Brightening a White Kitten

Paula has sent me her painting of the Siamese Cat project and has asked for a few tips as to how this could be improved. Paula feels that the white pastel looks dull and not as bright as she would like even though she has pressed hard with the white pastel pencil. She was also disappointed that the whiskers again did not respond well having followed my instructions by ‘zipping’ them in.There are several reasons why the white could appear dull. Firstly, when adding the grey tones on top of the white it is possible that these could affect the white making it a duller tone. Secondly, the colour of the paper could influence the light tones of the pastel pencils. Thirdly, the darker colours adjacent to the white could be too dull therefore losing the contrast needed to create the visual effect.As far as the whiskers are concerned I think Paula has done a good job of them, they stand out every bit as good as mine, but perhaps the pencil could have done with a sharper point this would enable it to cut through the pastel better.There is one other area that could be improved on Paula’s painting, the eye on the right cuts off too sharply, see black arrow. If this small adjustment was made the eyes would be really very near perfect.