Watercolor Pet Portraits: Short-Haired Cat (Bi-Colored Tabby)

1. Intro to Painting a Short-Haired Cat (Bi-Colored Tabby): In this Skillshare class, you'll learn how to paint pokey, a short haired mixed breed cat. This tutorial is a great beginning point for those who are looking to paint cat portraits. I've been painting watercolor cat portraits professionally for the last three years, and I'm excited to share some of the techniques that I use to create my portraits. In this step by step tutorial, I'll guide you through all of the layers that I paint, as well as the different brushstrokes that I use to make my cat portraits come to life. Use the template included in this tutorial to paint the exact same cat, or use the tips and techniques that I teach in this tutorial to paint your own tan and white cat. Although black cats, tortoise shells, and tabbies are beautiful, they are more challenging to paint with watercolors. This tutorial, highlighting a light colored cat, is the perfect stepping stone to gain confidence in painting before you tackle the challenge of a dark cat with lots of markings. So grab your watercolor paints and paper, and let's get started. 2. Supplies Needed: Alright, so before we begin, let's talk briefly about the supplies that you'll need for this tutorial. The first thing that we'll talk about is your paper choice. So I will be painting on an eight by ten inch sheet of paper. I am painting on a hot pressed sheet of arches. It's hot pressed 300 gram, which is 140 pounds. The brand name is called arches. Hot pressed paper, unlike cold pressed paper, has a soft texture. There really is no grain or texture versus a cold pressed paper that does have a little bit of texture and roughness. Now, if you have used Arches paper before or you prefer cold pressed paper, you're more than welcome to use cold press paper. The only difference that you'll have to keep in mind during the tutorial is that your paper might take just a little bit longer to dry. Hot pressed paper Although it's something it's kind of a divided topic. Some artists love using hot press, others hate it. It does take less time to dry, so you might find that your paper is drying a little bit too quickly, or maybe it's a little bit too glossy as you're painting. Your colors might flow a little bit too quickly on your paper. And so if you try hot press paper, you don't like it, feel free to use cold pressed. I choose hot press paper simply because if I'm using a calligraphy pen for my masking fluid, or if I'm using a micron pen for any sort of little details at the end of my portraits, I find that it's a lot easier to draw on a hot press paper that's nice and smooth versus a cold press paper that has some texture. Then let's talk about our paint brushes. So during this entire tutorial, I'll be using a round size six silver limited black velvet brush. Sometimes I also will use a round size four brush, but I don't usually use a smaller size brush for details. You're more than welcome to use a smaller size brush. I do find that I prefer to simply touch my paper towel, release some of the liquid to get a finer point so that I don't have to be switching back and forth between detail brushes and my main brush. O you'll also need a pencil for when you're sketching out your template. I will be teaching how to mask the highlights of the eyes as well as the whiskers. I use Windsor and Newton masking fluid, and I use a calligraphy pen. This calligraphy pen I originally bought in Mexico while I was living there, and I did add a link to a similar calligraphy pen, but you'll notice it's just a very simple calligraphy pen that opens at the end. I use this for applying my masking fluid. I know some artists who will use a glass pen. However, I keep coming back to the calligraphy pen. For me, it just is a little easier for me to use. The other option if you don't want to use a calligraphy pen or if that's not working for you, you can also find masking fluid that has a fine tip applicator. This would be also a little bit easier to apply thin lines of masking fluid. However, it can bubble up and you still might not be able to get quite as fine of a line as you can with your calligraphy pen. The brand of this particular masking fluid with a fine applicator tip is Sineie. If you choose not to use the masking fluid for your whiskers are your highlights. You also have the option of using a NOBL signo pen at the end and to draw this on top of your painting. I like using this UNABL Signo. There are some people who like Posca pens. I'm not a huge fan of them. I do think the UNABL can get a really nice, fine point as well. The other option, in case you don't like Jo pens, you can also use doctor PH Martin's bleedproof white for those white whiskers at the very end with a very, very fine fine zero or four times zero brush. The only challenge with using a brush is that you do need to have a really smooth brush stroke. I find it's almost easier to have a smooth brush stroke with the calligraphy pen than it is to paint with bleed proof white at the very end. But here, these are just some other options for you. You will, of course, need a cup of water and a paper towel or a cloth. Alright, so let's talk watercolor paints. In this tutorial, I will be sharing how to paint pokey using mostly Daniel Smith colors. This is my palette that I use in my home studio. You can find a PDF of the color palette that I'm using in the video in the resources tableau. And you'll find the names of the colors, a swatch and where it's used in the video. So I'll be using a raw sienna light for the majority of the fur that in combination with raw sienna to just get the right shade of color. And then I'll use a quinocrdon magenta. That will be for the pink of the nose, the pink of the ear, quinocredn burnt orange. That's going to be used for the markings of our orange tabby. You might need to mix that with piamintteGenuine or another brown in case your cat has more of a darker orange or a muted orange. And then shadow violet is the granulating color that I'll use for the shadows of the white fur, as well as for some of the darker shadows as well. Lunar black for my black details, and then ahaloblue for the colorful splash behind. You'll notice that there are substitutions for all of these colors listed along with the color that I'm using. Lastly, at the end of the tutorial, there is an option to use a black micron pen for some details or to fix up some of the highlights or the blacks of the eyes. The micron pen that I'm using is black. It is a size 03. However, you can use size 02, size 01. But the nice thing about these micron pens is they are waterproof and they're felt tip, so they're really easy to apply. The last thing I want to make mention, too, that you'll notice in the video is that my eight by ten sheet of paper is taped down onto a painting surface. The surface that I have for my students, and then I'll also use at home for smaller sheets of paper is just a piece of corrugated plastic. This corrugated plastic you can find at most art