Watercolor Pet Portraits: Tabby Cat

1. Intro Pet Portrait Tutorials: Hello, and welcome. My name is Emily, and I am the artist behind Emily Marie Watercolors. Welcome to my home studio here in Madison, Wisconsin. In the tutorial, you'll learn how to paint Tiger, the tabby cat, and watercolors. As a watercolor artist, I have found a passion for painting pet portraits. If you already know the basics of watercolor, painting pet portraits can be a great way to turn your hobby into a part time or even full time career. My style is characterized by adding details to the mouth, nose, and eyes, but not getting caught up in painting every single hair or curl. Use the tracing template of Tiger included in this tutorial or use your own tabbycat as a reference for this tutorial. You'll have access to full color reference photos, as well as a color guide and a supplies guide with all of the supplies and colors that I use during this tutorial. I'll guide you through painting. Tiger the tabbycat layer by layer. We'll pause to practice special brushstrokes that I find work well for tabby markings. We'll then continue to paint our tabby markings gradually until it comes together in one cohesive painting. As an added bonus, I've even included a quick guide with step by step pictures so that you have an easy way to see how all these layers come together. So grab your supplies, and let's get ready to paint. Don't forget to upload any questions that you have, and I'll try my best to answer them along the way. Let's get started. 2. Supplies and Masking Fluid: Alright, so to paint our Tabby Cat, I will be using arches hot pressed, 140 pound paper. I like to get a ten by 14 inch block. And then for my five by seven custom portraits, I'll cut the ten by 14 into fours. And so it's a little bit more economical. Now, I use hot press paper for my pet portraits so that I can use a calligraphy pen and also micron pen for some details and for adding masking fluid. However, if you prefer to work on cold pressed paper, you're more than welcome to try this tutorial out on cold press. I do suggest that you start with a smaller version of a Tabby Cat just to practice some of the markings before you go to a larger size, such as an eight by ten or nine by 12. For brushes, I'm using a variety of round size brushes of different sizes, sized zero through size four and six. The majority of my painting is done with this round size four. I also have a variety of water colors. I'm using Daniel Smith colors. You can find in the resources a page with all of the swatches of the colors that I'm using. Um, but mostly I'm using a quinacronon bned orange, a shadow violet, a sap green for the eyes, a thalo blue for the blue in the background, and a lunar black for my blacks. Lastly, you will need, of course, water and paper towel and optional, at the very end of the tutorial, you can add some final details using a micron pen. You might need a needed eraser, another type of eraser to take the masking fluid off and tape to tape down your painting. So I like to use these plastic corrugated boards that I get from Michael's in a large poster size. And then I'll tape it onto I'll tape my painting onto these boards so that I have the ability to move them around and so that they can dry flat. I'm using a tape called Kiwi Hub. However, you can use any painter's tape that you have, and it'll work just fine. Alright, let's get started. So I'm going to trace out my template for Tiger the Tabby Cat, and then we'll look at some masking fluid tips. Alright, so to mask the highlight in the eyes and the whiskers, I like using two different tools. One, I have a used brush that I always use for my masking fluid. I'm using Windsor and Newton. However, there are other brands that are also great to use, like Sinire. They also have a great brand, but I tend to prefer Winsor and Newton. Then I'm also using a calligraphy pen with just a basic nib for the whiskers. So I'll start with the highlights of the eye. And then I just use an old paper towel to clean the brush, and I'll just pull off the little clumps when they appear. Now, for the whiskers, it's a little bit more complicated. So this nib that I bought, I originally bought in Mexico. However, I know there's a few different brands that you can find in the States. You'll want to make sure that it's a fairly small nib in the top and that you can kind of press it open if you need a little bit more of an opening. So I like to test out my pen with my masking fluid before I use it on the final piece. So I'll mask it out and see if it works. If it doesn't like this, I'll try it again. So it just seemed like it needed a little bit more. I'll try it then on my piece. It looks like now it's working. This takes a little bit of practice. I don't actually need to be pressing very hard. As long as there's enough of that masking fluid there. If I press too hard, of course, I'm gonna get too big of an opening for the whisker here. So this is going to be way too big versus a little tiny flick of the wrist. We'll try it again. If you start and you notice that there is no masking fluid that comes out, I like to