Hi, this is Eric from Cafe Watercolor.
Thank you for joining me in another painting demo.
So last month we adopted two cats from the animal shelter,
and this is one of them.
She is just a few months old kitten.
Her name is Nekomata, which is Japanese name,
but it's named after a anime character
that my kids really like.
So there we go, if you're wondering about what that name is.
So anyways, this is a relatively small painting,
but I still started with a line drawing sketch.
And in the beginning of the video,
you might see me try to measure the head and the body
just so I can get a basic proportion of the cat.
So I am not very familiar with the anatomy of cat,
so I can only try to analyze what I see into structures.
So hopefully it will look as solid as possible.
So the beginning of the sketch is just me drawing
very loosely, very lightly,
and just get the basic proportion
and the size and position down.
So now I'm a little bit sure about the drawing.
I switch to a mechanical pencil and start to draw
a little bit more detail,
make the line a little bit cleaner.
So I start with the features:
the eye, the nose, and the mouth.
And I apologize for the camera movement.
I see the camera joint is a little bit loose
that's why it's starting to kind of slide down a little bit.
So it is a little bit tricky angle for the head
because the cat is actually looking up a little bit
and a little bit off the camera.
So I really try to capture that angle.
And now we're down at her paws.
So I try to make it a little bit dimensional.
That's why you see me starting to draw the upper plane
and the side planes have to paws.
So that's something that's very, very important.
You always want to sync in terms of the 3D structures.
When you're looking at a photo,
especially an animal or a portrait as well,
you want to make it into a three dimensional object
in a three dimensional space.
That's going to help you to make it look more dimensional,
look a little bit more solid as well.
So I cleaned up the line a little bit with my kneaded eraser
and I premixed some colors that I need for the first wash.
So the first wash for this pet portrait
is pretty much the same as my any other painting right now.
It's just the color of the light.
So pretty much the light value.
I will leave out a little bit of the white
because I want some highlights on the left,
but here's a very important thing.
The white part of her fur, I actually paint some value in.
So there is a little bit of cool gray there
with cerulean blue and alizarin crimson
because even though the fur may be white,
but it is not directly lit.
So it has a little bit of shadow in it.
So if you kind of squint your eyes,
it can be a little bit hard to see,
but I'm painting the first value,
which is sort of a high light value.
But the highlight is the part that I actually left white.
So I am just painting the overall color of the light here.
So the highlight on the left,
but also I'm doing a lot of wet on wet with my cool gray
and also my warm color
because she also has some warm furs and stuff.
So for the tail, I give it a little bit of the dark
in the end.
And now, while I still can I connect the shape
with the shadow, the cast shadow from the cat,
so that everything can be sort of connected.
And now the first wash is dry,
it's time for me to come back in.
And now I'm painting the second wash,
which is actually the middle value
of this specific painting.
This is actually quite a tricky scenario
because the cat is actually pretty well lit.
We've got a strong lighting on the left.
That's why we get some highlights,
but even in the shadow side,
there is still quite a bit of light there.
So the value is actually not that strong in contrast.
So my middle value is actually considered pretty light
compared to most of my other paintings.
But the important thing is, again,
try to connect as much as possible
even though they're different color furs and stuff,
try to connect them as much as you can.
I'm also paint the eye in, which is not nearly dark enough,
but we can come back in and paint darker value later.
The key now is try to connect as much as I can.
So I didn't do a value study for this one,
but the concept is pretty much the same.
You want to simplify the value as much as possible
so that it can be a very simple read.
So zoom it out again.
You can start to see a little bit sense of lighting now.
So I continue the wash down into the cast shadow
on her chest.
So there's a little bit of cast shadow
from her head to the chest.
And even though we already paint some values
during the first wash,
but I actually want to make it into a middle value
so we can have a little bit more contrast.
And I'm also painting the orange part of her fur.
It's very tempting to make the orange part of her fur
darker than the white part of the fur.
And it does really appear that way,
but if we want to simplify the value,
try to make them as close as possible
so you don't have a lot of different values jumping around
because our job here is try to create
the three dimensional form of this cat.
So if we just paint what we think we understand
from the color information,
and not thinking about overall value and the lighting,
the painting can become very spotty very, very fast.
So here I'm painting the tail area very, very dark,
just because we can have a value reference
about how dark we can go.
But if we look at the overall painting right now,
we actually have a good sense of lighting already.
And this is contributed by connecting the shape
as much as possible.
And now we can come back in with the dark.
So I started with the eye because that's definitely
some of the darkest part of the painting.
But again, I don't want to paint everything
just completely black.
There's still some subtle value changes here.
So I use a little bit of water, just some light moisture,
too soften some of the edges just to create
a kind of translucent look on the eyes.
And I actually use a little bit moisture
to bring that value out and connect that to the nose.
So her eyes and her nose and her mouth,
those are all the dark values
that we can paint in this layer.
So this is actually pretty similar to how I paint portrait,
which is I paint certain dark spot, some key areas,
and I try to connect them with a damp brush,
so that it has a different values within the same wash,
yet the shapes are mostly connected.
So the lip area, I actually want to darken the surrounding
just to add a little bit more form there.
Don't worry about her mouth starting to blend in
with the color.
We can always come back in and make some more indications.
So by now you can probably tell that I try to paint shapes
instead of individual furs,
which is really, really important
if you want to paint like this.
The last thing you want to do is to paint
all the little details that you see.
You can use different brushstrokes and wet onto wet
to interpret what you see and suggest textures and details.
But don't start to just paint a lot of details
because you want to keep that overall form and shape.
And if you paint too much detail,
if you got carried away too much,
it can actually become a distraction.
The people who is looking at your painting
might not be able to read the form as easy.
So now the cat is pretty much done.
I am going to paint the background on the left,
which is actually a very important part of this painting.
So I leave out a little bit of white
just to make it into a whisk,
but you can do that was whitewash later if you want to,
if you're not comfortable doing that.
But I use side of my brush to create a little bit
of dry brush mark on the edge of the cat.
But now, as you can see, when I paint the background in
the light pops.
Just be careful not to paint it into the cat.
I extend the background to the other ear
but that's about it.
I soften the background on the top.
And after it's dry, I start to just use the eraser
and clean up some of the lines there so it looks cleaner.
So if you squint your eyes on the painting,
you can see a pretty simple value and form,
which is what we want.
We want a good readability of our painting.
So now we can come back in and paint some more dark details
like the nose and the mouth.
And those are actually not as important as you think.
They are just little tiny details that's going to help out.
And I use a little bit of gouache on the other side
to paint some whisk.
Thank you so much for watching.
I hope you enjoyed this video and this painting.
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Thank you, and I will see you guys next time.