Kitty Part IV

We might actually finish this piece soon!  It can be difficult when there is so much detail to decide when you are "done".  We aren't there yet (as you will see), but I think we're in the home stretch!

I had a horrible flu this weekend so I didn't get to do any work on kitty here, but this morning went very well.  I have found in the past that if you aren't able to focus (even a little) on what you are doing then you will likely do more harm than good and you should leave it for now.  Today was a different story however, and I was able to make good progress.

So first of all, I tried the kneaded eraser to remove the offending arm.  Remember what I said about the green paper?  Ya, I noticed pretty quick that this wasn't the way to do it.  All I had was a green arm over a black body - not very realistic!  So instead, I went over the area with black conte (much better result) and used an eraser to re-shape the arm.  I had to go back to my reference photo for this.  And then I started applying the lights and darks.

I think the arm looks much more appropriate to the rest of the body shape now and even comes forward toward the viewer better.  Since I still had some time left over, I started putting in the lights and darks and shadows on the grass and leaves (right side of pic).  Instead of using a stump to blend the grey tones, I used an acrylic paint brush (natural hair) to sweep in the direction of the leaves.  The brush creates a much softer blending than the stump and I will be using it in my final application of fur on kitty (you can see that I've actually already done some on the new arm).

I'm not too happy with the leaves in the top left and I still have to do the shading, etc on the left side grass area, but we are in the home stretch now.  If I hold my breath and think it very quietly, I might even finish this week - but don't tell anyone ;)