take a paper towel. I'll clean it off really well. Sometimes I'll use that same paper towel kind of push the two ends of the nib up just to create a little bit more of an opening, and then I'll try again. If it still doesn't work, sometimes I'll add just a little water, maybe, like, one squirt of a squirt bottle and then kind of mix it up a little bit. You can add water to maskine fluid to make it a little bit more water down. But it is really just kind of a learning curve in the beginning. I might have to clean this nib off a few times before I can actually get that masking fluid out. But what you're left with after it dries and after you add the paint, then after you take off the masking fluids, you're left with these really nice clean, bright white marks on your paper. If you don't have this masking fluid and your calligraphy pen, you can always use some white paint, some white acrylic paint afterwards, something like a PH Martin's bleed proof white and a really, really fine tipped paint brush to then paint the whiskers on afterwards. But I do find personally that that's a little bit more challenging to paint these straight lines versus using a calligraphy pen. 3. First layer: Base Color: Alright, so our first layer is going to be always the lightest of our pet portraits, and so that's going to be the eyes, nose, and then any other pinks. So I have two round size brushes, around size four, around size six. I'm going to start with my round size four here for starting with our iris color. So I'm going to make sure to water this down. I'm using a sap green, and I'm turning it. I'm noticing Tigers eyes are just a little bit blue hint to them. So I'm adding a little halo blue to that sap green. I've made sure that my masking fluid on the highlights of the eyes is dry. And now, this first layer, I'm going to completely cover the pupil of the eye as well. Remember that with watercolors, we can obviously paint darker on top. Now, to this first layer of color, once I have this base layer, I can always drop in any additional colors that I notice. So I am noticing this kind of lighter yellow around the outside edge of the iris, so I'll drop that in. I can also look and see if I notice any sort of blues or greens, and I might drop those more into the center of the iris. I'm making sure to lift if any of this liquid goes someplace I don't want it to go, so I'll just tap my brush on my paper towel and lift any extra pigment. So for this portrait, I am dropping in some deep sap green along the top of my irises. I'm noticing quite a bit of a shadow there. I will end up going back after the majority of my portrait is done, and I will add a second layer wet on dry of a little shadow on the top of the iris. And so I don't have to worry all too much about adding that. To be honest, most of my pet portraits, I don't add that drop cast shadow in the eye just quite yet. Alright, so we are going to move on to any of the pinks in our pet portrait. So I'm looking at the nose. I'm looking at the ears, around the mouth area. So right now, I'm going to start with my nose. I am using quinacridone magenta mixed with some water. You can always add in a little bit of brown, especially for your tabbies. I do notice that most tabbies have more of a brown leaning pink nose. I am lifting a slight highlight off of the top of the nose there. And then I'm going to use the same pink. I might water it down just a little bit more, and I'm going to paint the pinks of the ears. I'll start with a line along the outmost edge of each ear, and then I'll pull in some paint strokes. And what that's going to do is it's going to negatively paint those white hairs coming out. So I'm kind of painting the pink in between. I will do this step for pretty much all of my cat portraits regardless of if you can see the pink in the ears or not. I just might kind of lower and tone down the pink that you see in the ears. So once again, the pink along the outside and then whatever's left on my brush or whatever is left in that little line of pink, I'll pull it inward. Now, depending on how dark your inside of your tabby cats ears are, you can always go back well that section is still wet and drop in a little bit more pink or a little bit more brown. Now, we will be doing another layer of color in the ears, and so I'm just worried about getting that first layer of color down. Alright, so I'm going to switch out my brushes here. So I've switched out my size four for my size six because I'm going to start looking at my first layer of fur color. I'll start by adding lots of water to my palette and now I'm going to try to mix that lightest yellow or tan that you see underneath your tabby stripes. So this first layer of color, we are not adding any stripes. We're not adding any fur texture. All we are doing is we're wanting to get that base layer of color, and that color is pretty much what you're going to see under the eyes, and around the eyes there, that's going to be your base color. This first layer, I'm doing very wet. Now you'll notice along the ears, I'll do the same exact technique here that I did on the pink, except for now instead