Thursday Night Art Jam
Cheetah Study for Cheetahs Fire Dancing commission. I worked directly from the best reference I had, the one for the cheetah that's on the far side of the fire. I'm still looking for a good pose reference for the cheetah on the near side that's wearing the bracelet, but the next step is to try doing some from imagination and just try to keep the body proportions accurate. I know how cats move. It should not be impossible to block in how she moves. I see her clearly enough in my head, it's time to go beyond that and start getting that onto paper in some form to put it all together. This study was also paying attention to the shapes of the spots, how sometimes they become elongated in certain directions by the angle of that part of the cat's body and other times rounded or blocky, and where they're placed, where they trail off to unspotted areas.
I also worked on my Alkyd Oils ACEOs in progress. I did a lot on Ari's oil portrait, everything but his whiskers is done, but I can't add them till he's dry tomorrow or they'll pick up the dark colors they're going over. He's upside down on my easel drying. So I went from working on him to using the same colors to work on my Flying Hawk WIP.
This is the one where the sky gave me headaches and had to be completely redone. Now the head is finished and detailed, along with the neck and the highlighted part of the chest. A swipe of titanium white is on the highlighted area on the tail, which will get detailed and worked into with colors. I used Burnt Umber, Paynes Grey and Titanium White so far, but have a little Raw Sienna out too so I may use some of that in the shadowed areas. The underpainting is pure Burnt Umber thinned. The sky is Ultramarine, Titanium White and Payne's Grey.