Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday Wishes!

Merry Christmas and happy solstice! I did this little sketch of our cat, Lucy, sitting at the window sill at our old place a few years ago. Loved how she was looking out the window as it was snowing. I added the hat, but otherwise the red walls and red and green drapes were actually how we had the living room decorated! :)

As we all look forward to celebrating the upcoming holidays, I want to thank you all for your interest in my blog and wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and happy holidays! I look forward to creating more artwork in the new year and hope you will join me for the journey.

Two cats - first cat, continuing colored pencil

Another step in the process for you to see. It is still coming along, but I am not sure if I kept the head markings correct as compared to the photo. I will continue this, but may end up redoing it in the end. Even if that ends up happening, this will be great practice for any future renderings.

Two cats - first cat, colored pencil progressing

I have continued to layer color and work on the fur for the first of the two cats. Still a long way to go, but it is progressing well, I think.

It's always interesting to see a drawing take shape before your eyes. And for something like this, that takes a bit of time to work on, it is really helpful to set it aside overnight, or for a couple of days, and look at it with fresh eyes. You might be surprised at your reaction. In fact, last night as I worked on this, I thought - oh no, this really isn't working...but then I looked this morning and it looked much better to me! I think it still has potential and I can see the layering coming together. Like I mentioned, it has a ways to go yet, but is starting to shape up.

Two cats - beginning colored pencil

This is the start of the colored pencil work on this piece. It's definitely a learning process for myself and I hesitate to even post this because it has such a long way to go! But I think it is really helpful for others to see how a piece like this looks from early on. It will take much more layering, with additional colors to match the fur, before it really starts to look right. So, you will get to learn as I do!

As you can see, I am starting with just getting the fur pattern blocked in, along with the beginnings of shading, making sure I put my pencil strokes in the correct direction to follow the fur. This is very important to making a pet portrait look accurate. The fur contour gives form and shape to the animal's body underneath.

Pencil drawing of Lucy - sprawled in the sun

This is a pencil drawing of our cat, Lucy. She was sprawled in the sun on the floor one day. I did this to try and experiment with rendering her fur. I like how it turned out, though it is more of a rough finish than I usually do. It would be interesting to take this and render it in pen and ink, or finer pencil, or even colored pencil. She is a gray cat, so the graphite works well in terms of color for a sketch like this.