of on the outside of the ear, I'll do the inside of the ear. Now, because Tiger the Tabby does not have any white except for a little tiny bit around the mouth, the majority of the upper face is going to be this base layer color. So I'm working quickly, and I'm using my big brush for this. I'm working fairly wet so that I'm pushing this puddle of color all over my paper. The other section that I might leave a little bit of white is those little white hairs coming out of the ears, if I can. If you can't keep that section white, that's okay as well. Alright, so now, once I get to this line here where I'm starting to notice the tan disseminating into the white, I'm going to take whatever's left on my brush of that yellow, and I'm going to kind of.it where I notice these whiskers coming out. So I'm going to slowly kind of blend that yellow into white so that the lower lip there is solid white. And then I'll continue with this base layer under the neck, as well. Now, obviously, when you look at the reference photo, you don't notice quite as bright of yellows. Now, this yellow will fade as it starts to dry, and that's okay. We will have a layer of color that will be color correcting. So we'll be adding more yellows, more oranges in the areas, particularly in the nose there, where you see more oranges. But for now, we just want a base coat of color. This is going to kind of prep our paper so that we can add more layers on top. And it's going to allow us to slowly build color in a way that makes sense. 4. Practicing Tabby Marking Brush Strokes: Alright, so let's practice some fur techniques before we start with some of the striped tabby patterns. So I'm going to start by mixing my light gray. Now, you can use any gray, really, for this purpose, but we are going to start with more of a lighter, more watered down gray, and then gradually increase as we continue painting. So the first brush stroke that you'll see me doing as I'm painting Tiger is using the edge of my brush and moving it sideways to create a thick, uneven stripe. So you can work either way. I like to work from the outside to the inside instead of inside to the outside. So we can imagine that our cat's face is here. So we'll start on the right side. I'm going to be pushing my brush down so that the whole length of the brush is hitting the paper, and then I'm going to move my brush along. I might make these little movements up and down. I might slightly pick my brush up in certain spots. But I want the right end to be a little thicker. And then as I come to the center, I want the center to be a little thinner. So you can imagine some of the stripes around the face, around the neck area. I can kind of make them a little bit more curved if I want. So I would have my stripes instead of being straight across. I might have them a little bit more curved. So I'm just going to start to practice maybe different sizes using this technique where I'm using kind of the edge of the brush. I might, like I said, I might slightly lift it up a little bit. I'm coming from the right in and from the left in. And then I can always go back before they dry, and I can kind of fix some of these edges with more of the tip of my brush. But I do want to have that uneven edge because that's going to help create this look of that our tabbies have of these markings. Okay, so that's one brush technique. I use this technique more for my underlayers, and then I would have a different technique for adding some details on top. So I'm going to add a little bit more gray. You'll notice this in a later part of the tutorial, but you can still practice this now just because you might find that this other technique, this other brushstrokes, might work a little bit better for you. So instead of these thick side angle on my brush, now I'm going to angle my brush a little bit more so that the point of my brush is a little bit more perpendicular. And so I'm going to use dashes to add a little extra detail than on top. So I shouldn't say dashes, I should say Talies. So these tally marks are talis that are touching. But we want to make sure that these talis are staying in the shape of the fur. So you'll notice that if I'm going around the eye, maybe my tally marks will look a little bit different or if I'm going to the side or the face, okay? So if you're imagining this is the neck, I don't ever want my tally marks to go with the curve of the neck because then it's not going to look like our tally markings. We want our tally markings to be diagno. And I might want some of them to be separate, but I would want some of them to be most of them to be joined. This whole time I'm using a lot of liquid on my brush. And these tally marks, now, this is the dark this is fairly dark in comparison. But you'll notice that in the video tutorial, a lot of these tally marks, I'm going to keep until the very last layer. So that's going to be my darkest layer on top is going to be these tally marks. Now I can also use a combination of talies and then swiping my brush. So I might tally and then swipe in, tally and swipe in. This all kind of depends on what you feel comfortable with