The masked bandit

This is the raccoon that went through Barney the Dinosaur's trash.

Once again, I used Hahnemuhle's Velour paper for this animal painting. I THINK I'm slowly (tortoise-speed slow) getting the hang of it. I did a count - this is my 8th painting on Velour paper and I'm still learning something new about it each time.

I started with the bokeh background. I now know that Velour paper is very insistent on keeping its shade - the colour of the paper will influence greatly the colours you put on top. So I used green Velour paper since I was going to have a green bokeh background. Once again, I think I have drawn too many spots. But I also know from experience that once the subject is painted in, people won't notice the background too much, so am not going to fuss about it.

I started on the raccoon by using a black NuPastel to mark in the dark areas. And then I did the eyes because that always makes me feel better that the animal will eventually look like an animal.

I decided to make the masked bandit a purple that would do Prince proud. This was the NuPastel purple I used. It's putridly bright, but when drawn on top of the green Velour, it's toned down significantly.

I used mostly Jack Richeson, NuPastel and Rembrandts for the fur. When I had coloured in to this portion, I still felt like it needed more pop. My daughter was like, "what, you think that purple is not bright enough??" Yeah, I like my colour saturation to be dialed up 100%.

 

I decided that what it needed was some pink highlights. Pink always makes everything better 💗 And then I coloured in the rest of the fur in a more mauvey tone.

Only the rocks in the foreground were left, so I picked red brown hues to complement the green background. I always use softer pastels like Sennelier, Unison and Mungyo Gallery for backgrounds and foregrounds if they don't require too much detail. I love how the soft pastels go on soooo creamily on Velour. 

I have no technique when it comes to painting nature - I basically just splash colour and hope that the values are right. In the end, it looks more like a fence than rocks, but that's ok, I'm not too bothered.

I don't think I would mind if this cutie came to rob my trash.