07/05/2025
This was a really tricky commission for three reasons, firstly the client wanted two full body portraits on one A3 sheet, which is much harder than just headshots, secondly they are both cats, so small features, fine hairs, tiny noses, and thirdly....THAT FLOOF.
How the heck to convey the shape texture softness colour direction density length and thickness of so much fur on two such different characters?!
I didn't take nearly enough progress pictures but there's enough to see how i build it up.
First, put the images together how i want them to appear on the page, try and get relative size correct, and colour pick the main colours I'm going to need. This is not exhaustive, more a visual reminder that the shadows are not just one colour.
I started on the white cat just because it was on the left, and i thought it would be fairly quick, as i could leave the white and just fill in the shadows. Reader i was wrong. This fur was so thick and wavy and floofy, i ended up with almost no pure white paper left, and actually every bit of it being pale yellow, pale blue, pale grey, pale brown, pale pink etc, until the overall look was right.
One thing to note for anyone sending reference pictures for multiple pets, is that the fur reflects colour and light, so a pet in a dark room is going to look very different to a pet by a window, or outside. Ideally, all reference needs to be fairly similar light levels, but that's not always possible, especially with cats, as they don't always want their picture taking...
Once i finished the white cat, i started the long haired tabby. The face seemed fairly straight forward, but once i got to the chest, and the floof, and the grey brown, with white, and tan, and stripes, and floof, and the layers of different lengths, and did i mention floof? Oh my gosh i had to lie down for a bit.
After I'd recovered from the absolute drama, i put in the pupils, as they would bring it into focus a bit, and sometimes you can tell how dark your mid tones are going to need to be until you do a tiny bit of darkest darks.
Then i had to suck it up and just start drawing floof. It was very dense, many layers, much pondering on how to make a clump push forward more, or settle back a bit. Sometimes the ref has part of the cat in soft focus, which can help, but even with that, it was a challenge to get the whole cat looking like a real 3D furry cat. I don't know how i did it tbh.
It was a marathon, not a sprint, but I was so happy with the results, and i learned a lot about long fur.
I am actually considering pastel pans as a base layer, or pastel pencils maybe, as i think Coloured Pencils make it hard to keep the highlights, and pastels let you drop them in last. hmm.
If you have any slightly malevolent beautiful floofballs in your life, my commissions list still has a few free spaces, so drop me a DM.