as you're painting. The other thing that you'll notice me doing quite often after you've kind of figured out which of these techniques works the best for you is you might notice that I'll start with some of these markings, and then I'll grab a little bit of water. And I'll use that water to just blend out the edges. Maybe it's the bottom edge or maybe it's blending out towards the center. And so I'm constantly deciding depending on where these curves are. So wherever my highlights are, I'm going to dilute it a little bit with water. So I might come in from the side and then grab a little water and kind of dilute my marking so that it looks a little bit less towards the inside. It's a combination of diluting with water and then touching my paper towel so that I don't have as much liquid on my brush. And then I get this really nice gradiation from dark to light. So let's try that one more time. We'll load up our brush. Maybe let's start left to right, or we'll start with some of these markings. I'll kind of stop midway, grab a little water. I might tap and grab a little bit more water because it's not light enough. And then I'll tap when I'm done and kind of lift some of those edges so that those edges aren't quite as dark. These are different types of brushstrokes and different techniques that you'll see as I'm painting. It's okay to leave a lot of these edges hard edges. In fact, we want a lot of these second and third layers to be hard edges. But these first layers, the first layer of markings, you do want to have nice and light and try to blend them as much as you can into the background. 5. First layer of Gray Markings: All right, so now that we've practiced a little bit, now we're ready to start with our layers of gray with the markings. So first, I'm going to use my size for round brush and grab some water along with some shadow violet. So I'm starting with a gray. Obviously, we're going to add a few layers of gray before we add our darkest layers of black on top. So what we're looking for to cover is all of the areas that we're noticing that has kind of this darker brown for our tabby, and we're trying to keep open for that underlayer yellow to shine through all the areas of yellow that we notice on our painting. So this is around the transparency opacity that I have of this shadow violet. So it is fairly transparent. I'm adding quite a bit of water here. I want to make sure that this first layer of color is kind of my way of blacking out where these colors are going. So I'm not as concerned yet about adding these individual tally marks for the Tabby markings, but rather, I want to make sure that that gray is where it should go first. And in order to do that, I need it just very light and transparent. Now, as I'm painting this gray, I am trying to paint my lines going around where I'm noticing the fur pattern. So around the eyes, I'm painting my grays going around the eyes, and I'm trying to block out those triangles that you see on the inside of the eyes. I'm also trying to block out a little bit of yellow around the eyes. So here I blocked out that big triangle. Now I'm coming into the center of the nose to kind of block out that center gray section. Now, as I come under the eye, I'm going to make sure to leave quite a large section under the eye there for that light highlight under the eye. And then you'll notice that I am leaving a little bit of that underlayer to shine through in certain sections. I'm keeping a really light touch on my brush, and I'm using the tip of my brush in the locations that I want to kind of let some of that yellow shine through. I know that I can always add more color on top. And so, like I said, I'm just trying to kind of place where this gray is gonna go. When I get to the center mouth here, I'm using quite a lot of liquid on my brush. I know it's hard to tell with videos, but there's quite a lot of liquid on my brush. This helps me to control exactly how much pigment I have. I can always lift if the pigment gets too dark. But I can only lift if there's enough water there to begin with. If I'm working with a very dry brush, but still with pigment on my brush, it's gonna be a lot harder to lift that up if it gets too dark. So I am one of those Watercolor painters where I think I tend to work a little bit wetter than most Watercolor artists. And that's simply just because I feel like I can kind of control my paint and pigment a little bit better. So I've kind of gone a little off script here where I started working on the ear, and then I decided I was gonna drop in a little bit of this darker shadow violet in the center of the ear. Um, occasionally, I do that where instead of, you know, I tell you, I'm just going to do that first light layer. And then I see a section that I have time to drop in. Now I'm not dropping in any other dark shadow violet on the face, simply because my paper being hot pressed, it's drying really fast. So when I'm doing these fine markings, on the face, particularly, I don't have enough time to drop in some of that darker pigment. And so instead of dropping it in wet on wet, I'm going to wait and do that dark