Thirty Days of Cats

As amazing as it seems (to me at least) I have now completed a cat of some sort every day for the last 30 days!

For this painting I tried something a little different.  First I sketched the face with pencil, like I always do.  But for this one I then used a Sharpie to put in the black areas.  I've never used Sharpie in my watercolors before and didn't even know if it was waterproof.  It is.

I think I understand now why the impressionists didn't believe in using black.  Since it was unrelated to any of the other watercolors in the painting, it was very hard for me to incorporate it and feel like it was a part of the painting.  I actually ended up painting over the black with the other colors.

I think it is much better to mix up a black from the colors used in the painting.  That way the black seems a part of it.  The advantage to using ink was that I didn't have to wait for it to dry like I would if it was watercolor and I was able to get started painting right away.  Also it didn't lift or blur like watercolor that's not completely dry might.

It was an interesting experiment and I think it resulted in an interesting painting of a slightly alien looking cat.