and craft stores. It comes in a poster size, and I cut it down to use for either eight by tens or five by sevens. I will use either a frog tape or I just recently found a different watercolor tape called Kiwi Hub is the brand, and this is also a really great tape for taping around on all four edges of my paper. This will just keep my paper from buckling as my paper is wet and as it's drying. Alright, so the first step for our painting is to transfer the image onto your watercolor paper. There is a template of Pokey included below in the resources section of this tutorial. You can either place it behind your eight by ten watercolor paper and use a light box or a window to trace, or you can use a tracing app on your phone. I personally use the app called DaVinci I. This app will allow you to save this template on your phone. Then pull it up in the app, and using a phone clip, you'll be able to trace the outline of pokey onto your watercolor paper without having to print off the template onto a piece of printer paper. If you'd like a link to where to find this or if you'd like a discount link, you can check out my website. I definitely do suggest that you trace this image onto your watercolor paper instead of printing it directly onto your watercolor paper because the whiskers that are drawn on this template, you'll need to erase after you take the masking fluid off. So for that reason, I wouldn't print this directly onto your watercolor paper. 3. The Iris and Pink Nose/Ears: Alright, so after I taped my painting onto a corrugated plastic board, I'm ready to start painting with my lightest colors first. I like to start with the irises of the eyes. And so, right now, I'm mixing water down. It's similar to a rossi on a light color. So it's like a gamboge, but slightly more on the tan side. So it's a very warm yellow that's kind of bordering on brown. That's going to be my base layer for this cat portrait. So I'm going to paint wet on dry. This is on dry paper. I am going to paint over where the black of the pupil is because I can always paint the black on top, and I don't want to have to worry about painting around the pupil. So I'll have this first layer of raw Siana light, and then I'm going to go in and I'll drop in some more intense opaque colors directly from my palette. If you don't have a Siena light, you might be able to use a gamboge or an ochre color, a yellow ochre, make sure that it's on the warmer side of yellow, not we don't want to cool yellow for the eyes here. So something that's leaning more brown. And then make sure it's watered down enough. This first layer, we want to keep these eyes fairly nice and transparent, especially with yellow. If you go too opaque at first, the eyes are going to look almost fake because they're gonna look way too dark. So now that I have that transparent layer, I might go and drop in some more concentrated color around the eye itself. I'm doing this while that first layer of color is wet. I should also note here that just because this left eye is a little bit darker in my reference photo, I'm actually not going to add any of the shadows at this point. So I'm trying to keep the two eyes the same color. From there, I'll grab a little bit of either raw sienna or some other tan that's slightly less yellow and a little bit more brown. And I'm not adding that much water to this color. I'm taking it directly from my palette using whatever water is left on my brush. And I'm outlining the eye, the iris of the eye. I'm also adding some of that tan color closest to the pupil. So with this particular cat, it's kind of a two tone color in the eye with this yellow and brown. However, you might notice that your cat has a little bit of yellow and green. And if there's a little bit of green in the eyes, you would do the same thing. Drop that yellow first, and then using a concentrated green directly from your palate. Without a lot of water, you would add that green then to your yellow. Alright, so we'll move on to another light color in our cat face, and that's going to be the nose and any pinks of the ears. So right now, I'm mixing an opera pink. That's a Daniel Smith color. It is a fugitive color, meaning that it can fade with time. So if you're not wanting a fugitive color, you might think about using a wateterdwn magenta or mixing your own pink that isn't quite as fugitive. So here, I've got this opera pink watered down, and I'm going to do my first layer of color on the nose. You'll notice at this step that I'm going to dry off my brush, and I'll lift any excess color or wherever that color has gotten too dark, I'll lift using a dry brush. Alright, so we're going to move on to the pinks of the ears. So you might notice that this particular cat has some pinks on the inside of the ear, but also there's some white hairs that are kind of coming out of the ears. In order to paint those white hairs, we're going to be first painting a strip of pink along the outer edge of the ear. I am careful to leave a little bit of that white paper at the very edge because there is a little section of white fur at the very edge of the ear there. I'm going in and I'm making sure that this strip of pink is nice and saturated with pigment. And now I'm gonna pull some of that liquid. Using my brush inward. And as I pull some sections of this pink inward, you'll notice that it's creating some white hairs that you can then see coming out of the ear. So this technique is called negative painting, where we're painting the space behind an object. In this case, we're painting the pink behind those white ears. Now, before it dries, I'm going to clean my brush, and I'll take a dry brush, and I'll lift up any of that section that got a little bit too dark. So I'm going to keep the darker pinks towards the center of the ear, but towards the edge of the ear, I might want to lighten up that pink just a little bit, remembering that I have to lift that pink up before it dries. Alright, so I'm going to do this exact same process where I add the little strip of pink color on the outside of the ear, and then I pull my strands of pink inward to create those negative white hairs. It's the same technique. I'm just doing it opposite in the opposite ear. 4. The First Layer of Fur: So now that I'm done with the iris color, as well as any of the pinks in the nose and ears, I'm going to start on the first layer of color in the fur. So this is going to exclude any of the white fur. I'm going to wait to do the white fur until I have one or two layers done of any of the colored sections. And I'm going to start with the lightest color that's behind any of the markings of the cat. So this yellow tan color that you notice behind the markings of the cat, that is going to be my first color, my first layer, and I'm mixing it with quite a lot of water. I want this first layer to be really nice and transparent. That way, if I make a mistake, it's going to be a lot easier to lift that color off my paper with a paper towel. It's also going to help to give the other layers of color that I add on top. It's