Happy Valentine’s Day!
This piece, Lilac Eyes, was a commission of Debby Frederickson’s cats. She had beautiful antique lilac bushes in her yard and she wanted them incorporated into the painting. These lilac bushes inspired the palette for Lilac Eyes.
Here is a fun fact about the cats’ eyes in the painting. I had the painting drawn out and I went in to get my hair done at a local salon. I met a lovely stylist and one of her eyes was half turquoise and half hazel. I thought that it would be a great idea to run a grid through the cats’ eyes and make them multi-colored.
In order to do this I broke up the space in an irregular grid and kitty-cornered (no pun intended) some interesting colors through their eyes. That plus the black and white in the cats’ coloring made this piece particularly fun.I don’t use black paint in my watercolors, instead I use multiple dark colors and set them next to each other to make “colorful darks”. It was necessary to apply the “black” fur colors quickly to get a fuzzy look. When I did, I missed a little area, but decided to leave it as it looked like a heart.
Ellen
