Walk with a painter

Okay folks, for a change of pace, today I’m featuring the one and only cat portrait I’ve ever done. Ladies and gentlemen…….. heeeere’s Cindy! This portrait of a Bombay was completed four years ago for our son-in-law’s father (does that make him an outlaw?) as a gift from him for Mother’s Day. I say Bombay because he wasn’t sure of the breed and after researching the Internet felt that her characteristic coat and eye color came closest to the Bombay breed. If anyone out there wants to debate this issue, be my guest!

Along with supplied photos from satisfied clients, I always spend time researching the breeds of the animal I’ve been commissioned to paint and in this particular case, attempting to capture the essence of a jet black cat, it proved very beneficial. Painting a black animal is very challenging and after two miserable failures (remember this is a watercolor!) felt that I finally nailed it! My “outlaw” friend told me to “Just splash some black paint on paper and stick two yellow blobs in the middle for eyes”! An easy way out, for sure, and I knew he was kidding but the gauntlet was thrown down and I ventured forth once again.

As with all good portraits, there is a cool side and a warm side and the trick was to make this technique work on a dark subject. Fortunately, in my collection of reference material is a series of books titled, “Masters of the Wild,” published by Briar Patch Press 20 years ago. One of these fantastic books features the paintings of Robert Abbett who spent his commercial career as an illustrator and started painting oil portraits, primarily of hunting dogs, when he retired. His paintings of Black Labs and Gordon Setters served me well as a guide for this project and other assignments. I emailed him several years ago about my pending retirement and attached a few images of dog portraits hoping he would respond. Ahh, I thought, what are the chances of someone of his caliber ever getting back to me? Holy smokes! The very next morning there was a long complimentary response from him about my work and future plans and how glad he was that I was going to pursue my artistic endeavors in retirement! WOW! MAKE MY DAY!

Encouraging words like that of Mr. Abbett and others have helped prompt me to start this blog and my intentions are to post items of interest at least twice a week. So, stay tuned and have a great and safe Labor Day weekend!