Drawing a Tabby Cat from a Photograph

Darren has sent me a photograph of his cat that he wants to paint in pastel pencils but is not sure how to tackle the tabby’s fur colour, he writes:"My cat is a dark tabby with (almost) black fur, the dark fur has cream highlights on just the tips - which looks 'two tone' I guess putting light pastel on dark pastel won't work but how could I make an impression of these highlights on the cats fur to retain the two tone effect?”I have blown up a section of the cat’s hair which will make it easier for me to explain how can be achieved. I would recommend starting with a light colour - 270 light warm grey. This is applied in fur like strokes in the direction the fur is lying over the whole area then, using a sharpened 273, apply this colour over the areas of dark as seen in the insert. Then I would use 175 dark sepia on top of the 273 which will produce the desired effect. You could also introduce 199 black to darken the 175 in places. Other colours such as 179 could also be added to the 270 in the lighter areas and together with 187 could produce the brown tints that appear further down. The long light hairs shown within the gold circle could be ignored as putting the se in could spoil the picture.I have over simplified this technique to make it easier to understand as there would sure to be many other colours that could be used to create this lovely cat portrait. The colour numbers I have mentioned above are from the Faber-Castell Pitt Pastel Pencil Range.