and I measure the distance between different spaces on the face, so I get an approximate approximation on where things go. The eyes, for example, are in the middle of the head right about halfway point from the top to the bottom, at least at the angle in this picture. And so that's where I'm measuring and making sure that I get the eyes right into that space. Since the eyes are an actual circle or a sphere, rather than just ovals, I'm kind of giving myself an idea of the full size of the eyes in the head. It's not necessary, but it's something I sometimes like to do to get a more three dimensional feel to what I'm doing. And what I'm adding here is actually the place for the whiskers and some of the lines around the eyes. And some of the markings on the head, as well as the light areas around the eyes. This gives me a guide space for when I start painting where everything goes. Now, the ears I try to sketch pretty lightly, so that when I'm finished, there won't be much visible under the paint. And then when it's time, I do give myself a little bit of time to erase anything that's outside the actual pat in areas on the page. The paper that we're using is actually a printmaking paper. It's a stonehenged printmaking paper. It's in a worn white. I believe it's called Pesha and you can get that at any art supply store. When you use printmaking paper, you need extra water because it's going to suck up a lot more water and not allow you to move the paint as much if you put it on without enough water. So you want to make sure that you have enough. Now, sketching some of the features in the face and then getting into the body, making sure that we have enough space for where the body goes. First kind of the shape of his sort of rough man shoulders. He's definitely an orange tabby tomcat. Very peaceful. Man his manners Now, the feet, we're gonna look at actually a different picture for those because, um, from here, this picture doesn't have an image of the feet. So we're gonna be looking at another photo. It's actually another cat. This orange tabby, one of his legs was either dislocated or broken somehow. And when he stood, paw his leg literally looks broken. It was very odd kind of bend in his legs. So, um, we had to kind of well modify that for this so it doesn't look strange in the final piece. No, I'm measuring the length of the head as, um in proportion to the body so that you can kind of get a sense of where certain areas or markings go on the body and how kind of a better idea of where to put shadows and light areas to make this a little bit easier during the painting phase. And I'm just checking some measurements, some locations, little details that I want to be mindful of when I'm painting so that I know where they go. And some of it will get covered up before I even paint it. But sometimes this part of the phase is not just for the physical drawing, but it's also for the mental familiarization with what you're painting because your brain has not usually taken the time to measure distances between a cat's face or body. And so if you take this time to do it, then you'll have some extra time to be able to do that, and your brain will understand the painting better. 4. 04 Pet Portrait Ginger Painting: Let's get into the painting. Make sure you have your paints and your brush and your water cup and some paper towels, 'cause that will be handy. So we're gonna start. This is sort of burnt sienna and some um, raw umber with a little yellow ochre mixed in together. I tend to use those kind of combined rather than one or the other at a time. And I'm just going to start putting in kind of the undercoat into the cat's fur. And one of the reasons I chose this warm paper to go into this painting is that even though the cat actually has a lot of white areas in his face. When you use this dark around it, the warm tone ends up actually looking white because of the contrast, and it gives a nice sort of warm creaminess to the whole fur of the cat and his whole body. And it looks very pretty and warm once the painting is finished. Now, I'm taking a little more yellow ochre to add to the colors. You'll need to moderate the amount of water use. Sometimes I'll just use straight color from the ochre. Sometimes I'll have a little bit of a mixture going on. For this underlayer, the yellow ochre gives it a nice kind of yellow warmth that's sort of common with the ginger cats. And then with the burnt Sienas and the umbers, you get kind of the darker stripes in the fur that gives it a nice kind of orange tabby feel where the tones are very similar, but you have the nice contrast in the fur. Yes, you'll use some slightly darker, slightly lighter tones in and out through this kind of top of the face. It's not hugely important at this stage because right now, we're not establishing shadow. What we're establishing is local color for the face. So that's something that's different between, um, the different types of painting you're doing when you're painting in color. With black and white, you can just focus on shadow and light. But here, we're also adding what's called local color, and that is the color of the face. Now, right there, you see, there's a little bit of shadowing, but also a little bit of tonality into where the face starts to, um, merge and where you're going to have some darker areas and lighter areas because of the fur patterning. Yeah, we'll just keep with this yellow ochre. I will go into the body a little bit. Add some tone into that, as well. In this part of the body, I'm doing these sort of semicircular strokes, a little bit curved strokes to mimic the curvature of the body, the curvature of the fur, as well as the curvature of the breaks in the fur and the sort of stripes of the tabby stripes that go through that. You'll see these spaces where we're adding, um, some pieces just into the ear. And there we're going to be taking some umber and mixing that into what we're working on. And taking some sienna, as well. No, often they say not to mix colors together on your palette because you'll never get them clean. You'll see that I do that a lot. And then I'll sometimes clean them out at the end. And now we're adding some of the more colorful areas into the face, some of those ginger stripes. And this is kind of the first phase of that, and there'll be more color added later into those areas. Some people like a step by step kind of painting. And if you're looking at actual artist paintings, they're generally not that paint by number, step by step kind of things where you end up really adding a little more here and a little bit there based on how the paintings doing and taking time to evaluate what you have in front of you to improve the painting and add the things that it needs rather than the things that you just want to add to it. A paint by number painting will end up looking like a paint by number painting as opposed to an artist painting where you have your own vision and you want to have a specific look to it that you're looking for. And here, you're seeing me mixing very wet into wet paint, and you seeing that kind of blurring and bleeding that comes out of that. And it's very pretty in certain areas of the fur because that's how the colors are. They don't just don't just necessarily look at each individual hair when you're looking at a cat. You can, if you want to focus on that hyper detail, but in a lot of ways, we just look at the colors of sp and into each other, and it gives us that feeling of what the cat looks like. And so having this picture of the especially the sienna and a little bit of umber and the yellow cir, giving us that very gingery kind of red color into the fur. And now we're taking the umber again. And the sienna, and we'll be adding a little bit of pain's gray. This gives it a little bit of a smoky quality. Doesn't kind of tones it down a little bit, so it's a little more muted. And this shadow area kind of under the mouth is where we're going to add a little bit of that shading and, you know, kind of wet into wet it out a little bit. So it's not super dark, just giving it a little bit of color. So that we have that sense of shadow there under the chin. And sometimes when you feel like something's gone too dark, you can pull it back with a little water or with a little bit of paper towel, and that will move you forward in your painting, and then you can kind of go over it as that's dry. And we're adding some of that shadow into the eye area so that you can get a sense of the three dimensionality of the eye rather than having a flat eye for the cat. And his nose gets a little shadow there, too. It's a sort of continuous, um, mark there. And sometimes you got to soften it up a little bit, so you can go back in with a clean wet brush. I use paper towels a whole lot. Some people like rags for me. That's not really a thing. I'm gonna add some more paints gray and continue this sort of shadow area. Cause the side of the head is obviously in shadow. And the photo is very strongly lit. So if you like that, you can keep with that, or you can make the shadows a little bit lighter. You know, it's kind of just a personal preference there, which way you to want to do. I put a