"Three Cats on Stairs" portrait in progress 3 - Eyes standing straight up

Working on the upper cat, Grace, in Tammy's portrait of “Three Cats on Stairs”.

I had to make a composite of her head from different photos. When I questioned Tammy about the expression on Grace’s face and the position of her ears, Tammy wrote,

“Very nice. Grace actually stands her eyes straight up when she is on alert, so that's good.”

I thought that was an interesting way to describe it. Grace is definitely standing her eyes straight up! I saw that in her other photos too. It’s important to capture behavior characteristics in a portrait as well as physical characteristics.

In my last post I showed the staircase which was done entirely with watercolor, an “underpainting” on the grey paper. The cats and all the stair detail will be colored pencil. All three cats are black and white.

🎨 Prismacolor pencil on “Flannel Grey” Canson Mi-Teintes paper, 20 x 26 inches.

“Three Cats on Stairs” (Grace, Bonnie, and Morgan)

Commissioned by Tammy Cunningham.