pigment for a second layer. However, the ears being a smaller section, I do have time to drop in a little bit darker of pigment and kind of avoid an extra step. Alright, so I'm back to working on that first layer of the face with this watered down shadow violet. I'm coming into the left eye now. There's quite a large shadow along that tear duct. And then there's quite a large space of yellow under the eye. So I'm making sure to leave that open. And then once again, using the tip of my brush, leaving a little bit of that yellow to shine through. That's okay. It's okay that it's not a uniform layer. And then I'll use my watered down brush and add some darker spots along the whiskers, as well. And, of course, here's where being that it's so wet, they get a little dark, so I dry my brush off with my paper towel and I just soak up some of those dots that got a little bit too dark. Now, when we take a peek at the mouth here with our tabby cats with any cat, really, we are going to have the darkest of the shadows on the lower lip. So it's this little triangle section of the lower lip. I know you might see some shadow on the upper lips, but we're going to wait to add that shadow until this lower lip fully dries and until we've got a better sense of, do we really need that shadow or not? Alright, I'll continue mixing a little bit more of this shadow violet, and then I'm going to take a peek at the neck. Now, the neck line, I know is slightly covered by the little house that our cat is in the little tunnel. And so I'm going to try my best to add these markings where I'm thinking they might be. And I'm noticing these markings running darker along the edges and then lightning up as you get to the center. So that's how I'm going to add these markings. Just like how we practiced, I'm using a very thick edge of my brush, and I'm kind of squiggling it up and down, making these edges to be uneven as I pull inward. And then, of course, where to stop, especially since we're doing just the bust of our cats. So I always like to make my cat's neck a little bit more triangular. So the point of the triangle is kind of where I'm going to stop, and this tends to mimic the head really nicely, and it kind of rounds off my painting. So I'm going to add a little center marking here on the neck, and then that's going to kind of give it this more triangular shape on the neck line. 6. Darker gray details in eyes and nose: Alright, so at this stage of my painting, I like to pause and add a few more dark gray details to the eyes and nose, just so I can place where those darkest shadows are gonna be, I'm still using shadow violet. I am using my size round four brush. However, if you have a detail brush that you'd rather use, feel free to use that brush instead. Alright, so I'm going to start by outlining around Tiger's eyes. Now, most tabby cats, most fully tabby cats, not like white tabbies white and orange tabbies or white with a little marking tabbies, but full tabbies are gonna have fairly dark rings around their eyes. It's gonna be pretty well outlined. Now, I still don't want to use my darkest of colors for this step because, of course, if I make a mistake at all, I want to make sure I can still lift it up with some water. So I start by painting around each eye and into this, like tear duct that falls in the center of the eye. And then I'm going to add that first layer of the pupil still all with this same shadow violet, just with slightly more pigment than water, but still mixing it with enough water, like I said, so that I can lift if I need to. Alright, so I'm going to move on to adding a little bit of dark outline to my nose. Now, I'm going to keep the darkest of my sections outlined on this bottom V. So I've got my two nostrils. They're barely indented in the nose. It's just a little slight cut out, and then I'll use that shadow violet gray to just outline along that bottom V. If you notice this little split in that bottom section of the nose, you can add that as well. And then we usually do have a little bit more darkness coming out of the upper corners of the nose. Now I'm adding a little bit of water onto my brush so that I can kind of blend that upper edge and somewhat connect it to those tear ducts coming out of the eyes. Now I will add a little bit of shadow violet along the top of the nose. However, it's not going to be quite as dark as along the bottom V there. And so you'll just want to be careful that that upper line is not darker than that lower V. I will dry my brush off and use a dry brush to just lift and blend that edge. 7. Second layer of Gray Markings: Alright, so now I'm going to start on my second layer of the gray markings of my Tabby Cat. And so to do this, I'm still using shadow violet. And the color that I'm mixing is going to be a fairly similar consistency and transparency as my first layer. I do have my little test strip where I have that first layer down, and I'm going to test just how dark it is on top of that first layer. A lot of beginner pet portrait artists will have too stark of contrasts between their layers. And so your second layer, although, yes, it needs to be