Translate

Monday, July 02, 2007

King of the Porch


I've had a reference photo for this cat a long time and finally decided to give it a try with watercolor. It seems lately cats have been lucky for a few artists so what better time than now to paint a cat! This one won't be going to market, though. I had some help from my faithful studio assistant, Raven the cat. She graciously added a few purple paw prints and some equally purple splots and drops here and there. *sigh* However, she DID inspire me to try stepping away from a realistic palette so I plan to attempt this cat again with a few Daniel Smith colors I've been dying to try out...Moonglow and Tiger's Eye Genuine. These may produce a very unusual but interesting cat. Anyway, I'll never know until I try.


This was also done on Arches hot pressed watercolor paper which I don't normally use for brush on paper techniques but I do love the smooth finished surface. I applied a very thick mixture of paint with a stiff short bristled brush to create all that thick calico fur. I feel it was successful.

8 comments:

Mary said...

This is very painterly and makes a lovely watercolor, Billie! You are doing so well!

Billie Crain said...

thank you, Mary! with this cat i decided to just chuck the rules and go at it like i wanted. i'm finding out just how versatile this medium can be.

Jeanette Jobson said...

I love how you've done this Billie. The colours are very well done. You're so good with watercolour and inspire me to practice more with the medium.

Billie Crain said...

do it, Jeanette! after watching numerous watercolor demos and reading several how-to books i found there's really no rules with this medium that can't be broken for the sake of creativity and the results are amazing to me.

Anonymous said...

I did not see this the other day when I stopped by. This is magical. You have captured cat-ism. I thought this was a reference photo at first, but knowing that you were working on another cat pic I looked closer. You are mastering this medium.

Billie Crain said...

Robin, thanks so much for your great comment. i can see by my wording how you may have thought this was my reference photo. thanks for drawing my attention to it. i changed it.

Lisa Ober said...

Hi Billie! I think this was a really successful painting. You are good at every subject, aren't you? I loved your comment about the paw prints. One time I did a portrait of a cat and the client's dog walked over to it and tinkled on it! LOL. That's the truth. Perhaps the dog just didn't like the artwork but I prefer to think he was jealous.

"JeanneG" said...

This is so pretty. I had a very beautiful calico and wish I had had a digital camera back then. All my photos of her are not very clear. You did a really good job. I want to learn watercolor but am still putting it off. Fear I think.