Animal watercolor: portrait of a cat

I created this painting of our pet cat for a Christmas gift for my daughter. I think the most challenging part of the process was getting our cat to sit still long enough to get a photo of her! Once I had the photo, I worked directly from the photo to create the painting. To create the  texture of the fur I added some white back in. I love the eye color that I got. It really captures her actual eye color. I am always challenged with mixing accurate colors. Working with landscapes, nature colors are much more forgiving, while portrait colors are not.  The rest of the cat's coloring was easy since it is just black and white!
This will probably be the first of many animal paintings....