little bit of shadow under the chin since the light is coming from sort of the top right of the picture. And then you get the shadow on the kind of left going down on the underside. We'll add a little bit of kind of where the shadow on his back is. I'm getting a sense of where that goes. I'm giving myself a better placement for. It helps with the three dimensionality and the kind of full shape of the body. And then adding a little more of the color in there. So that ginger orange from the burnt sienna. Now that we have a little bit of the body in, we're gonna add some pinks into the ears. Now, this is a mixture of azar and crimson. Um, and some of the Qudnacrome pink. That is, or like a rose pink. And then you can kind of mix in whether you want it more purply or you want it a little more pinky, sort of orange. You can add, like, a cadmium red into it. I tend to keep it pretty Alizarin. Alizarin is a traditional color used in portrait painting because it mimics skin tones very well. For lips and things like that, it's a little more brown rather than being very strong. And here I'm dropping in some of the paints gray, just add to the shadow a little bit. Sometimes I will do lighter washes of just a single color into a shadow depending on how I want that to be warm or cool. Here again, mixing some, um, of the sienna with an ochre, just to get a little more color into the ears and some more of the markings. So like I said, I work a little bit here and a little bit there when I paint because it gives you a better sense of what you need to do with the painting when you do sort of an overall working. If you focus a lot on one area and build up one area, when you build up another area around it, it's going to change the contrast in the original spot that you built up. It's going to make things look different. And so as you go through different layers, you're adding contrast, you're adding tones based on what's around the original colors and tones, as well as the new ones. And so it's a sort of back and forth play between your eyes and your um and your subject that you're painting and painting in front of you so that it becomes a sort of like a game. Say, How can I improve this? What do I need to do next? And you're constantly evaluating. You can take a break, stop and look at it. And you'll see kind of my brush hovers sometimes over the paper, it's a time when I'm actually just looking at the picture a little bit while I'm also internalizing that as I'm painting and just adding some things here and there. So I might be painting one area and still looking at another area going, Okay, I need to change this. Um, and here I'm adding some little bit of shade into the ear, where the tufts kind of um the sort of lighter colored fur comes in front, and then there's a little bit of shadow on the inside of the ear. So just adding that in and then going in with a little more of this sienna to give that more gingery color into the hair in the fur. The ochre helps too. It's a little bit more yellowy and lighter in some areas. But the sienna is a very good kind of gingery cat colour. I tend to think of ginger cats as orange, but there really is, you know, Halloween orange is very different from, like, a natural orange, like a pumpkin or a cat. There's a little bit of brown mutedness to it, that's a little more natural. And again, adding some umber into some of the stronger striped areas. And he has a little bit of, what I would call kind of shadowing into the stripes as well that kind of goes into this chest area here. Breaking up some of those lines in the tabby stripes will make it look a little more natural because the fur naturally breaks up the patterns a little bit. And then we mix a little bit more umber and sienna again with the more pains gray because we're going to work a little bit on the shadow area. And like I said, this back and forth is because in some areas that darkness is going to need to be more intense. When I add the stripes to the right side and give them a stronger color, then I see that the shadow on the left side is looking really pale. It's confusing and distracting to my eye. So then I go to Fix Sap because I want that to be a little more representative of what the image is actually going to look like. So I have a better sense of whether those stripes on the right are too strong or too light or, you know, what do I need to do to them if I need to do anything? And when they do look too dark when I first put them down, that's often because another part of the picture is not dark enough, and the paint also dries a lot lighter once it's dries so that we'll go back into these areas a little more as the painting progresses. 5. 05 Pet Portrait Ginger Color and Grass: So let's add a little bit of color to this. And we're going to start that by doing a little bit of grass into the front. So even though the picture was taken indoors, I'm going to add a little bit of intrigue because he was mostly an outdoor cat. And one of the things that I enjoyed doing with him was feeding him, you know, little stash handsome grass. He would, you know, eat them and probably throw them up somewhere outside. But, you know, it's good for their digestion, and it was something that he would just like to do. I'd hold a piece of grass out, and he would just come and chomp on it. And it was kind of a fun memory. So something that I kind of wanted to incorporate into this is him outdoors and with some blades of grass and things around him to kind of sit near. So because the drawing is basically there, and I have a sense of where his body's going to be, I'm going to take a little bit of time and just add some of that background intrigue into this painting. And you can see, I'm kind of moving into the greens here. And I like to have a couple of different greens, either a aridian or atheogreen. And then a sap green or a hooker screen. Right now, I have a hooker screen on my palate. I do like sap green, but it's not always available. So if I don't get it from the store, I will add some yellow ochre into, like, this mixture of hooker green and a varidian green ortho green. And that helps to add a lot of kind of warmth into that. And there's some more yellow adding into it. You can even add some of the sienna or the umber and just kind of mute it a little bit, so it's a more natural green because if you look outside, you're not going to have these sort of, um, toxic looking blue greens into it. And these first pieces of grass are gonna be very tall and sort of long and kind of flat. And we'll add some, like, warmer yellow green in there with a little ochre and just add a few different strands of grass next to it. I know later I'm going to want to just add a little bit more. And to get that shape of the grass, you know, I sometimes will tap lightly just to make a little bit of green. But for the leaves themselves, you know, there's a sort of point on the brush. You gently put the tip down, and then to get the thicker part of the leaf, you press down. And then to go down to the tip if you're going down to another tip is to just gently lift at the end to get that sort of nice thin gradation into the shape of the leaf. And now I'm going back into the face, adding a little more color, um, a little bit of ochre and some of that Sienna. And mixing all of that together. Oh, into the body. Rather than the face. And just adding a little more shape into his belly. Now, he actually has a fairly light colored belly, in actuality, but we're going to kind of keep with this orange orangy theme as we go into it. And even though I'm putting things on dry, I'm adding a ton of water cause like I said, this is a printmaking paper, and it soaks up even more paper even more water than a watercolor paper would do. So just adding in a little bit of color here as almost like a base color, a base coat, if you will. And then just a little bit of shape to the feet. Um, those are gonna be coming from a different photo just to give it a sense of what we're gonna do and for the legs to be a little more straight. And I'm taking a little more of that yellow green because he does have sort of a yellowy green in the eyes. I just giving it a little bit of that color. And sometimes, if you drop in a little bit of that color into other areas, it'll kind of something that's opposite will make the orange pop. Obviously, opposite of orange on the color wheel is blue, but occasionally because it's a little bit of a reddish, brownish color, the green will help it pop a little bit as well. I like you see here with my brush hovering, I'm considering what I'm gonna do. I'm switching colors and washing off my brush. I'm adding some, um, umber, as well as cadmium red, getting a little bit more, um, reddish tone into the nose. So it's got a little bit more of that kind of warmth to it. Um, you know, some cats have a very pink nose. His is more of a sort of a mauve, not even a mauve. It's just, like, a kind of brick red almost. Um, just a very soft color. So it doesn't it doesn't look exactly the same as the fur orange, but it has a similar tone to it, a little more sort of a warm red, perhaps. Now just adding a little bit of color around the eyes just to give