During spring break I’ve found myself with a bit of free time and took this opportunity to practice with my gouache paints, and I chose to paint my cat!

My first step I always take no matter the medium is making thumbnails of my reference before jumping to the main piece

My reference picture and my thumbnail!

Because this is just for fun I only did one thumbnail but I do plan to get into the habit of making multiple thumbnails every time I make something.

For my next step I loosely sketch out my sketch with a light color. I do this so I can force myself to think more about how I’m blocking in colors rather than making the sketch look all pretty when it’s going to get fully covered up.

From here I’ll cover my sketch with my base color, I usually gravitate to yellows and oranges and spoiler alert I do end up mostly keeping to oranges and blues because of this!

This step does not need to be perfect, it is just easier to work on a midtone, as you can map out shadows and highlights easier!

From here I block in some colors!!

After that, its all about just building on top of these building blocks and adding details.

I definitely need some more practice but I had fun!! I think I specifically will focus on painting fabrics as I ended up putting more focus on my cat.

I hope everyone had a wonderful spring break, and has a great first week back!!

– Esther k.