A fellow group member lost his cat a little while ago. I wanted to paint it for him as a keepsake. As I painted, I thought of my own cat, Sanmu. Sanmu is getting older too, and sometimes I think about the day I will have to say goodbye.

The portrait with a digital frame

Getting used to the paper again

For the first half hour, perhaps an hour, I struggled. I usually paint on fine-grained paper, and I had not used Arches cold-pressed paper in a while. Color looks different on it than on the Baohong paper I have been using. A finer surface might have felt more comfortable under my brush.

I have mostly painted landscapes lately. I had a sense of how I wanted this cat to look, but my hand was out of practice. A stroke would land a little differently from what I expected.

The painting on my desk

Finding my way back, one stroke at a time

This uncertainty is part of what I enjoy about watercolor. It reminds me of working with AI. I look at what is there, decide what still feels off, and try another stroke or another color. On a painting this size there is room to make adjustments. Eventually the cat began to look the way I had hoped. I painted the whiskers with a small brush and Paul Rubens white ink, and used the same ink for the catchlights in the eyes. I like how it turned out.

Materials

This is only my second or third painting with the Whiskers Plus Floral Set of 24. The paint was easy to pick up and lay down. I still need more time to get to know these colors and their mixtures. The pink behind the cat is Daler-Rowney colored ink. I used Arches cold-pressed 300 gsm watercolor paper and a Princeton size 6 round, with a smaller brush for the whiskers. I used Snapseed and VOUN for the finished presentation.