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Nothing more appealing (to some) than a sad, stray kitten, abandoned by all. However, this really is not the point of the study!
I tried the Luminance colored pencils, rather than my usual Prismacolor Premier. It is a totally different experience using them, but not better or worse. I decided to just play with the pencils, not aiming for anything other than just experience. I used a grey-brown Mi Teintes paper and a picture from Pixabay. I laid in a number of layers, ending with a brush and Gamsol (odorless mineral spirits), followed by a few quick lines for whiskers.
Poor kitty, but I didn’t stop there, either. After scanning the image, I really didn’t like the roughness of the cat’s fur. In post, I dropped the black a bit and blurred them together. This made the kitten more opaque. I also pushed colors a bit – don’t remember what I did – and ended up with a picture I prefer to the original. The poor kitty also has lopsided eyes – how pathetic is that?
Anyway, original is below. What do you think? Each has its merits, IMHO.
Journey by Paper 
Somehow the eyes look wrong, and there’s no hint of nose or chin or mouth. So I am not keen on this one. I did think it would look great without the weird eyes as it would be a view from the back of the cat and you can imagine what it’s looking at. Keep trying though!
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I did mention the eyes were crap! They are. The nose sort of disappeared. It is from a photo of a backlit kitten, and really, no nose or a touch of blue for it. The eyes in the photo were very round. Altogether a meh picture!
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It’s the practice that counts, and you don’t do many meh ones that’s for sure!
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Thanks, Fraggy, for the words of encouragement. The point was to use different colored pencils to see how they worked. I really appreciate your observations and comments, so don’t feel like I was offended. We all have to do exercises to learn (and to stay in shape!). In fact, I haven’t painted on my Tanglewood acrylic and in a bit here will be heading out to class to work on it – I really want it to work out. I have my blog on my iPad so I can see the other versions and the original photo – I can see why you like the watercolor – it is really light and airy despite the overgrowth. Maybe I can catch it – or the murk of the leaf mould . . . 😉
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