Baxter portrait in progress 6 - Pink-grey looks white?

Baxter’s golden coat finished. Tomorrow I’ll do his white front paws.

It’s funny, this is on “moonstone” paper, which is a pinkish grey — the color behind his head, and showing through on his paws…but with those darker colors around them, his paws look white, don’t they?

This is how my studio set-up looked after I finished Baxter’s head and started working my way down his body from the neck a few days ago. His front paws look "white" in this pic too. But you can see by the paper color against my white table-top that paper is definitely not white.