going to Make sure that those layers of color are also seen. So the color that I'm using is a raw sienna light, and it is a Daniel Smith color. If you're using Windsor Newton, some other color, I would use some sort of brown yellow or a yellow that's more leaning towards warm colors, like more of an orange yellow or a tan yellow, something like a raw sienna or a cadmium deep yellow, something of that sort. You'll notice as I'm starting to paint, I am going to keep any of those sections of white clean from the color. You also notice that I did start to drop in a little bit of brown in that one section on the cheek, while it was still wet. I quickly decided that, you know what I don't think I can continue to do that, where I wet my section, and then I drop in darker colors. With hot press paper, you run the risk of that paper drying too fast. And so instead of being able to drop in color while it's wet, sometimes it's preferable to do two different layers of color. So that's what I'm deciding to do instead. I'm going to do the first layer of this light yellow. I'll let it dry, and then I'll come back and I'll do a second layer on top. As I'm painting here, I'm taking a peek at where the whites of the face are, and I'm trying to use my brush to negatively paint into those sections. So if you noticed above the eye, you do have some white areas of fur that are arcing over the eye, and it's following the same shape of that eye there. So I'm going to try to paint negatively to pull some of that yellow up over and around the eye, to try to leave some of those white hairs open to the white paper. As I come through to the forehead, I'm going to use my brush to pull some negative white hairs along that forehead area. You'll notice I'm also adding right away a section of yellow around the ears. And every so often, I might go back and re wet some areas there to try to keep that section wet. When you're working from reference photos, you're constantly moving your eyes back and forth. And so anything you can do to keep that paper wet enough so that you can really take a time and not have to rush through this first step, it's beneficial. I noticed a little patch of white on the forehead that I'm going to try to keep open or the white of the paper. And now I'm coming around to this right eye. You'll notice I have big, large strokes. I'm negatively painting the white hair that's coming up and around the eye. Alright, when we come around to the lower section of the eye, we can notice that there's a little bit almost of this tan eyelid immediately under the eye. And then there's a little section of white fur. So I'm going to try to keep a small line of white fur under that eye. I'm using brush strokes that are mimicking the shape of the eye as they're going underneath there to kind of negatively paint some of those white hairs that are coming out of the cheek area. And now I'm going to do the same to this left eye. I noticed that as I was painting on this left section, I forgot to do the section of brown that's just immediately under the eye, so I'm going to add a little shadow there wherever I see that tan. Alright. And lastly, I'll take some of this light tan color, and I'm going to paint just a little bit of the white hairs coming out of the ear. I'm going to leave the very tips of those white hairs free from color, but the section of the hairs that are inward mostly in the ear there, I'm gonna paint a little bit of brown, and then I'll pull that brown outward, making sure that I don't cover up all of the white. 5. Pause and Practice: 3 Brushstrokes to Mimic Cat Fur: So before we go into the second layer of fur, I do want to talk briefly about three different brush strokes that you might want to practice before moving along. The first brush stroke is, and I have my pencil out just to kind of help to show you this. The first brushstroke that I will be showing is going to be more of like a hash mark. So it'll be kind of a straight up and down. So you can imagine I'm using my pencil here, but you can imagine what it would be like with my paint brush. And so our hash is going to be just simple straight up and down line. So I'm dragging my brush down. This would be the same. I'm starting with a pencil because it really is. Like, if you were to be making tally marks with a pencil, I'm gonna be doing that same brush stroke, and I'll practice it below here. So that'll be kind of my hashmark tally marks. My second brush stroke is going to be more of a curve, and it'll be stroking down and up. So I'm gonna be making kind of this mark with my brush. So I'm coming down and up instead of just pulling my brush down. Now, you'll notice that it'll have a slight curve here, a curve to the curve like a backward seat. And then the last brush stroke that you'll maybe want to practice is then the opposite direction. And so, same thing, we are pushing down and up with our brush strokes instead of with our tailing where it's just a down stroke. So when we add our brush, I'm going to be using around size four. You can use your round size six that you've been using or you can use a smaller brush for this, too. That's okay. So I will grab some of this quinocradone burnt orange or something similar. I'm still watering it down because for our second layer of fur, we still want it quite watered down. And now, if I'm starting with my talis just like I had practiced with my pencil, it's just a single stroke down. Now, when I'm painting my talis with my brush, you might notice that my talis are quite close. I might have some talies where there's a little bit of a paper mark shining through or paper shining through, but most of my tally marks are going to be connected. And so the only place that you're gonna see the actual fur or what would look like the fur is on the base and at the top of these tally marks. This tally mark or hashing technique I use for basically any of the markings of a tabby cat. So you can imagine that there's a different layer and I can curve these talies. So it's just the same motion down down down down down. I can curve them the opposite way, or I can use this kind of same tally stroke if I've got a whole blob, and then I'll pull some of these talies from my blob. Now, my tali my tales are going to be straight. They're not curved, and you're going to see points at the top and at the bottom. Moving on to the second brush stroke that you might notice me painting. This is going to be both the down stroke and the upstroke. So it'll be both. And I do it pretty quickly. So it's sometimes I'll do it left left to right. Sometimes I'll do it. Where I'm pulling it down, that's almost easier. So you can practice both ways. So like I said, it goes pretty quickly where I'm downstroke and upstroke, down and up. There might be a little bit of space in between. Now, you can rest your wrist and then keep your hand from resting, or you can try hovering your whole hand here and having more of the full movement of your hand. Grab a little bit more color. Like I said, you can try what it would be like, left