Blog for Shirley Lawrence Bellows

Hi Everyone:

I am so grateful to a cat that posed for me in Victoria one day. I just loved his black chin and white mustache. Here is the sketch on black paper.

I always start with the eyes on a portrait and after a few test ones, I have the eyes nearly complteted. For the coat, since I am doing it with Coloured Pencil and started with just some gray and white pencils:

However, the look seemed so boring that I put this away for a few months. Then there was a post on WetCanvas.com where a lady was doing a Dachshund portrait and she was using multiple colours for the black of the coat. It really inspired me so I did some testing on black paper and then decided to use the colours on this cat portrait. Have a look here:

You can see how the colours liven up the entire cat! In person, the colours seem to shimmer and given an iridescent look to the coat. I am now working on the rest of the cat in the same way.

I have now continued with the multiple colours and here is the next stage:

To continue with this work, here is the next stage: