A Painted Cat

A couple of months ago I took an oil painting class with a very good teacher at the local adult school. He won’t be back until fall, sadly, but I do have another class I am attending and which is also taught by another good teacher.

This cat is one of the assignments we had in the class, a photo provided by him to copy. For me, it was a challenge, but more than anything I wanted to use colors to provide contrast in color and value. This is not something I do easily, but I did accomplish it! Part of it was I just was not going to let the subject matter trap me into copying the photo completely.

I finished this cat up last week – it’s in oil and has been drying – and could get the shape of the cat’s nose when the new teacher reminded me that using a negative shape to create a positive one helps a lot!

And so it does – my chin and nose area were more along the lines of the proportions seen in Egyptian statues of Anubis and Bastet – a narrow mandibular area, and one a bit elongated.

I will say that I am really pleased with this painting. There are a few tweaks I need to do to clean up a couple of areas, but that is something done in a couple of minutes. Painting an animal is something I have never done, and it really was intimidating. Doing it helped me appreciate just the different brushes I could use, such as a rather beat up bristle to create a sense of fur, and a soft, pointed one to create the whiskers. Patience is also becoming more comfortable than not, and this lets me take time to work on this painting at the right time. I also work on other paintings, too, while this one or that one awaits my talents.

16 x 20 (or 11 x 14?) cotton canvas on board, oil paints.