to right, or you can turn your paper, and it might be a little bit easier to pull left and right and come down. I actually find it's a lot easier to do this stroke where I'm pulling my brush downward. Now, this stroke, you can see it does have a shape to it. So this stroke is going to be used a lot around the eyes where you have curves. It's going to be used a lot around the neck and the chest because that area of the body is also curved. And I do use this stroke a lot more often in larger surfaces. These little hash marks are going to be for the tiny details of the markings of the face. Around, you know, on those little triangles and on the markings on the face or along the markings on the legs, any of the tabby like markings. But these larger back and forth strokes might be used more for the shadows on the neck or for larger shadows on the cheek. And then of course, we have the opposite. So I'll grab a little bit more water. We can practice that one. So we've got this up and down stroke that it's this curved s, but just the on the opposite direction. Now, I find that this opposite direction is a little bit more challenging for me. Still down and upstroke. Sometimes if you're practicing this at home, it helps to have a really nice loaded brush full of liquid. And sometimes it helps to just go as fast as you can. Well, maybe not as fast as you can, but go a little bit quicker and see what it looks like when you go a little bit quicker. Now, if going in this C shape left to right is challenging for you, remember, same thing. You can twist your paper. I'm kind of running out of room here, and then do the same moon kind of arch shape, left to right, going up and down. If this is hard for you, remember you can flip your paper upside down and then do the upper see where you've got kind of the smile instead of the frown. And then just turn it around. I tend to do this smiley face. So I tend to do this smiley face brushstroke more often, and I will turn my paper upside down and do an upside down, smiley face instead of having to paint the frown. So once again, you'll notice these tally marks I'll use in this next video for the second layer of fur. These comas and smilees I'll use on the cheek area and around the eyes. And then you'll also notice these same strokes in the neck area. So once you feel like you've taken a little bit of time to practice on a practice sheet, then you're ready to move on. 6. Second Layer of Fur with Markings: Now we're ready for our second layer of color. This is where we're going to start to paint some of the markings that we see on our cat's face. Now, I'm mixing right now a little bit of burnt sienna, or specifically, you could use quinacrodon burn orange, burnt sienna, anything that has a burnt brown, orangy color. I'm adding it to that first layer of yellow, and yellow tan, and I'm still mixing it with quite a bit of water. This is really important that you still have a transparent second layer. If you get too dark and opaque for these markings, two things will happen. One, it'll be hard to lift up using a paper towel if you make a mistake. And number two, our layers are going to look way too different. So we want to be able to have these layers blend seamlessly together, and we can't do that if the second layer is too opaque. So I'm going to start on this left side of the face, mainly because I'm right handed. I don't want to drag any color across my painting. So as I'm painting these markings, I'm going to use some hashing. So you'll notice that I'm moving my paintbrush pretty quickly. These hash marks, I'm going to follow the way that the fur is flowing around the eyes and flowing around the ears. And I'm using these little hash marks. Now, you can't see it on the video, but I am tapping my paper towel. I have my paper towel in my left hand, and I'm tapping it if I'm noticing that there's just too much liquid in these hash marks, and that's going to help me to lighten them up just a little bit. So wherever I see a pretty dark hash mark, I might leave a little bit more liquid, and then I'll tap my paper towel and release some of that liquid if I want some lighter lines. At this stage, it's still really important to not blend. So you can see the two distinct layers. This second layer is sitting on top of the first layer. I'm not using water to blend my hard edges. That's important because if you overblend with the second layer, you're going to have to create many, many more layers because you just won't be able to see any of those markings. The other thing that you'll end up doing is you'll end up darkening the overall color of your cat because instead of seeing those individual hairs, you're going to just see one solid color. Alright, so I've been working on this one little section upper left. Now, I am going to take some darker of that burnt sienna color, and I'll just drop it into some of the sections that I notice are a little bit darker. I'm being very careful with this, and I'm only dropping into sections that are already wet. So this is why I need to work section by section here. Alright, so I'm gonna continue to show this section of painting. I'm not going to speed it up because I do think it's important to see these individual strokes. 7. White Fur on the Face: Alright, so I'm finished with the first two layers of the brown. And so before I get into my darkest browns and my blacks, I do want to start on the white fur. And so I'm going to start by adding some gray shadows to my white fur. I'm using quite a lot of water, and the color I'm using is a Daniel Smith color called shadow violet. It's a gray that has it's a warmer gray that has some violets added to the gray, and it is a granulating color. So if you're not a fan of the pigments separating and being able to see some of those purples and blues in your grays, you might want to stick to something more like a Paine's gray or you can use whatever primary colors you have to mix your own gray. Alright, so I'm going to start by painting some of the shadows that I notice along the eyes and along the nose. Now, remember that this shadow violet is watered down enough where it's just staining the paper. I can always add more of that shadow violet and drop it in while the paper is wet. But it's going to be more challenging to lift up the color once I've stained the paper. So I'll be doing a variety of using this medium tone. And then, now, as you can see, I'm going to drop in some darker shadow violet, where I do see some darker tones there. I'll also use my paper towel to lift up wherever I see, it's gotten a little bit too dark. Alright, so along the whiskers, where you notice on the cheeks, you might notice these little dots that are running along the length of the cheek. Those little dots are where the hair follicles of the whiskers are attaching to the cheek. And so I tend to paint around one to three of these horizontal lines that are running from the edge of the cheek into the nose. It's always going to be darker on the outside of the cheek. And as you come in towards the nose, those