Winnie Portrait Start

Tonight is the portrait start of Winnie our beloved and regal cat that passed away a few months ago.

This post is not going to be published until after Christmas because this should be a wonderful gift to my wife. She is away until Christmas night and I will surprise her with it when she returns.

The photo I chose was taken with my iPhone in our old apartment and it was lit through a window of natural day light. I had a ton of pictures of this one scene so I had a lot of shots to chose from.

After choosing the shot I liked most I began editing the colors and values in photoshop a bit to prepare for printing. I printed the photo 4 times before I arrived at the right balance. Then I printed a fifth photo of the scene after passing it through the cutout filter in photoshop. This removed most of the detail from the photo so I could focus on the basic shapes and adjust the composition a bit more while doing a thumbnail.

I like this portrait start setup of Winnie a lot because there are many compositional elements that work well. Most of the lines in the painting point to the center of interest which is her head and bright green eyes. I’m excited about continuing on this painting so I can’t wait to start in with more detail tomorrow. There are still many drawing concerns I have but I will fix those along the way.