This is painting is for Janelle Dixon for the Pet Portrait Show. This is her newest member of the family - Missy, a 12 year calico cat that belonged to a family member who recently moved and couldn't take Missy with her. In the reference photo, Missy is hiding under a VCR table and you can see on her face that Missy was still in the throes of the "New Home Blues" at the time the photo was taken.

I chose to use watercolour and a bit of white acrylic paint so that I could use a light feathering-in strokes from the dark areas into the light areas. The black I used is a combination of ultramarine blue and raw umber for the "lighter" black areas around the eyes and the tail, and added a titch of payne's grey to the mixture to create a juicier black for the hair on the ears and some texturing in the fur, again, around the eyes, tail and the patch on her back.