Having fun painting a cat the fearless way!

  If you are like me, you enjoy painting pictures of animals. I am a lover of all cats, dogs and even wildlife. Over the years I have painted everything from my great danes, birds,my cats and horses.

  Today's blog is about creating a watercolor painting of a friend's Siamese cat. Here is a photo of my friend's beautiful feline. Following are the steps that I used to create a watercolor painting of her. I hope you enjoy the process!
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Photo of my subject
The most important step is to begin with a good drawing of whatever it is that you want to paint. I drafted my photo image onto my watercolor paper, which I had previously brushed a diluted coat of gesso on. I like to lightly gesso my watercolor paper, because it allows me to do a lot of color paint lifting without ruining my 140lb CP paper.
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Original photo vs watercolor painting
I began my painting process by wetting my paper and than dropping in mixtures of diluted wc paint throughout the wet regions of my paper. I know that in this process I will be "building" a rich variety of darks, but before I get too dark, I prefer to work with light diluted washes of pigment.
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In this next photo, you can see how I am starting to layer secondary washes onto my painting. I am building my values. I am using the hues : New gamboge yellow, pthalo and ultramarine blues, permanent alizarin crimson in this painting. On the fur I chose to use a dry brush stroke to begin the process of creating the texture that will be the cat's fur. 
Dry brush is a type of stroke that allows me to fill my paint brush with color and then I dry it off on to a paper towel. Each time I drag my brush on the towel I loose wet paint and the resultant strokes leaves small bits of color on the "hills" of the wc paper but does not go into the "valleys" of the paper.
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I like to work from a black and white photo as helps me to see the values that I want to work with. If you look closely you can see how I have layered numerous layers of "drybrush" all to create the look of loose fur flowing across our models body.
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Here is a close up of the Siamese's beautiful face.
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My painting is half way done
Each paint layer allows me to create a richer, more saturated dark. In some places I paint my hues onto wet paper . Working on wet paper allows me to have soft, furry edges where colors flow from one place to another. In other regions I work on dry paper. By making sure that my paper is "bone dry" I can create wonderful hard edges that do a good job of defining a specific shape like her face or tail.
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Time to compare my wc painting to both black and white, color photos etc. Here is the time where I create a value photo of my painting at the mid way point. I do this to double check and see if I have created a full range of values in my painting and that the work is saying what I want it to say. 
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Value study
In studying my value study, If feel like I should consider deepening some of my darks, clean up some of loosed edges and add some more texture by working the dry paint a little more. My goal is to create a painting that has a full range of values! So, back to work I go!
At this point, I chose to rub the edges of my fur strokes to rough them up. Using my fingers I massaged the dry paint just enough for it to spread/ move the paint around.
I also felt that I wanted to bring out a few more lights in the painting. Mind you I have so much paint all over the place that now I want to think about using a modified mixed media approach.  
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Enter the magical world of using opaque paints such as fluid acrylics or in the case of this painting my special mixture, which I call "gesso juice" which is a recipe that calls for mixing 1/3 each of water, acrylic gesso and acrylic matte medium. I store this recipe in a bottle and use whenever I need to bring back out a light area in my painting. Oh by the way, if you are interested in knowing where I first heard about this mixture. Please visit the "inventor" Kathleen Conover, a marvelous artist , that I had the pleasure of studying with many years ago. 
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My final strokes in this painting were the opaque lights that I painted over the transparent watercolors. Because the "gesso juice" is opaque it lightens the darker previously  painted strokes underneath. If you look closely you can see where I lightly painted the opaque white on the highlighted areas of the tail, a little bit on the body fur of the cat and inside her ear.
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The finished painting.
... And finally what you are waiting for...my finished watercolor painting of a Siamese cat. 
I hope that you have enjoyed reading this tutorial and will now go forth and paint a wonderful watercolor of your favorite animal. 

Thank you for visiting this blog post and painting fearlessly with me. If you would like to learn more about my artwork I invite you to visit my web site  www.beattieartworks.com and check out my original mixed water media paintings and art shop.

Are you interested in learning more about painting fearlessly with watercolors or acrylics? Please visit my art classes page, where you can register for my Fearless Painting classes? Here is a link to my in-person and online art programs for painting with watercolors or acrylics sponsored by Spokane Community College. I also teach private online programs for those interested in a more personal approach to learning how to paint. 
https://www.beattieartworks.com/art-classes.


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