Just Ignore The Green

I get rules in my head, so sometimes I set out to break them. That's how I ended up painting a green cat. This painting is from yesterday. I did it in one sitting and it came together fairly quickly. 

This started as another 4-value painting, although it morphed to five values even before I went even farther with it. Throughout this painting, I also tried to have more paint on my brush.

After I painting the original values and shapes, I decided to add a background.

From there, I added another dark color to define the cat, since the black parts looked odd with the background. I wish I would have taken two more progress pictures. The first several paint strokes of the extra dark body color did amazing things. Next, I finished all of the formerly black background with a dark green. It would have been good to take pictures of both of these steps. However, my energy level was terrible and I didn't feel like going upstairs two additional times to take pictures in natural light. I have been fighting and, mostly, losing the battle with a wicked cold this week.

The very last thing was suggesting the other eye. The finished result is below. It was fun pushing this to completion.

#166 Marvin In Green - 8" x 10" in paper, regular palette

Here is a painting from the same source picture from back in August 2016. Even with the hideous green, this painting reads so much better.  It's all about the values and the shapes (which is the mantra that I need to keep repeating to myself).

Also in all of these value paintings, it's been amazing to me how little you need to represent an eye. This is especially true of the suggested eye that I added at the last minute. It's just one stroke with a tiny, tiny highlight and it adds so much!