them shape where the tear ducts are or where certain shapes go around the eyes for the whiskers to come out of. I don't know if they're actually called whiskers around the eyes, but they, um, they do look just like the whiskers around the nose, so we'll call them that. Now, we got a little more paints gray here. And you're gonna see me outline the eyes to give them a little bit more definition. Now, the green is wet, so it's gonna kind of bleed in there a little bit. And I will probably go in and clean that up just a little bit. You can see it kind of blobs up a little bit. So putting in a little bit of clean water on the brush and just gently pulling that back. And sometimes I do that where I forget that I need to let watercolor dry, so I will pull it back and then go back in a little bit later once it is dry. So I just because you make a mistake doesn't mean you have to scrap your whole picture just means, you know, work on something else for a little bit, and you can find a solution to an issue that you might have. But you can use some of the same darker color down here, give the mouth a little bit of shape. A little bit of the shadow area. Cats have a separation between the top of the jaw and the bottom of the jaw. There's a little bit more shadow there than you would see on a human because it's not an actual lip. It's just a sort of the snout coming out a little bit further forward. And the chin needs a little bit of dimension as well. So that's another reason why I work all over the painting doing a watercolor because when you do that, you let one area dry while you're working on a different area, and then you go back in and you can do that part again in a little while. But and then adding a little bit of ultramarine blue into these shadows can kind of make the orange pop sometimes. So it's something that I'm doing here in the face. And I'll also be doing that into the ear shadows, kind of towards the tip tops of the ears. And adding a little bit more of the sienna again into the face, adding some more of markings under the eyes, a little more color there as the face is very orange and building up the layers of the fur, adding some markings just around that edge of the face. Gives a little more dimension when you could see which way the stripes are going. And now adding a little bit more coolness into some shadow areas. Now we're adding a little bit of shadow area into the fur, whereas fur looks a little bit kind of bunched up, and it's giving a little bit of that kind of shaded. Now, this is a very blue color, and I decided later on I did not like this. So if you're going in, I would suggest more of a sienna, umber mixture that's a little darker with maybe just a tint of blue, but not to the extent that I did it because it ends up looking a little bit strange in this particular picture for some reason. Um, and maybe just because gingers are very brown. And it just looks a little strange afterwards. And that blue is just the extra touch that wasn't quite needed. But, you know, sometimes you do something, and then you decide, well, I'll have to go over that later. And that's a little bit of shadow on the leg, just to give it some place. And then, again, stopping to look, where do we need to go? And then adding a little bit of brown into that mixture with the blue trying to kind of tone it down a little bit, as well as creating some of the tabby stripes. And just pulling back some of that darkness. No taking a minute to look at the picture a little more. I'm gonna take some of the umber and add a little more shadow under the ear, but also just color. The umber, even though it is a more muted brown, it is still a fairly red color. And it works well on top of the sienna to create these sort of tabby stripe markings that are on the cat's face. Adding a little bit of ultramari blue under the chin, just to cool the shadows a little bit. And some of this stuff is very slow going, one thing at a time. I would love to see your progress and your work. It's sometimes interesting to look afterwards at the different layers once your piece is done and just have kind of a track record of what you were doing when you were painting. 6. 06 Pet Portrait Ginger Face details: Now taking a look at the picture, um, I want to add some markings to the face. And so I'm going back to our sienna, um, it's going to give us and kind of mixing it into that umber mixture that's there with the yellow ochre and everything and just adding around the shadows, the face, just adding a little bit of toad here and there, um, to where I want something to be warmer or darker or whatever it is, you know, kind of small wisps of fur coming off the side to give his, um, the outline, just a little bit more intrigue. So you can't see a huge change in the picture, but just adding a little bit of roughness to the outline that kind of makes it look more like a cat, because once you look at a cat, you realize there's a little bit of fuzziness around the edges just from the fur. And then, you know, also looking at the markings on the face now and adding some of that ginger ginger character all of his unique markings on the face. And even though these markings seem really dark on the face already, as the layers progress in this painting, I'm going to go back and darken them even more. And that sort of layering, to me, gives it a little more character because it feels a little more lively. There's a little more going on beneath the surface, just like there is when you're looking at a person or a cat. There's many layers to the fur, many layers to the person, and adding these very light little tick marks gives it sort of an illusion of the fur. Even if you go over it later with another layer, um, you'll have these sort of little marks underneath that build up a little texture in the fur, and then you can go back in and add some more sort of definitive markings as you want to, and fuzzing up even some of the facial markings with these stripes that are just very tippy tip of the brush. This is like the size six brush. It's probably the smallest I'll go in this painting, except maybe for the whiskers. And even for those, I'll probably just stick to the six because that's what I'm used to. Bigger brush for whatever you're working on as possible. And you can obviously do things with really teeny tiny brushes, and that's something you can do if you want to really drawing each single hair onto the cat's face. But this is a little more painterly, a little more loose and fun to give it a feeling of being close to reality, but maybe not quite reality. And here, we're adding um the dark shades into the eyes to give it a little more definition. So we don't have this sort of ghost cat staring at us for much longer. I always find once I put the eyes in the I can see the picture a little bit better. And until I put the animal's eyes in, I tell her the person's eyes in when it's doing people. Um, I sort of seems a little lifeless. Doesn't matter how close it is to the actual painting or the picture that you're painting from. Until you put the eyes in, it just doesn't quite have everything in it, character wise. And I draw those in with that same six brush. It's just a matter of how much pressure you put on your brush and that's something you can teach yourself, you know, how much pressure do you put in. And something that can help with that sounds kind of unrelated, but calligraphy exercises doing sort of, if you're doing pointed pen calligraphy, practicing thin and thick strokes with your pointed pens will help you also practice, some more control in your hand, as well as doing those same exercises with the brush. You could just practice that. But how much pressure are you putting on your brush and how much how thick is your line that you're putting down. Regardless of what paint brush you're using, can you make a really fine line with a larger brush? Because you have that control over your motor skills from just taking the time to practice. And here adding a little bit of intrigue into the ears for the fur that kind of sits there on top of the ears. I often wondered if that affects the sound that they hear. But cats hearing is so good that I doubt it would make much difference. Maybe it just keeps fuzzy things and bugs from getting in their ears. A lot of the fun in paint watercolor, too, is making suggestions of things rather than being very, um, literal with your brush jokes. So giving the idea that there's like fuzzy hair in those ears rather than painting it with a white paint brush or white paint on top kind of gives you just kind of a fun effect to it. We will go back in with a little bit of white just to give it a little more definition, but really, you don't need it. The picture is fine without it. Your eyes will kind of figure it out as you look at it. Sometimes it's fun to test different things to see which one looks better. The nose is kind of interesting because you have to look at all the little crevices and see which parts need the shadow. You obviously have to follow the way that the sun is shining or the lamp is shining in this case, and place the shadows in logical places to the left of the nose to the left of the nostril, on the inside of the nostril, you know? And then whether there's any kind of shadow underneath the nose as it goes into the snout, and now adding some fuzzy shadows into the legs and to the side of the body. A little bit of painterliness. And here again, I'm adding some blue here to these little stripes, and it's just a little bit too blue by the end of the painting. So I would recommend you kind of tone down on the blue in this and use more. The umber, maybe a little bit of paints gray with the sienna and just keeping it kind of on the warm side. 7. 07 Pet Portrait Ginger Shadows 1: Looking at the feet now, we have the second picture, and we can see he's in a similar position. This one is facing a little to the side more, but since we can't see his feet, we're going to use these from the other picture. And we'll take again some of this umber, Sienna, ochre mixture and just kind of get into the foot. And first we're going to work on getting the shape of the foot and some of the shading in it, and then we'll get into the details as we need to. Sometimes mixing of paint, it just takes a little bit of time. So taking your paints here and there, adding some paints gray, adding some sienna, adding some umber, deciding it's too dark, wanting to dilute it down, adding a little bit more then testing it on the side just to see how dark it is, whether you like it. We're going to kind of go in and do this sort of paw shape where when it's on the ground, you get a little bit more of the toes coming forward. In the middle. And then you have this sort of shape that goes back, recedes back into space. Reminds me a little bit of the shape of the nose at the same time. And then adding a little bit of shadow to the sides there. You want to keep the top of the foot a little bit light so since the light is coming kind of from the right and the top, you want to make sure that you get a little bit of curve on that foot. My hand was a little heavy there and we but dark paint over the top of the foot. So it's going to look a little bit darker than I actually wanted at the end, but it's still workable. And since the face is the foot good point, it's not something you're gonna notice right away when you look at the final painting. You know, adding a little bit of darkness to the bottom so that it looks like he is on something. The bottoms of the feet are a little more in shadow than the rest of him because they're touching the ground. And then adding some more shadow into the side of the body and mimicking somewhere in between the two pictures that we're looking at so that we get this sort of tubby back leg, sort of chubbiness that the fur sometimes makes for these Um, these cats. And then adding some of this sort of darkness of the back leg in there. We're not gonna define it really strongly, make it look like, Oh, this is a back leg, but it's there and you kind of get the sense of it as you're looking at the picture. And that's a nice way to make things recede in spaces. It's a little bit fuzzier than, like, the main focal area of a picture like this. Sienna is gonna add a little bit of that redness to the body. I'll get a little bit of kind of direction to the fur. You can pay attention here which way you're pointing the brush so that it kind of follows the curvature where you think the fur is pointing, and you get a sense of that even in the under layers of color. You want to try and create some definition between the front legs and the back legs through the shadowing. It's a little tricky in the shadow because it sort of muddles that edge a little bit. But when you give it some shifts in color and shade, it does start to kind of have that. This is the front of the body. This is the back leg sort of coming forward as they sit. And it will start to kind of take shape rather than looking a little bit amorphic while you build the shadow. Now, sometimes when you are painting a three dimensional object and you're looking at a photo, your job as an artist is not necessarily to replicate that photo, but to make a painting that has believable dimension. And so sometimes when a picture might be kind of ambiguous on where something is, you're the artist and you can make a decision about, okay, this is where I want it to look like. This leg is in the front, this leg is in the back, and this is where I'm going to make that shape, even though it's not very visible in the pictures that I'm looking at because the people that look at the painting are not the people looking at the photo. So they're not going to notice the difference in the photo versus the picture that you're painting. And so as long as you make your painting believable, then it does not have to be completely faithful to the original photograph. Adding some of the sienna here is gonna add some of the markings. Again, for tabby stripes, a little bit of redness and a little bit of softness to the side of the body. Some of those fur pieces sticking out. Little bits here and there. Then adding some into the feet as well or the legs. And I went a little muted on the bottom of the body. It's not quite as bright and vibrant at this stage as the faces. And that's just because it's not as important. So you want kind of stronger contrast up towards the face because that's where you want most of the um focus to go. And then as you see the rest of it, it's sort of something that you can investigate, adding some fun little fur details and things like that into the body. But most people say, Okay, it's a cat and seeing the face, it's this cat that I'm looking at. Um, and that's what portraits are. It's sort of a memento of the animal that, you know, you want to have for yourself or just a cute cat picture for your wall. But either way, you have that opportunity to distinguish between the focal point and what else is in the painting, sort of the secondary support. And you can see that in older master paintings of portraits and things of that nature. I'm going in and futzing in here with the toes, and it looks a little bit ridiculous. And it is because really the distinction between the toes is based on the shadow of the toes. So you're needing to create and you see ACI, like, just smudged it out because it's not working. You wanting to establish the roundness of the toes, and now this areas going to need to dry and you're going to go in after this. The shadow is still establishing where the foot is, so it's useful. Um, but it needed to be. Those lines would have stuck out too much and made it too much of a focal point if I hadn't wiped them off. So it's going to pull back again. And then when it's dry, adding these sort of wedge shapes into it to kind of create this sense of the toes being a little bit rounded as you delineate where they are. And they're adding a little more shadow to distinguish that leg from the back of the body. And still adding layers and layers of color. Now, if I had a bigger brush, it's like I keep talking to you about, I could have filled this area in a lot faster with sort of larger brush jokes because it's the fur, I wanted to give it a little more texture and use a smaller brush. But I could have largely used a number ten brush and had a similar effect to it and probably been a lot less fuzzy with it as time went on. So it's sometimes good to be mindful I get a little lazy with my brushes, and I don't always switch out when I want to, which is also another reason I tend to use the bigger brush that I can. And you can see here on the back foot is what I'm talking about where you're not drawing lines between the toes, you're creating a sort of a shadow for where each toe is kind of curving behind another toe, where the toe is curving away from the light in the darkness, the shadow is kind of hitting it there at the bottom. We're going to be adding a little more green into A leaf again. And just to create a sense of the grass having a little bit of a wedge shape in some areas. I don't know if you're used to seeing grass that way, but there's usually a lighter side and a darker side and just kind of working it up, deciding that I put the shadow on the wrong side because I wasn't thinking about where the light was. And so then going and kind of darkening it again with the full color and knowing that I'm going to back in with a darker color on the left side of the leaf so that that darkness is there on the correct side of the shadow. Um, you know, if you go fast and you're not paying attention, I can tell you my daughter was talking to me the whole time I was painting this, which was very helpful. Sometimes my brain would kind of paint put the paint somewhere, and then I would look at it and go, Okay, that's on the wrong side. The shadow is not where it needs to be, and I need to put it on a different side of that. Um piece of grass. Now on these pieces, I put it on the right side because I feel like that's a piece of the grass that's kind of on the underside as it's folded the top is in light and the bottom is in shadow. So if you're putting in grass like this, pay attention to where you want that shadow to be so that it's starting to look a little more consistent throughout the painting. That's sort of the telltale sign of a bad photoshop