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A Commissioned Cat PaintingLouie and Huey
Acrylic on canvas The Initial IdeasLouie and Huey are two amazing caramel point siamese. Their owner Janine wanted a painting of them. She sent me many lovely photos to work from. The boys obviously love going out into the garden and are really outdoor types.
I did a series of sketches looking at a possible pose of the two of them together as well as ideas for individual portraits of each of them. As they both have striking faces I thought two head and shoulder paintings might work better than one of the two of them curled up together. Louie sniffing the air is an unusual pose and Huey looking directly at us makes a strong painting. Janine liked the idea and we decided we should add some plants to the garden behind Louie to emphasis their love of the sun!
The Painting ProcessI started each painting with a wash of burnt sienna and mars red to set the warm tone of the fence behind them. I sketched in the main shapes and then I started on the backgrounds. Louie's portrait in particular needed quite a bit of work to get the background vegetation right. Although I did his eyes and nose in a fairly detailed way in the under painting, I knew they would be a lot darker in the finished painting.
Huey's background was much simpler. In this painting we would only have the fence, no plants, so it would contrast with Louie's painting. That meant that Huey's direct expression would be the strong point in the painting and his the eyes would be especially important. I spent a long time getting them right.
The paintings are 14x14 inches and are stretched on deep stretcher bars with the painting wrapping around the edges.
The Finished Paintings
Louie
Huey |
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