Farewell to a furry friend

Miss Pearl, best friend to Debbie Dusenberry was a Kansas City antiquer's icon. Debbie is a queen of the vintage scene and everywhere she was, there was Pearl. I'll miss seeing her fuzzy little face around town.

Here is a photo of her when she was a visitor at the cottage one time. Pearl always came along when Debbie visited us here.

My heart goes out to Debbie for her loss.

I used my Hello Watercolor ap on iPad to do this finger painting of Pearl..

The ap is very interesting, and you can more tell from the rough sketch that I started with, just how much it looks and acts like real paint. Except with no brush. You use a fingertip or stylus to paint with. You can chose different brush-like features, and sizes, and whether you are using wet or dry, to get just the look you want. My problem with it, is that I can't quite get the paint detailed enough, so I switch to the colored pencils function to add the finer details and sharper lines at the end.

I think a lot of people get to this point of a painting (the sketch) and think it looks awful, or nothing like what they want it to. Sometimes newbies don't realize that most artwork is all about the details or the layering. There is often a point near the beginning when you are horrified at what is on the page and think about stopping. The trick is to not give up, and to not judge the end by the early stages.

This painting has a heavy use of white pencil over the underpainting. In real watercolor that doesn't really happen, you need to save your white paper. The ap can be much easier to use than real paint. It even has an eraser.