Cat an Urban Jungle

Started this big silvery grey tabby last night. His name is Thomas Big Eater. Painted in oils, the canvas measures 24 x 18 inches (60.79 x 45.72 cm) As with all my works, it's free-hand drawn directly on the canvas with brush and paint. Here I've posted a couple photos of it in-progress. This painting took off very quickly once I started getting a build-up of linear marks, which I always like in a painting anyway. So at that point it started moving along very quickly. The motivation for the composition was that this big cat is staring straight out at you as he walks across the lawn --- he seems to have an "I own the place" attitude about him. It made me think of jungles and so I invented a "backyard jungle" of iris for the painting. His eyes are a minty luminous green but at this stage (and also still in the second photo below) I only suggest the eyes. They will be painted fully once more of the rest of the painting has progressed more.

By the next photo (below) I'd started adding some greens where leaves may be and lightened the iris, starting to build up their forms. My intent is to have them be white iris or perhaps one white iris and the remainder in blue. Hmm. Or maybe reddish. I'll decide that in the next painting session.