The Bengal 6 Part Two

So how do you agree on a layout for 6 cats in one composition when you have a portfolio full of images and infinate possibilities?

For me the answer is Photoshop.  It's a great tool for quickly and easily pulling a composition together to show to a client.  I started out by selecting what I thought would be the best images to work with - you saw those in my last post.  With Photoshop you can build up your composition in layers, a bit like a scrapbook except with no glue!

These are the first two layouts I tried.

I sent both to Tracey and Steve to see what their comments were.  Like me, the guys favoured layout 2 with a couple of tweaks.

We spent 30 minutes on the phone one evening moving cats around and trying different images.

Our biggest issue had been getting a good shot of Carminah the kitten, but we solved that with the 'jiggery-pokery' that I mentioned in the last post.

Eventually we decided that this would be our layout:

With Shadow & Spirit looking into the picture from the left and Jasper & Sonnet holding it all together on the right, we felt that this was the right balance.

So....next comes al the hard work.

This will be pastel on velour, so my next step was to create the overall sketch on watercolour paper, the only paper I had that was large enough for the sketch.  Although you can't see the scale here, the piece of velour that I'm working on is 70cm x 50 cm. So quite large to do justice to such a family.  You can just see the corner of the A4 reference sheet in the top left.
Next to transfer the drawing to the velour:

This bit always amazes me because it looks so flat!  Then suddenly when you start on the eyes, animal start to appear out of the paper...

I will start on Shadow in the top left hand corner, so that I'm not resting on work previously done...then the rest of the boys in the back row will follow.

Thats all for now... part three with Shadows eyes in a few days.