Background

The cat theme continues! This month, I've been thinking more about backgrounds. There's all of this space. While it's not the focal point, it is important too. Many times the actual background from life does not work, so you have to decide what to do and move forward. Most of my cat backgrounds this month have had a strong color and it's been fun deciding what color to use and how to shift the values to denote the light. Last night, I decided to go in a different direction and experiment.

When my cats are in the kitchen, frequently, the background is a striped, flat pillow. The fabric is busy and from time to time, I try a different way to represent it.

On this one, I had to do the eyes twice. I painted over the first attempt. The picture really captured her eyes and I'm not sure that I captured it. Still, the intensity of her look / stare is there. I also painted over much of my original colors. At first, my colors were too blue-gray. While both of my gray cats have a warm, blue undertone to their fur, I tend to over do it. When I thought I was almost done, I mixed some grays which were more neutral. To my eyes, these grays are actually a tad ugly when they are on the palette or the brush. The color looks sickly to me, so I was hesitant to use it. On the black gesso, I liked how they looked so I toned down some of the blue gray tones. I must remember this for future reference!