Feline Focus - Up Close and Personal

When I was brainstorming ideas, one that immediately popped in my head was a close up of a cat eye. I chose this because when you look closely at a cat's eye, it's so intricate and the pupil tells a lot about the cat's current mood, so I thought this would be interesting to do. I added emphasis by making the eye the focus of the piece and putting a blue color that really made it stand out, as well as putting the white lashes on the picture to brighten up around the eye. I also added a little emphasis when I put some purple pieces of fur in the hair of the cat. I chose chalk pastels as my medium because I've worked with pens, pencils, and some acrylic paints, but I wanted to try something new with the chalk. The chalk was easier to blend and add texture to for this particular project which helped make the picture come to life. I took the risk of adding the white eye lashes and the whiskers on the bridge of the nose and eyebrow last. I was nervous they wouldn't show up that well and would just blend with the other colors I had already put on. If they hadn't shown up well, the eye wouldn't have looked as realistic and defined as it does with the lashes. The whiskers were very hard to make defined so it took me a few tries until the white color really stood out. The characteristics mainly included in this piece are medium and technique. I used chalk pastels as my medium and added so many different shades of brown, black, grey, white, and even purple to create contrast in the fur, and did a bright light blue color in the eye to really grab your attention. I used a lot of crosshatching when making the fur and since the paper was brown, I had to add white before I could color the eye blue. When it was time to add the blue, I rubbed the side of the chalk against the paper instead of the end to add texture to the eye.