White Kat or Walking on the Wild Side

 

White Kat

8x10 inches on illustration board

Various watercolors and prisma colored pencils

My reference photo

This time around I'm talking about mixing my media again. White Kat is a mix of watercolour and colored pencils. White Kat went over the rainbow bridge a few years ago, but her lovely almost pure white coat, remains an artistic inspiration even today!

Before getting started with my watercolors, I used a wax colored pencil (Prisma) and drew in some white whiskers spreading out from her muzzle. I first layered in a nicely dark greeny/bluey/purply watercolour wash, with just a few yellow highlights. Just for good measure I sprinkled on some salt where I wanted to highlight a bit of twigs and leaves. This left me with a lovely background to work on later. While I had the watercolors out, I ghosted in some warm highlights for her fur. I kept them warm 'cause the light on her was late afternoon, and it provided a good color contrast with the cool background.

 

 

 

Then I started to work her fur over with my Prisma colored pencils. It didn't take much as the watercolor had responded wonderfully to some lite whisking with a damp brush to indicate fur. I had a ball working in her lovely green glowing eyes, leaving just a hint of the original paper showing thru for the highlights. 

 

Finally I went back into the background with my colored pencils. I used my white colored pencil to reaffirm her white whiskers and show her fur tips against the background. The darker background watercolor washes had “stayed away” from the wax whisker lines I'd laid down in the beginning. I took just about all the dark colored Prismas I had on hand and started drawing teeny tiny dark circles on the dark background to show additional texture. The little salt sparkles, left when the salt crystals slurped up the surrounding watercolors were a perfect target for a colored pencil circle. I used slightly lighter colored pencil circles around the brighter leaves and added in a highlighted branch and wood fence post for a finish.