Find the Hidden Kitty

A kitten is the delight of a household. All day long a comedy is played out by an incomparable actor.
CHAMPFLEURY

Hidden Treasure
acrylic on Gessobord, 2013
NOTE: At the bottom of this post is a video showing the step by step transition from initial sketch to final painting.

This may look like your average geranium painting. But if you look real close you might see a kitten.
Here’s Jo. In her mischievous little kitten mind she’s completely invisible to me as I climb the stairway to the second floor landing. When I get to the top she pounces on my feet and then scampers down the hallway back into the room which at the time was serving as my studio.
A day or two after she initiated this routine I started carrying my camera with me whenever I went upstairs, in hopes of capturing the moment for a painting. Following are behind-the-scenes at the photo shoot.

Got it! 

And then, a shot of the straight-on pose I was imagining for the painting.

Of course Ray had to get into the act.

An impromptu game of King of the Stack of Decorative Storage Boxes ensued.

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And here are my step-by-step painting progress photos:
NOTE: At the bottom of this post is a video showing the step by step transition from initial sketch to final painting.

First, I drew the sketch with a graphite pencil and loosely went over it with black acrylic.

I blocked in color for the underpainting using transparent acrylic glazes (paint mixed with acrylic medium).

After the first layer of color was dry, I added a transparent layer of burnt sienna everywhere except the background wall and the center leaf, which I kept bright rose red at this point. I choose colors for the underpainting based on what I imagine I want showing through for the finished painting. I wanted that geranium leaf to have some intense red accents in the end. And for Jo, who in real life was sort of “tuxedo-calico,” I wanted to use the underpainting colors of deep sienna red to peek through her black and white tuxedo.

Starting to add some opaque color to kitty Jo: brightest whites and darkest blacks. These days I don’t usually use black on my palette, but here I used Mars black. Also blocked in the light behind Jo, and her shadow in the foreground, keeping it nice and loose. Just a little triangle of light at the bottom left of her shadow helps define the shadow cast by her tail.

In keeping with the fun, playful feel I wanted for this, I didn’t concern myself too much with Jo’s details, but used color kind of like bits of confetti for her markings. And just a few loose strokes get across that mischievous twinkle in her eyes. You may also have noticed in the previous pic that I added the tip of her tail, which was not showing in my initial sketch, to indicate that playful switching of a cat’s tail in anticipation of a pounce!

For flowers that are made up of multiple smaller blossoms on each bloom, like geraniums or hydrangea, I like to start with a darker color for the base layer of the entire bloom, and then add the smaller areas of color on top of that, keeping each slightly separate, but with some lost and found edges to keep it interesting. Here you can also see how I let the bright red of the underpainting peek through on the dark green leaf.

Here I added opaque color to the blue flower pot, using the sienna in the underpainting for the definition of the design carved into the pot. In a couple of spots, after the blue/teal color was dry, I added a touch of transparent yellow glaze to sunny it up a bit. Little bitty touches of pink (magenta and white), green and buttery yellow help to keep the pot from being too monochrome, and deeper blue helps to define the shadowy area under the rim and the overhanging leaves. You can see by comparing the reference photo to the painting that when painting an impressionist representation of these pots I don’t worry too much about making the design on them exactly like the design in real life, but more a feel of the design. Even though the painting is not a photographic depiction of the actual pot, my goal in the illustration is that if you walked into my house and saw these pots sitting on my coffee table you would say, “Hey! Those are the flower pots in that painting!”

Finished the flowers, the empty pot and background vase ... signature ... and done!

Happy Painting!