dots are going to become a little bit more transparent. You might see that I'm not doing individual dots at this point. I'm just painting the shadow of those lines that you see. And then the second layer, I might add a few more individual dots. Alright, we'll start on the mouth. So there is a vertical line connecting the nose to this little triangular piece of the mouth. So I'm still using my paints gray here. I'm not going to be making it quite as dark as it needs to be just yet. I do want to make sure that it's in the right place first. So start with this triangle, and then I'm going to pull some little hairs down and out, and then that's going to create a little bit more of that mouth like texture. M For the right side of the smile line, instead of pulling a single line, I'm going to create these little hash marks, and that's going to show the texture of that fur right by the smile line without having it be a single dark line. If you add a single dark line to your cat portraits, that's when you kind of run the risk of having more of this joker like smile. So I'm using these little diagonal hash marks to create that texture. We'll come back to the nose and we'll add a little bit of shadows to where the nose is. So right now, I'm just worried about placing the shadows. So the shadows are gonna run along the bottom V of the nose. Most of the shadows, the most intense shadows are going to be that V of the nose, and then the upper section of the nose is going to have a light shadow. There in most cats, there is going to be this vertical line down the center of the nose. I'm still using my shadow violet for that. I can always add another layer of pink at the very end of my painting, but I want to bring this shadow violet color into all of the areas where I'm noticing shadows. And then that's going to unify my painting because I have that gray under every section of my painting, not just in the white fur. So, when I paint this right side of the nostril, I'm still using the same size brush that I've used throughout this whole painting. I'm the type of painter that I don't like to switch to smaller detail brushes. I just really try to use a less amount of pigment to get that really fine line. But if you're somebody who prefers to use a small size zero brush, feel free to switch over to that small size zero as you're painting these fine details. I'm switching back to my really, really watered down shadow violet as I paint the shadows on the cheek here, and then I'm moving into the lighter shadows on this right side of the face. So we can tell that there's a light spot that's on the right side of the cat. And that's why these shadows are cast on the left hand side. The shadows on the left side of the face are slightly darker than the shadows on the right side of the face. And then I'll dry my brush, and I'll use a dry brush to blend any of those shadow edges that I want to blend seamlessly into the white fur. The hardest part about painting white fur is to not go too dark and to not paint too much of the white paper. So you do really want to edit as you're looking at your reference photo and really only paint using the shadow violet where you see the shadows. So I'm trying to leave still portions of my paper without any sort of shadows, just because if I paint too much of that white paper, it might start to look a little bit too muddy for my cat's face. 8. Adding Shadows to the Rest of the Face using Gray: So now that I've finished with adding some gray to the white sections of the face, I'm actually going to go back to where I painted browns, and I am going to add some shadow gray on top of some of the browns in the ears and around the eyes. The reason that I like doing this with my pet portraits is because I've sometimes found that if I don't bring the gray into the colored section of the faces, I tend to notice that the colors and the white fur tend to look like two separate cats. So by bringing the gray, and this is still the same amount of water that I used for the white fur. So bringing that very water down gray and adding some of that water down gray to the brown section of the fur, I'm really marrying the brown fur with the white fur and kind of bringing my whole painting together. Now, it is important to still leave sections of that brown that's underneath to leave that without any gray on top. So I'm really looking at my reference photo as to where are the darkest shadows and to add some of those grays into those areas. So right now, I'm working on this cheek, and I'm bringing the gray into the eye socket here so that it really forces that eye to sit in the head instead um if you don't have shadows around that eye socket, sometimes it looks like the eye is kind of protruding out of the head, and by adding those shadows, it's going to help to push that eyeball inside the eye socket. So as I move up to working on the ear, I'm going to continue with the same kind of hatching brush strokes that I did for the brown fur, and I'll just use gray on top. And I'm once again looking at where are the darkest shadows to add the gray. Inside the ear, I'll kind of do this similar technique that I did for the pinks of the ear, where I'll add a little bit of that gray, and I'll pull some brush strokes inward and then I'll go along the inner side of the ear, and I'll pull some brush strokes outwards. So this is going to just help those white hairs to kind of give them a little more of a three D effect and to help them curve a little bit more. And then, of course, in the darkest areas, I'll drop in a little bit more gray while it's still wet. I am going to speed up the painting of this next section, but just slightly so that you'll still be able to see exactly where I'm adding some gray fur strokes. 9. Pause and Practice: Fur Patterns in the Neck: Alright, so before I show you the actual video from painting the neck of my cat, I would like to practice painting the neck a little bit. So obviously, as you notice in the reference photo, you Pokey is not actually sitting upright. And so I do want to share with you an image of a white chested cat that is sitting upright. If you notice around the chest with short haired and long haired cats, you tend to see more of a triangular peak that is pointing downward on the chest of white chested cats. Now you'll notice this for the chest of any colored cat, but it's a little bit more prominent when you're looking at white chested cats. So if we were to want to practice how to paint these white fur, because, of course, we have to paint negatively instead of paint the actual white itself, we have to paint the shadows. So if you are wanting to practice that, we'll practice it now. I am going to draw just a little cheek here with the mouth, the little chin, it's gonna be a very not a very good drawing here because it's gonna be really quickly. And then we've got kind of the side of our neck and from the cheek, kind of the side here. So obviously, this is not the exact same, but it'll do for now. So when we're thinking about the shape of our