just slightly more opaque, it shouldn't be obscenely opaque. I'm still adding quite a bit of water to this shadow violet. And I'm noticing as I'm painting the second layer, if it's looking a little too illustrative or if it's just looking off, a lot of times I notice that that's because my second layer is a little bit too opaque, so I'll add a little bit more water and then try again. Alright, so now for the second layer of gray, you're gonna notice that I'm using a lot more of these hash mark technique that I was talking about before. I am going in to where I'm noticing it's the darkest first, and so that would be the top of the head. And then I am using more of these tally dash marks around the eye. You'll notice I'm going with the same shape of the eye, so I'm arcing it above the eye here. And then I'll continue bringing it down and into the right corner here. Now, it's important that we still leave this first layer of gray to shine through in certain areas. So I do want to start looking, taking a peek at where are these more apparent markings on the face? And then that's where I'm adding my second layer of gray. Now, you'll also notice that I'm not really blending out these hash marks all too much. I am leaving these edges quite hard edged. Now I can do this because my second layer of gray isn't too dark and opaque. I can always go back and blend out some of these hard edges if they end up getting too hard. But for now, I want to make sure that I have hard edges so that it reflects the individual fur. Now I'm gonna continue showing you this video. I'm not going to speed it up at all because I do think that at this layer, it's really important for you to see kind of how quick my brush is moving, but also kind of the way in which I'm moving my brush and the direction of these brushstrokes. So I'm going to let you watch where I'm making these markings and where I'm adding this second layer in real time. Now, at this point, I'm noticing that the yellow underneath the eyes is quite bright, and so I am adding the slightest of little markings on the upper and lower edge of this yellow with just whatever grays left on my brush. All that is doing is it's just toning down that yellow just slightly, and it's creating a little bit more of a blended edge without blending. Alright, so I'm going to speed up the next video just slightly. We're going to continue on with the second layer of gray on the neck. We're doing the same exact brushstrokes that we did for the first layer. We're just making sure that the darkest of these sections is towards the edge. And I'm also going to leave a few individual hairs out, as well. So you'll notice along the lowest section here, I might leave out just a few individual hairs just to add a little extra detail. And then we'll also add a second layer of gray to the inside of the ears. We already added a little bit of extra gray on the outside of the ears, and so we're going to add just another shade on that inside section. 8. Color Corrections, Glazing: Alright, so at this stage of my painting, I'm going to take a peek at color corrections. So before I continue with my darkest layer of color, either dark gray, dark brown or black, I'm going to go back to the eyes, nose, mouth, and any of those yellow fur tones, and I'm going to correct some of the coloring. Now, these color corrections are often done using glazes, so they're light, transparent layers of color. I'm going to start by taking a peek at the eyes. So for a lot of my cat eyes, we don't usually have very, very dark coloring in the eyes, but usually you can notice multicolors. So we've already done that first layer with a little bit more yellow tones, and so I'm coming in with a sap green and adding a little bit of darker green. Now, you'll notice I am leaving a little bit of that lighter coloring to shine through around the outside edge of the eye. This is going to give it just a little bit more depth instead of adding a complete second layer to the eye. I'm still gonna allow that first layer to shine through in spots. After the eyes, I'm going to take a peek at the nose. Oftentimes the tabby cats, we do want a second layer of quinocreomgenta, or quinocretomgenta mixed with some sort of brown on the nose. I'm keeping the second layer just to the left side of the nose to keep that little highlight on the right. Alright. And then after I'm done with the eyes and nose, then I'll take a peek at the yellow and orange coloring behind my tabby. So that first layer that we did with yellow, we wanted to keep that really nice and light and transparent so that we could add our second and third layers of gray for the markings without discoloring those markings. But now that we have those first few layers of markings, we can go back and we can see where do I have some darker shades of yellow and orange. So I'm noticing for Tiger, that there's a little bit more orange tones around the nose and the lower section of the face. So right here I'm using it's a color by art philosophy called sassafras, but an equivalent would be a burnt orange of any sort. So a quinocradon burnt orange would be a similar color