The Bengal 6 - Part Four

This is the life! My lovely husband has just made me the most luscious large, foamy cappuccino, (I knew that coffee machine pressie was a stroke of genious ;0)  ), with 3 jaffa cakes on the side; which leaves me in the ideal position to tell you about the progress with the Bengal 6.

So when we last spoke I had just started on Spirit.  Since then, I have completed the Open University assignment that is due tomorrow and had time to get out the pencils!  So you can see from this shot that I carried on building up the layers in Spirit's body fur.  He has such amazingly rich markings that he almost glows.

Here's a closer look - I love this alert expression that he has - almost like he's about to pounce on you!
At this point I also started to add some shadow and depth under and around him.
I should mention that these images were taken with my iPhone!  John (hubby) was doing a lecture the other evening at a camera club in Kempston and it was such a beautiful evening that I decided to go along and take my work with me so that I could sit in the car and do it, but I forgot to take my camera.

Anyway they are not too bad, maybe a little grainy, but you get the idea.

This image makes me smile.  It shows an almost finished Spirit - I say almost because in both shadow and Spirit the whiskers are missing.  These are usually the last things to add and it's amazing the difference they make.  I always have to stop myself adding them at this stage because invariably I'll want to strengthen the background or shadows which means going over any whiskers that are in the way.  I smile because in this shot you can just see a 'naked' Carminah peeping in - looks like she's saying "What about me?"

Now it's Inca's turn. 

The base colour coat for the eyes is first then the underpainting for the blocks of colour in the face.

















Comparing these two images you can see how brave you have to be with these areas of colour.  The raw Sienna colour is aptly named as it does seem quite raw on it's own, but by the time the graphite tail is added on top everything begins to calm down a little.

You can see the difference here that the darker top of the head and detail over the Sienna makes.  You can also see here that I've started to add a suggestion of colour to Inca's body.

This is the wider shot that I took just before I added the detail to Inca's head, but you can see how the whole is starting to pull together with the background and shadows slowly starting to build.
I'm off to finish Inca now and start on the kitten. 

I'm sure that space between the kitten and Spirit is crying out for a toy!

Take care all

Jilly x