Now don’t be frightened, this is FAR from what the portrait will look like completed! 😀

In case you’re wonderin’, I’ll explain a little bit about how I do this. I start with the blank canvas in front of me, and the photos of who I’m painting, and start with the very first layer of color, the foundation color that I can see in the photographs. When you look at a piece of fur, from the root to the tip there are several shades. I start with what I see as the deepest layer, sometimes I see that the skin is visible, and I start there. This layer is the underpainting. From there, I build up. Layering the skin tones by deepening more, lightening more. Building layers of fur. The last things I paint are the things that are physically closest to you, the whiskers, the hair in the cats ears. In W’s case, the slight flyaway’s in her hair, her eyelashes, eyebrows, bangs. What you are seeing now is what I will build from, and I will paint over every inch of what is already here a couple more times to give it dimension and life.

So as strange as my works-in-progress seem, I hope it is giving you more interest in how my paintings come to life rather than freaking you out!

Ok here they are…