Daily Sketch: Mewsette in Sun
Mewsette lets the warm sun wash her back while she sits and simply looks lovely.
I was in the mood for a more detailed pastel today, and decided to also use the Tiziano paper for its texture and working it out on a mid-range background instead of a white background in my sketchbook. I’ve also taken a break from pastels for a while and wanted to revisit the comfortable nature of an old friend.
I’ve been watching them in the morning sun in the kitchen, looking for shapes and colors and compositions. In these images you see as much reflected light as direct light, and while direct light is pretty reliable in tone and color, and direct sunlight generally has hard edges, reflected light takes on the color of whatever it’s reflecting from and can be very difficult to match, not because the colors are hard to determine but because you want to paint the color you think you see. In this case the direct sunlight is reflecting from both a rich pine cabinet from the left and the white floor from below Mewsette.
I was probably ready for this today because I’ve been studying her and the rest of them and seeing all these beautiful bright and subtle tones, planning my techniques and colors. I sketched her outline in black, a challenge for the angle but that was what I wanted, and made sure it was correct. She sat in the same spot but kept turning her head and moving her tail; I had to keep getting her turn her head to approximately the same angle. Then I blocked in color areas, then I blended, and reblended, and reblended again. Eventually she came out to this long after the sun had gone—it disappeared behind cloud cover quite quickly this morning—and added her whiskers from the reference photo I’d taken.
Inspired by felines you know! Visit Portraits of Animals on Etsy this Holiday Season.
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Bernadette, Don & I both love Mewsette’s portrait in pastels!
Thanks, Paulette! I’m pretty pleased with it myself the more I look at it.
Love the expression in the eyes
Susan, thank you! And I’m not even sure I caught her eyes well enough, but that is Mewsette.