Silver Tabby in a Garden - 6" square
Painted earlier today! This is part of the Pastel Spotlight monthly challenge, photo reference by SweetHuia from WetCanvas.com. I meant to paint this cat sometime during the month. Today I felt good enough to do it!
Theme of the challenge is Line, so I did something tough - picked out the main subject with linear accents and added some lighter ones to the vegetation to unify that. I used very soft pastels for my early layers. Blue Earth for a local colors underpainting softly blended on light green Canson Mi-Tientes. Then went looser over that with Great American half sticks. No blending on that middle layer or layers, did several layers of color in some areas.
Finally, when I knew hard pastels wouldn't give the effect I wanted, I tried Girault over the softer pastels. Girault are firm but in some ways act like very soft pastels. They lay down that easily with that much density from very fine-ground pigments, they're heavy in the hand from pigment-rich formula. They gave me good lines when the paper tooth was mostly full, so this worked in a big way. I'm happy with it and looking forward to more this month!
So far have gotten 18 of 18 posted on their proper day's blog at 30 Paintings in 30 Days. The weather's getting better and the landlord removed the radiator that turned my room sweltering whenever the temperature goes down a notch. It's bright and lovely, not sweating hot or bitter cold, I can relax today and maybe even get in two paintings, get ahead for once!
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