Tribute to Bonnie

Rick's birthday is coming up, and I want it to be special.  He had complained that his very favorite picture of Bonnie was of such poor quality that it couldn't be blown up at all, so I decided to make a thing.  This picture is special because it looks like she's about to let out a signature "merf!" as she demands that you do her bidding.

* Warning: crappy pictures ahead.  I need to take a real pic outside in the sunlight or som'n. Or find a program with color correction capabilities. *

Disclaimer: yeah, I went to art school.  Yeah, I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.  But, somehow, I managed to avoid all painting classes and so I have never actually made a painting on canvas before.  I have done watercolors, even gouache on board, but never a real painting.  I just need to get that out of the way.  :)

So, I started making my thing.  With no idea of what I was doing, I jumped into my thing.  I decided on an acrylic thing since I didn't want to have to deal with thinner, fumes, and long drying times.  I started over with all supplies from pro-quality paints to brushes to a palette to an easel.  I decided to use gallery-wrapped canvas in 16"x20".  But, first, the pencil sketch.

Then on some youtube thing I learned about putting a wash on to serve as a background color and lock the pencil down.  Didn't work too well.  Still a thing.

I decided to do a black background, and so blocked that mother in on my thing.  This is the only time I'll show the picture it was based on, however, as I have the bad habit of trying to discern differences when I see another artist do it and I'm too insecure for that.  So, there it is, under the thing.

Then, why not, eyes.  It's starting to be less of a thing and more of a Boo.

I started to do the fur.

And I hated it.  What am I doing?  I know nothing about this.  It's going to suck.  I'm so stupid to even try.  Is that even what her tail looked like?  I don't know.  I'm such a sham.  Why did I blow so much money on supplies?

The reference picture was just so poor that I couldn't see anything and was terrified that I would get something fantastically wrong.  After freaking out in Anne-Marie's kitchen (where I had been working on it on the sly), I decided to ruin the surprise and take it home so that I could get the input of he-who-knowest-her-best.

In the meantime, I picked up a book to help me out a bit.

Next, color blocking.  Sucky representations of color from here on out.  Everything is very, very yellow.

What?  I have no red paint?  Grrr.  Gotta go pick some of that up.  Sigh.  Tick tick tick tick tick tick.  There, now I have red.  I continued blocking in and refining.

I then started the fur.

At this point I was getting quite discouraged again, thinking how amateurish it looked.  Next I broke up the edges so that they weren't smooth, and added depth to the greys with darker colors.

The textured edges were a profound improvement over smooth.

So, this leaves us with tonight.  I realized she was too dark, so I needed to lighten the greys.  I also worked on the eyes, reshaping and recoloring them a little.  Then, I textured the tan areas, and finally added the whiskers.

Whew.

Knowing that I'm my worst critic, I'm actually happy with it considering how much the source image sucked and the fact that I never did anything like this before, nor knew what the hell I was doing.

I'll have to get pictures of it in better light, and hope that I don't come down in the morning, look at it, and decide it's complete bullocks.