job is when you have your light sources are mixed up, and you're trying to put pictures from two different light sources together. The same thing can happen in your painting if you're not paying attention to where the light is coming from. So just be mindful. And with this sort of grass that I'm adding towards the bottom, it's just these quick little wisps where it's a little thicker on the bottom, and then I lift the brush up as I go brush towards the top. And I'm trying to make him a little haphazard because obviously that's kind of what uncut grass looks like. And he was always really into tall grass. So having this sort of grass that's pointing every which way is kind of fun in the front of it. And then we'll make it a little bit taller behind him so that it's not like covering him up. But it's part of the background that's sort of fun. And playful. You're not quite sure it's not quite a yard. It's not quite a meadow, somewhere in between. So it's, again, a mixture of those sort of siennas and the hooker's green or yellow ochre and the hooker's green, and mostly a mixture of all three. And I will have pictures that I'm painting where I've got paints that were mixed for a different picture, and I just sort of coop them into whatever color I'm mixing in because it just happens to work. So the colors I blend are not always very specific blends for each little piece. I kind of play with them until I get to a color that I like, and that is close enough to what I want that I will put it on my painting. People that would probably drive you crazy you want exact mixtures. But if you look at color mixing theory, and you do it yourself, you have a warm cool or warm red and a cool red. You warm blue and a cool blue. You have a warm yellow and a cool yellow, warm green and a cool green. And depending on how you mix those together, is how you make these different sort of muted shades, whether it's going to be more gray oriented or brown oriented, or you know, is it going to be more yellow? Is it going to be more brown? Is it going to be more purple? Whatever it is your color needs? Once you add it together, it it improves that experience of color mixing. I'd rather teach you how to mix your own colors than to tell you what colors to mix together. Yeah, so now he's got some grass behind him, some grass in front, some grass around the sides. And we'll go on this a little bit more as well. It's a little bit tough to see here. But I've taken a mixture of the CPA and some of the other darker colors, kind of a greenish brown mix. I'm dotting in the little lines around the snout where you will have the whiskers coming out of, and you can see little peaks under my arm there. And I'm just really taking the tip of the very, very tip of the paintbrush and very lightly tapping little rows of lines because usually you see the whiskers and kind of lines around the face. Um, depending on how much you touch the tip of your brush there, it will affect how much, how big your dots are. So it's very delicate. You know, if you want a teeny tiny brush to do that, that's completely understandable. And then you can see it a little bit closer. And I would go into the ears and add a little bit more on this side of some of that kind of fuzziness, into the ear. You could have obviously done at the same time as the other side, but this side will be a little bit lighter than the other, little bit warmer. So it's a slightly different color in there. And then just adding a little bit of that redness to the inside of the ear to create a little more dimension in there. Sometimes I look at it and I try to do something and I decide I don't like what I'm doing, so I change it. And so, instead of using this color inside the ears, I decided to change it and use it on the face to kind of create a little more drama on the side of the face in terms of the shadow and just kind of bleeding it out into a wet and to wet style paint rather than a very dark, strong lined paint and adding just a little more shadow into the body, as well. Then you can pause and take a look. What does your painting need? Obviously, I'm looking at my painting, seeing, Okay, what can I do next? Now, let's take a little red, some of the cadmium red medium cadmium red light, mix it in with some of the browns a little bit to mute it down, and then add a little bit of that red and pinkiness into the ear to give it a little color. That looks really strong there. So I'm going to go in with water and just dilute it a little bit so that it gives it a little tint without being overwhelming. Once this dries, it'll look very much sort of a muted pink color that will look nice and fit well with our color palette. And that's something to consider when you are painting is, how does the color you're mixing fit in with the rest of the painting? Is it going to stand out and be garish, or is it going to work well with the paint that you have. You see me dabbing out a little bit with a dry paper towel. And that's just sometimes something I like to do. When I feel like a too much color has gone on, I will take a dry paper towel and just dab it out. It's almost like a little mini eraser. It doesn't take quite everything out, but tones it down just a little bit. And here I'm adding a little warmth to the eyes, just that space around the eyes and giving a little more definition in terms of shadow and shape to the eyes and even the front of the mouth. Just adding a little bit of color in there will make it seem like part of the face is receding back in space, even though it doesn't make a huge change to the actual look of the face. You could make it a little darker if you wanted to, because as we're going a little further, the face is going to start darkening and the body's going to darken, and that colors gonna look a little lighter than it does here. And so once you have that in, then you'll be able to kind of build the shadows in the picture as it were. I'm adding a little bit of these little dashed lines in here, and that's just sort of mimic the direction of the fur, give the fur a little bit of feeling of sort of that fuzziness that's there. It doesn't add a huge amount of color or darkness. Face itself, but it just give you that feeling of, Okay, this is some hair here, and I get I'm still using the numbers to express. But if you felt like you wanted to go in with a slightly smaller brush here, you could, of course, do that. It's really a matter of how much control do you have pressure wise over your hand. Then changing the directions of the hair as it curves around the face and goes back in space, it changes direction slightly and looks a little bit different. As long as you're controlling the direction, you don't necessarily have to control exactly where each hair is going because the hair changes directions on a cat's face pretty frequently and their body, as well. You're adding a little more dark tone underneath the chin and just giving a little more definition between the face and the head. I'm looking at the direction of the sunlight and just kind of looking at the fact that I need a clear definition between the face and the neck and the face and the body so that I get a sense of, Okay, this is where the head is. This is where the body is. And even though it might not look that in the photo, it's very important to place in there, just to make it work for all of that. I give it more dimension. Now I'm adding a little bit more of that sort of sienna and adding that sort of stripiness and kind of hairiness to the fur, just a little bit of dashing, as well as just more reddish color in there because the body's gonna be a fair amount darker than, um the rest of it was. And even adding some cadmium red in there to give a little bit more variety of the color. So it doesn't all look like just sienna. And sometimes that's a trick that you can use. It's just switch the color up slightly, and you get slightly different tones, as long as it's still within kind of a pleasing color scheme on your painting, then it still looks kind of nice. And in the finished piece, the sort of blue areas that are in the chest, they sort of play nicely off the blue in the face and create a little bit of dimension, a look like, cast light that's coming, kind of reflected light that might be coming from the side onto the body. So it does work with your eye, your brain can make sense of it, even if sometimes it's hard for the artist to make sense of it while painting. It sort of textured, almost dry brushy mark. It's also just to give the fur a little bit more of a scruffy kind of textured look. And I'll go over the layers a few times so that it does soften up with the layers, and doesn't look quite as stark of a contrast as it does here. In terms of texture. We're going to continue adding a little more shadow into the lower body and into the legs, giving a little more definition, a little more sense of it being in shadow. Um, and that's going to give it a little more kind of unity with the face. You might even go a little bit darker, as you get towards the edge of the paper than I have, just to give it a little more consistency with the face. However, when you create contrast at the edge of a