here. And I'm still mixing it with quite a bit of water so that it is transparent. I can always drop in more opaque pigment once that section is wet, but I definitely don't want to go too dark. Adding oranges to your tabies, it's very, very easy to go too dark. And so I do definitely suggest that you start off lighter with these light glazes. You can always add a second glaze or drop in a little bit more opaque as you continue painting. All right. And then I will add a little bit of orange then to the outer edge of the neck, as well as around the ears. 9. Layer of Black: Alright, so we're finally ready for our black layer of color. So I have here mixed with quite a bit of water. I have some lunar black, and I'm checking it on top of the first two layers of gray, make sure that it's not too dark. Oftentimes, when we're adding layers to tabby cats, we're adding layers that are too dark and the same is true with our black. So I do want to make sure that my black is still quite watered down. I'm still remembering, though, that my black is going to dry lighter than what it looks like when it's wet. But I just want to make sure that it's not too much of a contrast. Now, even as I'm painting this, I am realizing that it is quite a dark contrast. However, I also know that I can go back and lift up if any sections get too dark. At this last layer of black, this is where I'm wanting to add more individual hairs. You'll also notice that I'm not extending my black layer all the way covering my first few layers of gray. I do want to leave a little edge and rim around the black that is gray instead of covering all of the gray layers because that's going to help to kind of assimilate that black into the fur instead of having it stick out so much. Alright, so I'm going to speed up this layer just slightly. The most important thing to remember as you're painting your black layer is that most of our black layer, we will not blend. There's only certain areas that I will blend the black, and that's where I'm noticing a slightly darker shade that isn't quite as detailed. So in the center of the nose and that bridge of the nose, that's one location where I'll blend out my black. But most other locations, I'm going to keep those edges hard. I know that I can always soften up those edges after it dries, but I want to give myself the chance to see what this painting looks like while the edges are hard and after the black layer is dried, because I do know that it will lighten up significantly. So here around the nose is where I'm going to add just a little bit of water to my brush to whatever black I have on my brush, and I'll just pull that black upward into that center portion of the nose because I do want that portion to be darker. However, I don't want it to be as dark as the other markings around the face. Now, as I add a little bit of black under the eyes, I am going to leave, like I said, some of that gray underneath. And so I'll add my lines that are going running along with the eye and that eye shape, but I'll leave some space in between those lines. And then that is going to help give that texture of our Tabby Cat fur without us doing individual hairs for that. Now, when I get to the nose and mouth area, I'm still going to use some black around the nose and mouth, but I'm going to try to keep that black into that middle triangle area. You Tabby Cat might have more browns in that white area or it might have more white fur. If you have more white fur, like, tiger, you're going to want to blend out some of those whites. So I'm using a little water on my brush to just dull down some of the white in that mouth area. Now when I paint my last layer of lunar black on the neck, I'm going to make this last layer have the most details in it. So I'm still using my watered down lunar black, but I'm using more hash marks than I did in the first few layers. So you'll notice a little bit more marking texture on the neck in this last layer, but I'm still trying to keep the darkest of values around the outside edge. Now, when I move on to outlining the eyes and the blackest details in the eyes, I'm going to use my darkest of black values around the eyes and in the pupil of the eye. So I'm using great caution here, but trying to have this be the darkest of values in my painting. I'll also add some of the darkest values to the underside of the nose, particularly around the nostrils and in this little line in between the nose and mouth. The line on the top of the nose, I might not fully connect. And then that line in the center of the nose, I can always blend slightly using water. The last little thing that I'm going to do before I add some extra colors around the outside of my pet portrait is going to be I know Tiger from a different photo has these little hairs off the end of his ears, so I'm going to add that with a little bit of lunar black as well. Last thing that I always like to do with the eyes is add a little arc of shadow in each eye using lunar black. This helps to give it a lot of shape. Alright, so, lastly, I am going to take another peak now that my black clayer has dried and see if I need any more intense black anywhere. So I am still using some water with lunar black, and I'm just adding a little bit of extra in the darkest sections. Most of the time I'm noticing my darkest sections are going to be around the eyes, nose and mouth. And then if there are any special markings that I really want to be prominent that are looking prominent in the reference photo, like the very clearly defined M on Tiger's forehead, I can also add a little extra layer of lunar black there to just highlight those extra markings. 