Le Chat Retourne

The title translates roughly as The Cat Returns. I thought it would be fun to translate my usually boring titles to French. It sounds a whole lot better.:D

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I took the reference photo last summer during a hot, sunny afternoon when one of my cats came inside to escape the heat. After downloading the image to my PC I noticed it contained some fascinating shapes, shadows and colors. Amazingly the slice of door on the right and the cat are both white but reflected light(or lack thereof) and surrounding colors inside my home greatly changed the hues of both. Also it was interesting that the cat is casting two separate shadows...forward toward the viewer because of the light entering the window in the storm door and also to the left because of the same light reflected off the white surface of the inner door.

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For a palette I started with the three primaries, in this case Quin. perm rose, permanent yellow and phthalo blue. I later added some tinted gouache and watercolor pencil as well as Quin. violet.

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Note: I hope these images are somewhat close to the originals. I have a new OS and have struggled to adjust the colors on my old monitor.