painting, it does create some um kind of a focal point where that sharp cut off with a dark tone in it can kind of trick the eye into seeing the picture as flat or flatter than it actually is, not not flatter than it is, but fatter than you're wanting it to make to be unless you're putting in a darker colored frame, in which case, that's not a big deal. But if you are putting, like, a white mat around it or something or a white frame, then that contrast can create a little bit of flatness in the picture. So adding shadow to the feet requires a little more finessing because the area is a little bit smaller. The anatomy is smaller. And being mindful of where that's going can be a little bit tricky. So I'm trying to lift some paint off of the foot here because I feel like I got a little too dark on the top where it needs to be more light. Wanted to have some of that redness and tone to it, like the Sienna is, but it's not doing it for me, so it looks a little bit fuzzier and overworked than I would like it to be. But it was just a matter of me going too fast while I was painting and not paying attention to what I was doing. So here we we add a little bit more of the umber, some of the more shadowy colors into the legs to give it a little more volume in terms of from the left to the right, how the leg is turning. And then also into the feet, adding a little bit more tone in these sort of almost, like, tear top triangular shapes that kind of help to create the illusion of these toes here. And it takes a little bit of finasing to get that right shape in depending on the picture that you're looking at. Um, just kind of practice the feat. If you feel unsure about it, make a couple on a scrap piece of paper and practice painting on them to give yourself a chance to figure it out. I sometimes will just keep going with the painting, even if I don't like something, the way it exactly turned out, and I will keep kind of working on it sometimes until it's beating a dead horse. But it does sometimes improve it, and that's how kind of my process ends up being a lot of times. So I still adding that sepia onto the toes and working on some of those sort of tabby stripes into the legs, gives it a nice continuation of the fur color, and gives them a little bit of, um, shape to the legs because you get to sense of this roundness as the fur kind of goes in a band around the foot, so you're making the stripes a little bit curved rather than straight across, just to give them a little bit of that feeling. And then we're adding a little bit of hair onto the outside of the sort of shape of the cat, just so you get to see a little bit more of that. Um kind of fuzziness on the edge so that it doesn't seem so hard. And, you know, I looked at the grass, and I decided I wasn't quite finished with it. So now I'm going back into it and adding some around the sides there, adding some down to the bottom. That kind of goes over the foot, gives it that sort of three dimensional feeling of layering things and as we go over the body, some more, it's gonna cover up some of that green, and it's okay. You know, there's some areas that will be a little more fuzzy. Some of them it'll be a little more defined. And that's all part of the process. You know, again, this is not the focal point of the painting. It's part of the supporting cast. So what you do here is less likely to make or break the painting. You know, a lot of people have the opinion of Less is Moore. And I tend to agree, but I don't usually follow that with my watercolor paintings. I do as much work on them as I do on an oil painting sometimes just because of the layers. Obviously the top of the background needs a little bit of work. You could leave it white if you really like that sort of look. If you're making an illustration for a book or something, obviously, a lavgna is fun. I'm going to add a little bit of color here. It's just a nice blue. And this is going to be a sort of mix of ceruleian and ultramarine blue, largely ultramarine blue, because of the yellow in the background, it's actually going to look quite pretty without much added to it. But the cerulean is more kind of sort of bright blue, whereas the ultramarine blue might be a little more purply, and mixing them together, in this case, creates a nice kind of color in the sky. A sort of feeling of clouds behind him in this yellow color and of the background of the paper, and then the blue adding this sort of smoky haziness that kind of gives us a feeling of being outdoors. I'm using a lot of water here to make sure that the blue is kind of bleeding into the paper and creating these sort of puffy wispy shapes of the sky in different shades. And you're getting a little bit of that sort of bleeding of the paint all around it to create the softness. No traditional landscape paintings, like, especially oil, a little bit of yellow was put either in the underpainting. It's called Hansa yellow. And it was either put in the underpainting. Oh, sorry, not Hansa Naples yellow. And it was either put underneath in an underpainting, of the painting to give that yellowness into it. Or it was mixed in with the colors that you're using to create the clouds and the blueness of the sky because painters discovered that apparently creating just blue in the sky was not the right color, that there's a little bit of yellowness to it. So it adds the color of this paper actually adds that nice little bit into it. Be careful not to put too much yellow if you're mixing it into your paints because that will create more of a green tint to the sky, and you don't really want that. The Naples yellow is a very sort of um, Creamy, almost, very pale peach kind of yellow, so you don't want to go overboard with that very much. Adding just a little bit of color into the body again, just a little bit of sienna to just kind of orange it up a little bit. Some of the umber was making it feel a little too muddy brown. And so to make it back into that ginger, adding just a straight sienna on top is helping to kind of bring that orangy light back into the coat. You can see it there kind of just brushing it, washing it on top. Very light colour, you know, light coat. You could do this with a much larger brush much faster if you wanted to. I'm going back into the grass a little bit and just adding a little more green. Sort of that hooker's green, a little bit of yellow and orange mixed in, adding a little bit of darkness, creating a little more depth in that leaf. And this bis feel a little bit like jumping around. But again, it's that sort of artist's feeling of, Okay, this is what needs work right now, and this is what's wanting to dry, so you're taking steps to kind of choose where to add things right here, adding some leaves, a little bit of grass in there making a little more full just because grass is pretty full when it gets to that. And then just connecting some of those points in the grass. And I get to a point here where I start to feel like we need a little bit more of these strong heavy blades of grass, and I kind of go in and add those as well after I add some of these light kind of wispy grasses. So you're going to see some of these heavy blades of grass just pop in. That part did not get recorded, but really it's just a couple of little bits. Ignore what's going on with the body of the cat right now. I'll get to that in a second, but I wanted to include this grass section kind of together with the other part of the grass and just show you where those kind of heavier blades are added in. And, you know, you can kind of work on it yourself, figure out where you would like those to go, whether you want them to be a little thicker or thinner, heavier or lighter, where they're coming from is they're tough kind of closer or further away from where the other ones are. Um and then adding kind of the directional lighting into those blades of grass to create a little bit more of that dimension in them. And I'll go over them a couple of times just to kind of get them to blend in a little more with what's going on around them and even add some to the bottom of the grass to kind of integrate all of that together. I'm using some yellow ochre to add some of that color in, even though it's so bright already, it does help to tone down some of the greenness of that. One of the sort of blueness of the color, actually. 8. 