Painting for a friend

 

I have this friend who really, really loves those hairless cats. I think they look like wingless bats, and she knows that I feel this way, but she loves their adorable faces and says that they have fantastic dispositions. Her youngest is "Rob," a male that's about 5 years old. 

Last year she posted a picture of herself holding one of her cats while standing in her kitchen.  (I've blurred this picture for her privacy. )

We decided that this needed a Renaissance Madonna and Child paint treatment...which I feel better able to do now that I've completed a year of art history. 

My reference photos include this, for the background. The Renaissance was the first time that atmospheric perspective was widely depicted in painted works. 

   I isolated the background from one of those paintings using AI. 

 I started with a blank, white canvas board. I didn't bother with a mid-tone ground because I wanted the background to be bright. 

I laid in the sky and background basics, and then started on her face. As usual, I have to go back and forth, back and forth -- light, dark, light, dark, to get the transitions to look natural. 

 I am by no means a portraitist. However, I like to do them for fun now and then to keep my hand/eye skills sharp. I used Phthalo blue and some indanthrene blue for the robe - in the Reinnaisance, ultramarine blue was made by grinding lapis lazuli for pigment. It was expensive to maintain and reserved for the robes of holy figures, as in the madonna and child picture here. 

 I started working on on the cat first with some Payne's gray to put in the ears, and underpainting the shadows and wrinkles in the cat's skin. 

 Next I started laying in the color of his skin - not completely, as his coat has a bit more of a pinkish/cool hue to it. 

I'll keep adding to this post as I work on the painting.