High Alert - XPost on A&W

[Orchid Lady]

This is a piece I just finished today. It's a Bobcat that I photographed in Montana when I was there a couple of months ago. It's mostly Prismacolors and some Luminance, 9"X12" on La Carte Pastel card. I wanted to experiment using the La Carte and to practice doing fur and this piece is the result. I haven't put any fixative on it yet, so C&C's are welcome and appreciated! Hopefully my camera hasn't washed out the image...I find it hard to correct the colors to the way they are on the actual piece :o
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/13-Aug-2010/172573-High_Alert_1.jpg

[robertsloan2]

This is beautiful! I love that cat's expression. Massive, powerful, fluffy, gorgeous bobcat. Interesting warm shadows in the snow under the cat, they make it look as if the light's very warm. La Carte is gorgeous paper as long as you don't sneeze.

[aphid dew]

The fur looks good to me. Texture & colors look just like a bobcat's fur. How wonderful it must be to see Montana & take photos!
Suzanne

[cjc45]

The only thing I'd recommend would be to crop the background little, it seems like too much dark for a sweet little kitty! Great fur.

[ladypainter]

This is beautiful work. I can feel the strength in this cat and also the softness of his coat.How lucky to see an animal like this out in the wild.

[Orchid Lady]

Thank you Suzanne, CJ, Elinor and especially Robert Sloan, because he thought my rocks were snow! I decided to rework the rocks to be more rock-like and I'm happier with the result. So here's the piece with new rocks -- what do you all think?
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/14-Aug-2010/172573-High_Alert_2.jpg

[TessDB]

Lovely work, Linda!
I'm wondering if you might want to go just a wee bit further here & there in the fur? On my monitor, I'm not seeing much definition of his (her?) shoulder/chest/neck. I'm wondering if adding just the smallest bit of a value difference in those areas might help.

I hope you don't mind, I went ahead & pulled your image into ps so I could show you what I was thinking:

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/15-Aug-2010/46497-ElinorBobcat.jpg

Just a little bit of a darker value to pick out those white fluffy hairs on his shoulder, just a tiniest bit more in the chest area to help define the front of his leg, and just the smallest bit on his neck to help show where shoulder stops and head begins. See it?
It's really subtle, 'cause all you need is just the tiniest bit of tweaking-- at least, that's what your pic & my monitor are telling me-- look on the real thing and see if you agree.

If you make any changes, I hope you'll share!
Rosemary

[Orchid Lady]

Thanks, Rosemary! I see what you you mean about defining the shoulder and leg area. I'll see if I can tweak some fur color there without messing up the white fur. Sometimes I lose the definition of the fur if I tweak too much.
Elinor and Suzanne - I should add that the photos I took in Montana (as a reference for this Bobcat) are of "captive" animals. I went to the Triple D Gamefarm and they have a large number of wild animals on their 50+ acres. I was attending a photography workshop there and the handler took this Bobcat to a large compound (someone's large ranch) and then let him run around for about 11/2 hours so the photographers could photograph him. The handler would make sounds and throw him bits of meat to reward him and get him to go pose on the rocks or on the logs in the area. He seemed to be enjoying himself, but this was a set-up photography session, and that's why I was able to get so close and get pretty good detail in the fur of this piece.

[TessDB]

It doesn't need much-- just a whisper touch here & there. If you're nervous, do some practice bits before you touch the real thing!

Good luck!
Rosemary

[Orchid Lady]

Thanks for the help, Rosemary!
I'm in the stages of trying to compose my next piece and I'm thinking of using one of these little cuties for my main subject: either the baby bobcat or the young raccoon. I now have a lot of my own reference photos to choose from! :D
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/16-Aug-2010/172573-Baby_Bobcat_1.jpg
http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/16-Aug-2010/172573-Raccoon_Baby_1.jpg