08 Pet Portrait Ginger Stripes: So looking at this tabby right now, I feel like, Okay, we need a little more of the Sienna. We need a little more orange, gingery tabbiness to us. So that's what I'm doing is washing in some of the sienna, darkening this area under the head because this is clearly part of the shadow, and it should be much darker, even though in the photo, it does not look that way. To make this make visual sense for someone looking at this who is not seeing the photo, it's something that I need to put in because it's going to confuse people otherwise. So there was a kind of light area there behind the head or next to the head, and it wasn't making sense. So now it's going to be part of the shadow. And I'm adding here some more tabby stripes, some more ginger kind of orange sienna to give it more of that color, and you're seeing me take it straight off the palette. Which is not something I do with a lot of paintings, but in this case, it's just very appropriate for those tabby stripes. And with everything else mixed in, it just kind of pops that color in the right place. You see this kind of washes out some of that texturines of those earlier darker layers and gives them a little bit more softness. And here we're getting a little more of that kind of thick tabby stripe onto the back to match the ones on the other side of the body. And yes, even the fit needs to be a little more orange. It helps to unify this space because with some of that texture, it was starting to break apart a little bit visually, and adding just a little bit of that helps to kind of visually bring it back together. I added some onto the right side, as well, and then adding to the mouth and face, like I said, to make it a little darker. And you know, on the right side of the body, the orange helps to unify some of those stripes so they don't stick out quite as garishly, while still maintaining the kind of light side of the body. It's a sort of play between what's called local color versus kind of the dark and light of the piece. You can look at a white ball, and you can look at the shades and lights very easily there. When you have a local color like orange, then you need to pay attention to what is the intensity or the dullness of the color that's on the animal as well as the darkness or lightness of that color. So something can be intense but not necessarily light or bright. And something can be bright but not necessarily light or dark. So there's a lot of kind of variance that goes into that. So just adding a little more orange everywhere in this body, the legs and the side, really, especially working on that shadow area to give it a little more color, adding a little bit of fur texture out to the side so that there's no it's not a super smooth edge because cats, especially outdoor cats can, you know, have a little bit of texture to their fur when they roll around in different places. 9. 09 Pet Portrait Ginger Ears and texture: Work on adding some detail to the face. We're gonna be doing whiskers from the eyes, the nose, and some of the fuzziness in the ears. And to do this, we're going to be using a more opaque white, something like a titanium white. This is a guash from Acryla. Windsor Newton has a nice, which is a little bit more water based. This is plastic based, but it is opaque. It is not translucent. So being mindful of how much water you mix with it will kind of affect the translucency a little bit, but it will stand on top of the other paints. And if you put it in just one area of the painting, it will kind of um, stand out and look a little bit weird. And so having it in a couple little areas like the eyes, the ears, and the snout for the whiskers will add a little bit of kind of uniformity to the pining where it's not going to stand out as much and look a little strange being on top of the other paint. So now looking at the pure white of this tube, when you put a color onto the painting, especially when we're using a warm white paper, you're not going to want to use pure white on your painting. Nothing in nature is pure white or very little, if that, usually, it has a little bit of a tint to it. And so we're going to mix this a little bit with kind of, like, a yellowy CNI, just a tiny bit so that it's not a pure white, but it has a little bit of warmth to it. And we add these little tiny things to the eyes, it's got these little whisker eyebrows. Um, I still using the size six brush, and now moving into the face and adding some of them short ones and some long ones and just kind of giving them a little bit of a curve as they go on the body just as they go. Sometimes cats have very strange whiskers. They go in every different direction. And we want to honor that. And if you've ever noticed, sometimes, cats will not just have white, but they'll also have some black whiskers mixed in. So we're going to do a little bit of both. And if you notice some of these are not going perfect, there's a little bit of, like, thickness to some of them, but the paint is diluted enough that it's slightly translucent. And once it dries, it's not really the most noticeable thing. People are not going to be looking at that as an issue, and we'll be taking off some of that a little bit of smudging it out just because it's a little bit too long anyway. So a little bit of water will wash it a little bit out, and adding some color in afterwards we'll kind of hide that and give a little bit of a spotch. Now, it does exist in the final painting, this little area, where I washed that out because it washed out some of the other layers as well. But it's not something that most people will really notice and go, Oh, that was a mistake. They just kind of see it and wonder what it is, maybe if they notice it. And now using sort of an umber, that's been diluted, adding some of these kind of darker hairs into the whisker mix, just to get a little feel for it and give a little variety, makes it a little more believable. Nothing is quite perfect or simple the way things we want it to be. No, it's add a little bit of color, a little bit of this white into the ears, 'cause these fine little white hairs that are sticking out. So we're gonna use that same color from the whiskers and just add a little tiny bit in here, to give it a little sense of, like, little hairs coming out. And then you can make this a little bit lighter if you want to um, maybe a little thicker so that the lightness stands up against the lightness that's there in the ears because the body's obviously darker, so that light colors gonna stand out against it a little bit easier than it will be in these ears. But just adding a little bit of hair, and there will give it a little kind of integration of that white into the body of the cat and other parts of the painting. You know, adding more sienna into the body, mixing it with a little umber and starting to add a little bit more of this texture of these little hairs into the body. They're a little bit larger than what you see in the face just because of a little bit more pressure. But adding some of this to the body just gives a little bit of feeling of some of these hairs on the chest might be a little bit ruffled. They might point up and down a little bit sideways, gives a little bit of whimsy and later on in the body because the body hairs are a little bit thicker, the body's a little bit thicker and bigger than the face. Um the hair is a little bit longer. I get a little bit more variety in that. Some of this color has a little bit of umber in it, it's just a little darker sienna and just different layers depending on whether it's in a shadow spot or depending on if it's in a sunny spot, making it a little bit lighter. And this is kind of going to add dimension to some of these shadier spots where you have a little bit more color, a little bit more texture going in, a little bit darker kind of lines to mimic the hair that's there. And it gives it a little bit more layer, more of a layered effect makes a little more intriguing as far as the surface goes. Obviously, you're not going to dry a little hair. But for this particular instance with the texture of the fur, I felt like it was very useful. For an animal, if you're drawing from far away, it's maybe a little bit less, you know, individual hairs. But this one because of the portrait nature of it and sort of the texture nature of it. This adds a little bit more a description of what the cat looks like as you're looking at it. Gives you a more tactile sensation, I feel like, of the fur of the cat. I'm pulling out this to take a look at the feet again just to get a better sense of the shade and the shadow around there and how much of the fur you can see. And you can kind of play around with that what feels natural to you and what doesn't. You know, some pictures, especially on a white cat, it can be kind of difficult to see how much hair you can actually notice in that. And that particular cat has very fine fur, at a younger age. So the fur was a little bit softer and smoother, whereas here the cat was older and his fur was a little bit rougher. I just adding that kind of into the feet to take a look from the picture. You're adding a little bit more to the shape of the feet, kind of giving a sense of which way they're pointing a little bit more of those tabby stripes, a little more definition into the legs. So we know which way they're turning where that body is going. He might be a little bit of a chubby cat, but that's okay. We don't judge, right? These hairs around the edge. Like I said before, add a little bit more of just break up the outline a little bit and give it a sense of, like, a little bit more reality of especially animal for not being precise. If you ever tried to photoshop a person's hair or an animal's fur, it's almost impossible because of the way they capture it's captured on a camera. And so this kind of mimics the idea that, you know, it's not something you can really make up. It's just there. You can't cut it around it, you know, sort of easy convenient cookie cutter kind of way. It's a multi dimensional animal, and that's just part of what we do. And, you know, once you know just adding a few pieces of grass down there at the bottom, because why not? Let's integrate it completely into the painting because that's what it feels like it needs. And maybe adding even a few thicker blights of grass to the front would help that integrate a little bit more to the right side. I didn't do it here, but looking at it now is sort of after the fact, that might have been a good choice. Sometimes it's hard if you don't step back and look at it from, uh, you know, leave it for a few days and then go back to it kind of thing. Adding this darker grass helps to create a sense of shade and light. 