chest, now, there were a few guidelines. If you used the template to trace, you might have seen there's, like, a few little kind of fur things in the center here. In general, we're going to want our fur to be kind of in this triangular shape here. So I'm going to kind of draw this little triangle just to help guide my brush. When you're doing your final piece, you probably will not have this triangle there, but it's helpful to have it in your mind to think about it when you practice. And then on each side of our triangle, we're going to have some more dark pigment. I'm still gonna use my size four round brush. I'll grab some water and add it to my section here, and I'll grab some gray. So I'm using shadow violet. However, you can mix your own gray. I do want to have it fairly transparent. Now, at home, you might want it just slightly more transparent than this. I'm just going to have it a little bit darker so that you can see it on the camera. And then I do want to have that shadow violet in handy so that I can drop in where it's a little darker. Alright, so I'm going to start on either side of the neck just because that's going to be where it's going to be the darkest. And now I just like I have been doing when I practice and when I paint the markings, I'll start with a kind of a puddle of color where it's the darkest. And then from that puddle, I'm going to pull some strands in. And remember, I'm using that semi moon. Kind of brush strokes. So I'll come in, and then I'll keep continuing using these semi moon brush strokes. I'm kind of curving this way. I'll do those semi moon as I get all the way along that point. And then from that point, so I have this curving this way. Now from that point, now I'm going to start curving the opposite way. So I was curving inward. Now I'm going to be starting to curve outward as I bring my strokes this way. Now, I know it seems like it goes really, really fast and it kind of does. When I get towards the bottom here, I might add a little bit more liquid, and maybe some of these along the bottom, I might blend out with a little bit of water before it dries. I might add a few little individual strands towards the bottom, because this section here at the bottom can be a little bit lower my sections on the sides here of my cat. I do want to keep that definitely a little bit a little bit higher on the edge. Before this dries, I can always try to drop in a little bit of darker gray, and then I might pull a little of that darker gray in a few areas. Now, some here have already started to dry. That's okay. I can have some of these that are still wet in some areas where it's starting to dry a little bit. I'm keeping my paper towel handy so that I can lift up wherever it went awry. And now I know I kind of stopped around the chin here, so I'm gonna go back up to the chin before this dries. And then I'm I'll make sure that just a little bit darker around the chin area. And then I'll do the same thing. I'll just pull some strokes from that chin, as well. I might leave some of that white open depending on how my reference photo looks. You notice that it is a little bit lighter, though. So I did add a little bit more water here towards the chin. I can always kind of add a little bit darker on this left hand side. I can connect some of these strands while it's still wet. This is why it's kind of helpful to practice this on a separate sheet of paper. And then towards the right here, I know I kind of stopped because I was noticing that the left here was starting to dry a little bit. And so now on this left hand side, you noticed I grab just a little bit of water. I'm still continuing with these half strokes. But I want them to be a little bit lighter on this side. I can go back to these strokes that have started to dry these edges, and I can kind of rough them out a little bit to soften those hard edges. But then, of course, along this edge of my neck, it is going to be a little bit darker because our neck, we want to keep our neck a little bit rounded. So I can connect my strokes here. I can even add a little bit of that shadow violet. And then I might bring down the shadow violet just a little bit. Now, if my light source is coming more from this right hand side, yes, there will be a little bit of a shadow where the neck rounds out, but it might not be as dark as on this left hand side. Once again, I'm going to keep this left hand and this right hand side and the left hand side. I'm going to keep it a little bit lower. Although I noticed that I kind of want to even out the triangle here. I'm going to add a little bit more water, and then maybe here I might add a few of these individual strokes or some strokes are connected, some are not. It's a little bit more water down. It's still following this slight moon shape. Remember, our moon is shaped towards my pencil. Remember, our moon is shaped this way on this side of our neck and then it straightens out towards the bottom of the triangle, and now our moon is kind of shaped the other direction coming on this side of the neck. So this is kind of the general where I'm going to add. This is kind of the general shape. Once these start drying in here, I can go back and I can add if I want, I can add a few wet on dry. Strands, just a few. I don't want to busy up my painting and have it really busy with a lot of individual. But I might go back to where the darkest of these sections are and add a few wet on dry. So here I'm adding a few wet on dry on this left hand side. I'm adding a few strands here that's going to bring your eye towards the center of this triangle. So I added a few here in the center, a few out to the left. And maybe just a few here on this right hand side. Now, this paper has dried a lot quicker than a cold press. This is actually the backside of a hot press paper. So I was able to get back and do some of these wet on dry a little bit quicker than you might be able to. Alright, once you've practiced that once or twice, however many times you want to practice it, now I think we're ready for our final piece. 