Stil Life With Bicolor Cat - Part 3

The epic saga of "Still Life with Bicolor Cat--The Watercolor" continues! This pose of artist model Buttonwillow is my reference photo, but I continue to take advantage of "artistic license" whenever I feel the need...

To see what I've done so far visit these posts:

Part 1
Part 2

My next step is to define the frame with goldtones. I use a wonderful hue called quinacridone yellow/gold which is a deep rich transparent amber gold color...

Here's where my "license" comes in again--I decide to keep the tabletop in the same color family because it will give a nice balance to the composition and it will be a nice contrast to the blue pitcher...

The blue pitcher is the next step. I want to be sure to "save" those little white spots of light that will make the surface look as if it's shiny. If you don't have masking fluid here is a great little trick: I indicate lightly in pencil where the "whites" are and then put a big W in each spot so I will remember not to put any paint there... The W's will be erased later...

To make my blues more interesting, I'm going to do a little underpainting in rose and quin. gold, then dampen the rest of the pitcher area, carefully going around the saved white spots and keeping them dry so that color will not bleed into them.

Then while the paper is still damp, I add different shades of blue and let them flow together, looking at my reference photo to see where the blues need to be darker or lighter...

As the blues dry but are still slightly damp, I drop in more paint wherever it needs a little more intensity or definition...Artistic license again: I decide to make the blues much deeper than the reference photo. And see how important it was to save those white spots?

Next step in the epic production: Buttonwillow! Coming soon to a Cat Lady blog near you!