10. 10 Pet Portrait Ginger Shadow texture: So adding a little bit more, um, well, one more little whisker in there, but also just adding, um, little bit more texture into this fur. We go to kind of continue on that note. And, you know, sometimes when you see what you did with the whiskers, you want to add one or two more. But here, the body still needs a little bit more darkness in there. You see how the actual shadow area is lighter than the shadow areas in the front, so there's a little bit of a kind of issue with the contrast there. So we're going to go in and add a little bit more of these darker textured hairs, and that will help to improve some of the darkness of that side of the body. We'll add fairly dark stripes in there. A little more to the outside of the body to kind of fuzz up that outline. And again, using the umber and Sena mixture. You know, of course, if you feel like adding something else, 'cause your eye looks at it and says it needs something else, then, you know, go ahead. There's nothing wrong with that. And these lines are just pretty self explanatory short little dashes to kind of give that illusion of the fur. Maybe some are a little darker because they're in the shade. So are a little bit lighter. Some are helping to create that illusion of the tabby stripes. And it has this sort of you know, I don't want to say painterly quality to it, but it almost reminds me of writing a little bit, you know, sort of handwriting quality of these little marks. They're dancing around on the fur. Makes me think of calligraphy practice where you practice directional lines over and over again. So if you ever want to gain more control over your brushing skills, um, calligraphy practice, oddly enough, can improve that a little bit. Um, I didn't realize how much. And yoga, also, because you're using um you're holding postures and help working on your nervous system, which helps, which helps with that control over your muscular movements. The kind of fine motor skills. And here adding a little bit of hair into the toes and a little bit of darkness in there just to give it a little more dimension. Now, making sure that there's a little bit of shadow on the bottom of the feet, as you see on the one on the left, kind of that sideways backfoot, that helps to kind of anchor down to the ground. Having a little shadow underneath it, as well on the ground will help that, as well. You know, see in this one, there's almost like a halo around that back foot. And that can cause the um cat to seem like it's levitating rather than sitting on the ground. So just something to keep in mind as you're painting. You know, they say practice makes better. And when you chase perfection, you'll probably reach excellence. Motivational quotes. A little bit of just sort of straight sienna adding in there to add a little bit more of that ginger cat quality. And it dries much browner than it looks when you first put it on and it looks sort of garishly orange. But it looks much nicer once it dries and has that sort of browny gingery quality to. Also going into this little shadow to the left side of the leg here because there needs to be a very clear delineation where that part of the body is and how it sort of separates. And so I worked fairly consciously on that, um, kind of anchoring that plane shift into the painting. And wouldn't you know it, I just felt like the grass was still looking too flat and wanted to add a little more to the tips, sort of shift from light to dark across the length of the leaf, as opposed to just left, you know, from the width of the leaf. I felt like it just needed a little bit more of that. Now, I should have probably been looking at actual grass as I was painting this to make it a little more convincing. Um, but it is where it is right now, and sometimes when that happens and I don't do all my research, then I will, you know, futz around with it until I feel like it's getting better. And then, but if you want to avoid that, you know, looking at grass outside and doing a small study of it with your watercolors can really save you from doing this sort of futzing around that I do sometimes. 11. 11 Pet Portrait Ginger Remove tape: So now that we're finished with the painting, Whoo. Yay, happy dance. We're going to look at how to remove the tape off the edges here. And when you pull, you don't want to pull it straight on. You want to kind of peel up the corner and then pull so that your tape is at an angle rather than straight on, because that will keep it from kind of tearing the paper as you pull. And you'll see right here, if you look closely, some of that paper is pulling up and it is tearing a little bit. You want to make sure that your paper is completely dry, your paints completely dry before you do this, or it will peel more and break things. So and your paper will warp as it dries if you don't leave it taped up. I'll work on fixing that a little bit. And show you hopefully you can see the texture of where it came up. So the hair is kind of fuzz up and look a little bit uneven and ragged. So what you can do is take a piece of paper and either a bone folder or the back of your nail or something else that's kind of smooth and slides easily. Place it above that paper and then rub into it because that will make it kind of push down the fibers. You can use kind of a side of a pen or something. And now the fibers are smooth down, and sometimes you can even use back of your finger. Because it's clean otherwise, your paper will get dirty. The kind of the back of the nail will fold the fibers down and will kind of give you a sense of flatness to the paper, even if it wasn't. So this is a bone folder. This is what a lot of artists will use, especially people that work with paper, you'll see these bookmakers. It just works well with folding paper down. It is made from actual bones. So if you're vegan, you know, maybe find an alternative. But that is something you can do. Animal bone, not human bone. And here, again, trying to go slowly, but sometimes it pulls up faster, and it kind of fuzzes up the paper, and it will get fixed just using that same method. And again, just turning it around from one side to the other. That's why I like this, pre gesso kind of artboard it peels off pretty easily off of that. So again, making sure you don't pull straight, but you're pulling at an angle so that you don't tear the paper as easily. And go slowly. Move your fan closer to the tape so you have more control over it as you pull. And it's coming loose, and you get this nice crisp edge to where the paint ends, so that when you frame it, it looks very nice. And the bone folder again, you're just pressing down gently with the side of it, not the edge of it, but the kind of flat rounded side of it to keep those fibers down as you're going. And I'm pressing on the white part of the paper, not the painted part of the paper. And I'm just peeling off the corner of the paper, but it doesn't fit on the screen. And there you go again, just pulling up at an angle, pulling the tape. And once you're done with that, you can kind of use that bone folder to clean up the edge. Back and forth, just pressing down the fibers of the paper. You can use kind of sort of the paper that they use in the post offices, might have a little bit of wax on it to help press dose down. But sometimes that creates a sheen on the paper. So I'm not a huge fan of that, but I've seen other artists use that, too. Glassine paper. So there it is. 12. 12 Pet Portrait Ginger Closing: Thank you so much for joining me painting this sort of ginger cat, Tomcat picture. So grateful that you've joined me, and it's a pleasure to teach, and I hope you've learned something valuable from this lesson. And please do leave a picture of your painting that you've created. You know, you might think, Oh, everybody's made their own painting, it looks better than mine, but really, you know, I'm happy to leave feedback and encourage you because I love seeing the different interpretations that everyone has of these pictures and these animals. It's a really rewarding experience to teach and a really rewarding experience to get feedback from all of you about the course, you know, that helps me improve what I'm doing and helps me to create better courses for you in the future. So thank you so much and love to see your work, and I wish you the best of luck in your painting journey so that you can get as much reward out of it as you possibly can.