EXPERIMENTING

BIJOU

Bijou is my Russian Blue companion, and is always ready to have her 

photo taken, or a sketch drawn. I decided to experiment with this drawing. 

Step 1 - top left. I sketched her from a photo, then attempted to create

some texture in parts of the drawing by placing a piece of scrap metal screen

under the 130# paper and rubbing over it with Stockmar white beeswax. Next, I thinned

down some acrylic and did a green wash over the whole image.

Step 2 - top right. Using charcoal, I created, more or less, a value map of the cat,

then painted over everything with Golden acrylic ground for pastels as some grit

was needed to hold the pastel.

Step 3 - bottom left. Adding pastel. Hmmm. Not as happy with this as the texture

I had created in Step 1 pretty much disappeared. Maybe added pastel with too 

heavy a hand? What next?

Step 4 - bottom right. I added green to her eyes - which, indeed, are a lovely green.

I think I'm done with this particular experiment, and am, somewhat, happy with 

the result. I like the fact that I played with color, though my intent was to be much looser and free-er with the entire piece - always a struggle. I'll try another with lighter-weight paper, lighter hand with pastels, and see what transpires.