A Good Ending To A Busy Work Week

I mostly kept up my painting habit last week. It was both an accomplishment and a giant compromise. Most mornings before work, I spent only 2 minutes or so drawing out my next painting. I didn't do so well on the drawing front.

Friday, I got a break from the daily grind. I finished my morning work for a client early and had 1 1/2  hours free before my afternoon client work. One of the things I did with this bonus time was go to Wet Paint, since it's time to play with some new colors. Wet Paint is in the midst of the their back-to-school sale, so Golden Heavy Body Acrylics are 40% off. I don't recall how this compares to their usual price, but it was a good enough reason to stop in.

Meet my new additions.

I haven't decided if I will rotate them in, start another palette or what. I decided to purchase the Diarylide Yellow when I saw some paintings of another one of Kat's students. This student refered to it as "school bus yellow". While I will always have Quin Magenta in my palette, I decided that I would like to play with a red which is closer to orange. Being messy, I stayed away from any of the Cadmiums and went with Pyrrole Red Light. Based upon Patti Mollica's book, I purchased the Yellow Ochre to have a mineral or earth pigment to play and see what happens.

On Friday night, I did a quick value sketch and worked on the painting. The value sketch helped me slow down and tune into the value shapes. On Saturday, I finished up the eyes and whiskers. Since I was painting one of my orange cats, I added a tiny dab of the Yellow Ochre to my palette. It helped me get some orange-yellow colors which look closer to life without being muddy and made it easier to get some of the darker shades I wanted. Using a little bit in the purples, neutralized the purple without making them boring.

So many times I get overly fussy trying to get the right eye color, so I end up with multiple layers of paint in the eyes. This time, I was able to focus on the values and whether the color was clearer or muddy and just went with that. I must remember this in the future!

#255 - Chandler At Twighlight - 8" x 8" - paper

The background, whiskers, and eyebrows add nothing. I don't think the whiskers or eyebrows are needed at all. Even so, I really like this painting.