Cat 41

Cat 41: Cat Nap.
Acrylic on Masonite. 12" x 12".

I wanted a very fluid, curvaceous photo to work from, and found one of Lizzy napping on the bed.
I also made a point of trying to work with some colors that I don't use often, to see what I can discover. Here I used violet, ochre and raw sienna, cooled down with ultramarine blue.
After the initial drawing I covered the board with various mixtures of the colors, with the intention to loose any pure white areas. I wanted to build in the whites later. I thought I'd leave the background on this as ambiguous fabric, but in the end, I added the stripe pattern.

Editing through shots I've taken of finished works, I'm noticing that I prefer the under exposed darker shots to the more accurate shots of the picture. This leads me to think I'm over using the light values and white.

I am also mulling over the rigid quality of the previous painting, and how to modify that direction. I would like to see more variation using both soft edged and hard edged forms, instead of everything being in sharp focus. The obvious would be to soften out some or all of the edges as they occur. That is pretty much how my vision is anyway- my eyesight tends to fuzz and blend the edges of forms. Another problem might be that I don't stop when I should, and keep adding to the surface.