10. Painting the White Neck: Alright, so now it's time to start painting the neck. So when the client had sent me a few different reference photos of poky, this particular reference photo that I chose of pokey lying down is the one that I like the best, but I knew that I didn't want to have to paint the paw and the side body because I did want it vertically as an eight by ten. And so I'm going to make up the neck area. I know that the neck area is going to be white, and so I'm going to start with that same shadow violet, that violety gray that I used in my last layer. And I'll start kind of at this midline of the cheek. So mid cheek kind of coming down. And I'm going to try to keep my brush strokes to be very almost like it's a fountain coming from the bottom of the chest. So I have almost like if there were an upside down fountain coming from the underside of the chin and it fountains down and out. So right immediately under the chin is where I have the lowest section. So it's a little triangular at the chin. Um, I am going to try to keep some of the paper to shine through here so that it's not completely solid gray. So, I want you to keep watching as I'm painting. This is I'm painting this in real time. I'm keeping my brush strokes really nice and light and quick, but I'm also keeping my brush nice and wet. And that's gonna help me get these brush strokes to look very fur like. Alright, so this is always a delicate thing to try to drop in a darker pigment. So I'm noticing that the left side of the neck is already starting to dry a little bit, and before it dries completely, I do want to drop in more of this shadow violet, particularly around the bottom of the neck and closest to the cheeks. Towards the bottom of the chin, I'm just adding some separate brush strokes so that and I'm doing this wind this top layer that's underneath layer is still semi wet. So it's going to blend in certain areas, and it's not going to blend in other areas. And that's actually what I want. I I don't want it to be a complete separate layer. I want some blending to happen and still some hard edges. And then before it dries completely, I'm going to clean my brush, dry it off, and use a dry brush to lift where some of those areas got just a little bit too dark. And then, lastly, I'll come to the right side of the face, and I do want to kind of blend in the neck line with the cheek. So I'm just going to add a little shadow right there under the cheek, but then I'm going to go up and I'm going to bring that shadow up onto that brown. So now I'm just trying to blend the head with the neck, so it's not it doesn't look like it's separate. 11. Layer of Darker Gray: Alright, so my next step is going to be another layer of just slightly darker gray for the shadows. And here I'm really going to focus around the eyes, ears, nose and mouth. So I'm using that same shadow violet, just a little bit more pigment compared to water. If you want it, you can always use black and just make sure that it's watered down. I don't like to I always like to do kind of a second layer of dark gray instead of black right away just because I do feel like it's helpful to build up that gray and those shadows in at least two layers before I add my darkest blacks. But you can always use a watered down black for the second layer. So I'm going to start with my eyes. And I'm going to outline the outer edge of the eye. So I'm using a really slow, nice, slow pace for doing this around the eye. And then now before this little eyeliner dries, I do want to wet the inner edge. So I'm going to actually start with the lower edge of the eye. So I do want to flip my painting around. I'm going to clean my brush, tap it on my paper towel so it's not soaking wet. And I'll use that damp brush. I'll hit the tip of that brush up against that black liner. And all I'm doing is rubbing back and forth because I want this to be a softer edge on the inside of the eyeball. So the outer edge of the eye, that's fine to have a hard edge. But this inner edge of this black want to just kind of blend it in with the eyeball color. I want that line to be a little bit thinner, a little bit softer on the inside, but only on the bottom eyelid. That top eyelid, I'm going to keep it still nice and dark. And then I'll start painting the pupil of the eye. Now this is also why I like to do a water down gray to start instead of go directly to a black because it's a lot easier to lift the water down gray versus a black. If you go into opaque, it's going to be a lot harder to lift that pupil. And so I like to have that water down layer just in case I make a mistake. All right now for the left eye, I'm going to do the exact same thing. I'll start with this darker gray around the outside of the eye, and then I'll come back with a clean damp brush, and I'll just blend out that lower eyelid. I'll turn my painting upside down so that I can blend on the inside of that eye, get a really nice soft edge, and then I'll paint the pupil. Alright, so with some watered down shadow violet, I'm going to add a few shadows to the iris. That's the colored part of the eye. So I notice right away that there's a little coma like highlight of that yellow in the lower left hand side, so I'm going to keep that clean. I won't put a shadow on top of that. But the rest of the eye, I'm just adding a few of these horizontal lines that are kind of radiating from the pupil. Since the iris is a little bit more of a subdued brown and not such a shiny yellow. And then next I'll paint a shadow all along just underneath the upper eyelid. You don't see this in every reference photo, but there usually is a bit of a shadow that the eyelid creates. So it just helps that pupil to sit that eyeball to sit in the eye socket. And so that little line of a shadow underneath it really gives it a three D effect. I'll do the same to this left eye. So I'm starting with these radiating lines of shadow. And I am remembering to still keep this left eye lighter than the reference photo. The reference photo shows it much, much darker than what I want to do. I am going to keep some of the lightest colors of that iris. I'll continue to do the shadow immediately under the eyelid and that'll help give this eyeball a nice three dimensional shape. All right. I'll use some of this darker gray, this second layer of gray to add a few little details around the eye. So I'm adding some wet on dry. So this is on dry paper. I'm following the curves around the eye. So this is just going to accentuate the dark corners of my cat's eye. Then I'll also add some darker fur strokes on that edge of the cheek. Moving on to the nose and mouth area. For the nose, we'll add some darker gray in the nostrils, in the corners of the nose, the upper corners of the nose, and in the lowest point of the nose, that lowest point of the triangle, along with a little bit extra darkness along that center line in running down the center of the nose. The mouth area can be a little tricky to paint. My reference photo does show a fairly large section of that mouth, that triangle of the mouth that I'm painting right now. It shows quite a large section of that being dark. I always lean on the more conservative side of the size of that shadow in the mouth. So I might paint it slightly smaller. And then if I need to make it a little bit bigger because it looks a little weird, then I make it bigger. But smaller is always better, in my opinion to start with. We'll darken up some of these whisker spots. So the location where the whiskers are coming into the cheek. Remembering that along the furthest edge of the cheek on the outermost edge, that's where the the whiskers are going to be the darkest where they attach. And then as it comes inwards towards the nose is where it's going to be lighter. I'll move on then to the upper left ear. So here I'm just taking that darker gray, and I'm outlining the outer edge of this left ear because I notice it is a little bit darker in the reference photo. And then I'll go around and I'll add just a few little sections of this