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Alice – Commission

This is a portrait of Alice, a gorgeous Bengal cat who lives with Fiona and Andy. She has a wonderful expression as she stares out through the grasses. I wonder what she is looking at?

Alice is sketched onto a 20×16 inch canvas and the under painting is started with light washes of colour. 

Then the blues of the sky and the greens on the grasses are developed. I used several different blues for the sky, Cobalt Blue, Ultramarine and Prussian Blue.  

 Finally I start work on Alice herself.

 Finishing touches are her whiskers and details in the seed heads in the grass. This is the finished painting.

A close up detail of the canvas.

This Post Has 5 Comments

  1. THIS IS ALICE’S CHIEF SLAVE HERE-DENISE,YOU HAVE AGAIN CREATED A MAGNIFICENT PAINTING FOR US-SHE IS RESIDING NEXT TO YOUR ONE OF OZZY,& AT LEAST ON CANVAS THEY ARE TOGETHER AGAIN.THANK YOU,FIONA

  2. Thanks for the kind comments. :-)

    Yes it’s nice to be back finally, after a bit of a rocky start to the year. I’m really pleased with how Alice turned out.

  3. All your “cats” are wonderful. What do you use to get the whiskers so perfect. Is it a brush with very few bristles or some other sort of tool?

  4. That’s a good question! I’ve tried all sorts of things over the years, I’ve even tried using whiskers themselves when the cats shed them. :-) Needless to say they didn’t work!

    Now I use very fine liner brushes. Of course the larger the painting the easier it is to paint the whiskers. But my best tip for painting whiskers is to have a clean, dry, small filbert or round brush to hand when you paint your fine line. If you wobble a bit you end up with kinky looking whiskers, but if you use the clean brush to gently tidy up the line you can ‘push’ the paint back into the shape it should be.

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