What I am working on Now-Cat in Watercolor
This cat! I saw a picture of this fellow and had to try to paint him. So, I asked for permission from his owner to sketch and paint him. Here is my progress so far on creating the likeness of McGregor, the handsome one.
McGregor is my second attempt at painting a cat. My first cat watercolor painting is from a tutorial by Louise De Masi. She is my watercolor guru. I follow her techniques as much as my untrained eye can. Links to her website tutorials can be found on my links page. I signed up for her classes on Patreon and Skillshare after first finding her on YouTube. She gives shortened demonstrations on YouTube of her painting techniques and studies. Patreon and Skillshare offer full length videos of her tutorials. It's is a membership site but the cost is minimal and I find, well worth it. Her tutorials on Patreon average 60 to 120 minutes. She breaks the longer lessons down into two segments and gives a list of all of the paint colors, paper type, size, etc in her lessons. I don't follow them to the letter, if I don't have a particular color that she uses, then I mix my own. (Mixing my own watercolors is a bit of trial and error on scrap paper). I like her Skillshare lessons the best simply because they are broken down into bite size pieces of 5 to 10 minute segments. Sometimes when my schedule gets busy, a few minutes may be all I have but it still allows for a few Zen moments in my day. It is whatever works best for you though. The longer lessons on Patreon can be stopped and started easy enough. I do that on all my paintings. A lesson that is two hours long takes me days to complete. If you are experienced in watercolor and sketching, the free tutorials may be all you need.
Here is the cat tutorial by Louse Di Masi that I completed. The reference photo taken by Engin Akyurt came from Pixabay and can be found here https://pixabay.com/photos/cat-animal-white-feather-5328304/
This particular tutorial is found on Patron under creator Louise Di Masi.
I used an inexpensive set of Paul Reubens watercolor paints. They come in tubes and by mixing a little at a time, they last a very long time. To get started, you can view the set here: https://amzn.to/2SyOs8y
The watercolor block that I am currently using is Arches cold pressed 300 lb 100 % cotton. It comes in 10 sheets and can be found here: https://amzn.to/36Ao7PO
I currently enjoy using the watercolor paper that comes in a block of 10 or more sheets. It reduces the need for stretching the paper unless I am doing a lot of wet on wet technique. I have about used up all of these sheets and will be needing to purchase more of the 9 x 12 size soon.