10. Second layer of Color Corrections: And then I'm also going to do another layer of color correction. So these are my layers of glaze. So I'm noticing that the nose still quite isn't as dark as the reference photos, so I'm going to add another layer. I'm also going to add a little bit more pink to the ears. So glazing can happen really at any stage of your painting. However, it is nice to have multiple spots where you do glazes instead of just multiple glazes all at once. So I did a layer of glaze before I did the black, and I'm doing a layer of glaze afterwards if I still need to correct any of my colors. The reason being is we just don't want to have these colors go too dark too fast. So I'll add another little glaze of orange around the nose and cheeks, and then I'll take a peek at if I need to glaze any gray. So here in certain sections, I'm going to use a wet brush and go over some of these gray areas where the gray is slightly darker. I'm also mixing a little bit more of shadow violet and just adding a glaze of shadow violet in these areas of the face where I need it to be a little darker. I do still need the highlights around the eyes and on the forehead to stand out. But everywhere else, it seemed to me it was still a little bit too light. And so I'm glazing that gray in those areas just to tone down those areas a little bit so that the highlighted areas can really stand out. 11. Colorful Background Splash: Alright, so now that I'm done with my main painting of the cat, I want to add a little colorful splash behind. So I'm adding water to some palo blue here. I am checking the opacity because I do want it to be similar to the first cat that I painted for this client. She ordered 25 by sevens of two different cats. So I'm adding just a little bit of yellow there just to change up the blue and to slightly green it to a little bit of a turquoise. And I'm checking it on a test strip to see if it matches the original color of the first portrait. Now for the colorful splash behind my cat, I do want to make sure that I'm covering that masking fluid from the whiskers that I covered. I do want those whiskers to stand out against that bright blue background. So I will add water first to this section then I want to add my colorful splash. Now this colorful splash, I'm painting wet on wet, so I'm wetting the section that I want to add the color to. I'm doing it wet on wet simply to have extra time before my edge is dry. So that way I can kind of correct my edges. I can extend them. I can soften them, and having my first layer of water will extend the amount of time that I get to correct those edges. I'm still gonna work in sections because hot press paper dries quickly, so I'll work mainly in three sections here as I'm adding my colorful splash behind Tiger. 12. Final Details: Alright, so I usually like to leave my pet portraits to dry overnight after I add the colorful splash. And then the next day, I'm gonna come back and add any of the final details. The first thing I'm going to do is erase the masking fluid, using either a needed eraser or gum eraser. And for this step, obviously, you have to make sure that your colorful splash is completely dry. Now, I usually like to come in after and add just a little bit of shadow around where these white whiskers are attaching to the cheek. Sometimes that masking fluid is a little bit too hard edged, and so I might come in and just add a little bit of that lunar black or shadow violet along some of those dots. Now, you can also use this shadow violet or lunar black to darken any of those whiskers. So if there's a few whiskers that aren't quite bright white, you can also use a wet brush and kind of dull them down just slightly. Now, in my reference photo for Tiger, the top of the whiskers are a little bit more black. And so I'm using a micron pen to just kind of trace over some of those top whiskers, especially where they're coming out of the cheeks, and that's gonna kind of tone down that white and help add a few of those darker black whiskers. So I have to apologize that I completely forgot to record the taking off the highlights of the eyes with the masking fluid. Usually what I will do for the highlights of the eyes is, of course, I'll remove the masking fluid first, and then I'll take a usually, I'll take a damp brush, and I might I might soften up the edge just slightly. It all depends on where my highlight is. I might have to use a little black around the outer edge to just correct the shape of the highlight, but it's very minimal. But I did forget to record that step, so I apologize, but it is an important one. C.