Leopard

This picture is a printout of my reference picture from which my current project is being painted.  This photograph was from National Geographic by Jaque Pierre Joubert. 

 

 

Click on Picture for Better View.

 

I started mapping out the picture with Wicked detail sepia, a couple days ago.  I am using my new Micron CMC-Plus airbrush on gesso'd canvas.  This leopard has way too many spots and I got lost in the painting trying to capture them all.  So, its not an exact duplicate of the photograph.  But, that's okay, I hope to learn something from this painting.   

 

Click on Picture for a Better View.

 

So, tonight, I started working on the water area.  I created some texture underneath the water with my electric eraser.  I then added some color with a mixture of detail cobalt blue, detail blue violet and detail raw umber.  I worked on the ripples by painting the color mixture over the already painted in ripples on the right side.  I will be continuing with darker shades building the water to a very dark shade of almost black revealing only slight texture along the right side of the cat.   Building texture, color and shading.  Going slow with this one.  So far so good!