Cat painting finished!

SOLD

Rose Queen  © 2012 by Karen Mathison Schmidt, Louisiana artist

7 x 5 inches • acrylic on GessobordTM

private collection • Jacksonville, Florida

Before I did the illustrations for Amy’s book, it had been a while since I had used acrylic for an entire painting. I decided on acrylic for those illustrations because, just in case my client wanted any adjustments or changes, I wanted to be able to make them easily and quickly. I loved that process so much that I’ve decidd to do a few more all-acrylic paintings, starting with this one.

Here are my work-in-progress photos ...

First, glazes of Hooker’s green on the pillow, cushion and eyes, magenta on Bailey’s body, and vermilion on the chair ...

... followed by glaze layers of Phthalo blue in certain areas, Dioxanine purple on the bottom of the chair, and vermilion on the cushion and pillow.

When adding the finishing layers, as usual I start with the eyes (notice that her right eye is a little darker than her left, because the daylight is streaming in softly from the right edge of the painting) ...

 ... and work my way out from there, lightening the lightest areas up gradually ...

 ... bit by little bit.

As I went along, I constantly assessed which parts of that vivid underpainting I wanted to leave showing. I left a good bit more than I usually do, especially on Bailey’s body and face, because I was liking the overall effect.

After I finished painting the chair, I added a glaze of Cadmium yellow light just on the right edges, along with the top right corner of the pillow and some of the highlights on the roses, and on the wall at the top right of the painting, just to suggest a sunny glow coming in from the right. And last I lightened up her whiskers, added just a couple of brushstrokes of the palest yellow white on her chest blaze, and used a frosty white glaze to lighten up the background of the rose pillow. It gives it a kind of a frosted glass look which I like

By the way, the pillow in the photo wasn’t covered with roses. I added those to give the setting a more cottage-y feel. And that’s it for the progress on this one!

Happy painting!