second layer of gray where I'm noticing that it's a little darker in the reference photo. And then before I move on to the right side of the face, I am noticing that this second layer of gray in the left eye actually didn't come out quite as dark as the right eye. So I'm going back with a little bit of a third layer just to even it out to get that left eye a little bit darker, a little bit more similar to the right eye. 12. Color Corrections: Alright, now that I have the shadows the way that I want them, now I always like to go back and correct any sort of color. So I'm looking at my brown, and I'm noticing that I do need some sections to be a little bit brighter. So I'm using a glazing technique where I water down whatever orangish brown color. So this is kind of like a quinacradon burnt orange color, watered down. And I'm glazing it over certain sections where I want that color to be a little bit more intense. Reason I like doing this after I add the shadows is because it really helps me to not have my browns get too intense and dark too quickly. I do find that it can be really easy to make your browns really, really intense, and then it doesn't blend in really well with the rest of the painting. So I always have this as a last step after all my shadows are added right before I add any of my black details. At this stage, where I'm glazing this color, this is where I like to then add any of these really light brown areas blending in the head with the neck. So particularly if you have a cat that has some light brown patches around the neck area, this is how I would lay down that color. I would do the shadow first and then add the brown patches on top, just to kind of get a really seamless transition between the head and the neck. I'll also go back and I'll color correct the iris. Now that my shadows are in the iris, now I can go back and add a little bit more vibrant and bright of colors if it's needed, particularly with cats that have light yellow eyes and bringing in this orange just around the edge of the iris and closest to the pupil. Then the last section to think about with color correcting is the nose. Depending on your first layer and how dark that first layer got, you might want to add a second layer of pink to your nose. Now, I'm just adding a little bit of extra pink at the base of the nose. I don't need to add any pink towards the top because I do want this seamless transition. Then I might take a peek at the ears and under the eyes and see if I need to add any pinks to those areas. 13. Dark Black Details: The very last step before I add any sort of colorful splash in the background of my portrait are the black details. Now, this is going to be the darkest layer, and so I'm going to reserve this only for around the eyes and nose, particularly for poky, because poky is such a light colored cat. So I'll add a layer of dark black, still mixing it with water, but just more concentrated black. And I'll add a little thin layer of black around the eye. Then I'll also add some black to the center of the pupil. And lastly, I'll add a little bit of black to the nostrils. And particularly for poky, that's pretty much where I'm going to stop. If I had a different colored cat or say the cat is a little bit darker of a brown or maybe a tabby cat. Well, then of course, I might add more black details around the mouth area or the cheeks. But because Toby is such a light colored cat, I'm going to reserve my blacks for just the deepest darkest areas. Y y 14. Optional Colorful Splash: Alright, so our very last optional step is a colorful splash in the background. This splash is going to be painted wet on wet. I'm going to get my color ready first. So I've got a bunch of water on my palette. I'm using a To turquoise. And then to theTo turquoise, I do want to dim the color just a little bit. And so I'll use that shadow violet that I used for the shadows on my white fur and on top of the brown fur. I'm going to add just a little hint of that just to din tone down the brilliance of that turquoise. I'll get my paintbrush wet and I'll paint section by section for this colorful splash. I am going to paint the water going right up directly next to the fur. Remember that wherever the water goes, your colorful pigment is going to go as well. This splash in the background, I don't need to make it very circular. I can have this splash be kind of irregular, but I do want to cover the whiskers, because remember, those whiskers are still masked in masking fluid. So as I drop in my pigment, I do need to push the pigment all the way up to the body of the cat and to the fur. And then I do want to leave a little bit of a rim of white still for framing purposes, I don't usually like the color coming all the way to the edge of the frame. So if you notice I just lifted a little bit of that hard edge away using a dry brush, and now I'll go back and I'll drop in some darker pigment closest to the body. And then with everything, once I drop in that darker color, then I go back with a dry brush and I'm just going to lift along some of these edges just to have these be a little bit softer of edges. I want certain sections to still be a hard edge, so I'm not lifting over every single section. I just don't want a fully hard edge around this colorful splash. I'll turn my painting, and I'll continue painting section by section wet on wet. Now, along the bottom edge of my painting, I am going to add a few little blobs just to round out the colorful splash in the background. Most of the time, it's just to kind of balance the painting, although it's not really necessary. It's just something that I like to do to balance the heaviness of the top heaviness of the color to balance it out with some blobs at the bottom. 15. Final Details: So I let my painting dry overnight, and now I'm ready to take the masking fluid off. So I already took the masking fluid off my whiskers with a kneaded eraser, and I also took it off of the highlights of the eyes. Now that that step is complete, now I can always add a few extra details with a black micron pen. Sometimes you might want to do a little bit of outlining. Sometimes you might want to add extra dark details where you couldn't get quite black enough. I'm also going to take a peek at where the highlights are. Sometimes the highlights come out a little wonky and not quite as circular, so I might correct them with a micron pen. I'm not adding any details right now because I just like how it looks. And that's it. You're all done painting a bi colored orange and white cat. If you enjoyed this tutorial, you can find more of my Skillshare videos by following me as an instructor. I have other pet portrait tutorials, as well as some botanical tutorials. Also on my website, Emily Marie watercolors.com. I do sell watercolor kits that come with everything that you need to paint at home, including the paint, the brush, and the designs printed on your watercolor paper. I use Arches watercolor paper for those watercolor kids so that you can enjoy your time and create beautiful artwork.