Cat Portrait Painting

SUPPLIES & TOOLS:

• Photo of Cat for Reference
• Canvas
• Acrylic Paint
• Medium and Detail Brushes
• Water and Paper Towels for Clean Up
• Pencil

DIRECTIONS:

1. On your canvas lightly draw out the layout of your portrait, start by roughly drawing out the circle for the cats head and filling in the bust for placement. The rough layout does not need to have details.
2. Once the rough outlines are in place use the photo for reference to start laying out where the details will be on your cat. Add the eyes, mouth, ears and note the features of the cats face. Move onto making a more human approach to the bust and adding fun elements like a scarf and sweater.
3. Start filling in the background color and base colors of your portrait. You will want to build your paint from the background to the foreground.
4. Once you have the background and base layers painted start adding in more details. You can approach your painting with a more realistic approach or keep it more loose and painterly.

JOANN HACKS:

• If you need help with free handing your layout you can blow up your reference photo to the size you want it on the canvas, color on the back of the photo with a graphite pencil. Place the reference photo face up on the canvas so the graphite is on the canvas and then trace the outlines of the cats features, this will leave reference lines onto your canvas.
• Adding highlights (the little white dots) to your eyes will add a more realistic look and more dimension.
• Painting when the paints are wet will give you more blending. Letting the layers dry between coats will give you more of a crisp line and less blending. Choose whichever method is best for that area of the painting.