CATS IN COLOURED PENCILS

Smudge is now framed

On 25th April, I published a post about the coloured pencil drawing I did of Smudge, my hubby’s friend’s cat. I subsequently had this framed, and today we visited Tony and I was able to give him the picture. He was thrilled with it and said I had captured her expression perfectly!

I am highly delighted with the result of the framing. I got both pictures featured in this blog post framed professionally by a local art gallery.

In that previous post, I didn’t share the reference photo I used. On that visit to Tony, I took several photos of Smudge, and particularly liked this one:

but the angle of the shot wasn’t right, and the length of her body was exaggerated so that she looked almost sheep-like! I didn’t want to draw her whole body anyway, and so I cropped it down and rotated it slightly, which meant I lost a segment of background and produced a sloping floor. However, this didn’t matter as I was going to add my own background anyway.

When we visited Tony again today, I took another photo of Smudge, lying on the back of the chair with her paws dangling down, apparently a favourite pose for her!

She looks utterly exhausted, which isn’t surprising, because she had just finished a mad dash about the flat, chasing nothing, and then leaping up and tossing a load of magazines off the couch onto the floor! Apparently she gets very playful sometimes, and loves to knock things onto the floor. She is such a beautiful cat, with incredibly soft fur.

Love

This is the title I have given my other cat drawing. I actually drew this before doing the one of Smudge, but it has been hidden under wraps until today.

Today is my hubby’s 75th birthday and I drew this picture from my absolute favourite photo of him cuddling Beatrice, one of the previous generation of kitties before Lily and Ruby, our current ones. Beatrice and my hubby were joined at the heart and it was often hard to prise them apart!

This is the reference photo, taken back in August 2012. Did you ever see such blissful expressions?

This is the initial pencil sketch I made in order to begin the drawing.

I have to confess to tracing the basic outlines and main features, because I wanted the picture to be as accurate a portrayal of them as possible, particularly my hubby’s face. I shaded the darkest values as a guide. You can see that there is a missing section down Beatrice’s back, which wasn’t visible in the reference photograph.

I worked the drawing in my Faber Castell sketch pad designed for dry media (graphite, coloured pencils), and used the Amazon Basics set of wax-based coloured pencils.

The completed drawing.

You will see from the reference that the background is virtually black. I didn’t want this as it would have been too heavy, so I created my own background, mostly blue to echo the colour of my hubby’s shirt and provide some balance to the picture. I darkened it right down where it meets the figures, though, to bring them forward. Also, as you can see, the reference photo is quite dark overall, and some features were lost, so I made a temporary lighter version in my photo editing software to help place certain details. The drawing is a compromise between the two.

Here’s a close-up shot.

Finally, the framed version.

I discussed the details with the framer at the gallery, and we decided on the same frame for both drawings. This neutral grey almost lime-washed frame with an inner trim of gold was just right, and enhanced, rather than distracted from the pictures. A cream mount seemed less harsh than dead white, but the bevelled inner edge of the mount was white. I asked him to cut the mount so that the edge of the actual drawing was visible – a soft outline, exposing some of the original slightly off-white paper, as this seemed to make the picture look less “crowded” somehow, and he agreed. He followed my brief to the letter.

Both pictures came back ready to hang, and he had even put little felt pads on the bottom corners to protect the wall! He did a perfect job and I am highly delighted with the results. Here is a montage of the two framed pictures.

I am pleased to say that my hubby loves his birthday present! Now he’s got to decide where to hang it.

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