Paul's Grey Cat Feedback

One of our members Paul sent in his picture of the Grey Cat subject and requested some advice and tips. Paul writes:

Hi Steve and ColinI thought I would send you my latest painting. The Grey Short hair cat. I'm quite pleased with the outcome although it was very difficult. I don't think there was any part of the cat that I didn't struggle with. I did in fact struggle with the skirting board (of all things). It did take a bit of tweaking to gut I got there in the end. This was done on the Mi Teinte Moonstone again. I know the carpet needs adjusting so I would like to know how?Paul

To listen to Colin's advice click the play button or to read the transcription, see below:I know why you struggle with this because it is quite a tricky subject. One of the things we noticed though that it was quite dark compared with my example this is quite dark and one of the contributing factors to that was the colour of paper that you used. And I think that takes a little bit more effort to get the light in and whereas the ingres paper which I was using of course start's off light. So that's one thing that could happen.I also picked up the ears. Now you've done a good job for the ears but there are just a little dark and I suggest you possibly didn't  put the pinks underneath that or if you did you have put too much dark on top of them. It's nice to have a little bit of colour coming through the black. It's going to be difficult for you to address it now. The only way you could do it was to use a putty rubber and try to take some of the black inner ear out and then perhaps put a bit of pink in. But it's only a suggestion. And as far as the rest of it is concerned I think you've done really well.You pointed out to me that the carpet you felt you know the carpet wasn't quite the same as mine. Well again it's to do with the grey. You started off with a a medium tone paper therefore putting darker colours on to that automatically make it a little darker probably what could work here if you want to take a chance on one corner of it. You could just put again a putty rubber just press it up lightly in that area and that will lift the colour out and you could then you know replace it. But again it does really matter I mean you're looking at mine and saying well I like that light colour but really yours looks perfectly okay. So I would if I were you I wouldn't touch it at all.Skirting board again I think you've done a good job at that and although you're not terribly happy I'm pretty happy with it. And again you know you just need a little bit of practice. We don't get many skirting boards in our website so you'd have perhaps haven't had a lot of chance to practice that. Anyway I think otherwise I'm pretty happy with it and you should be too. And I look forward to seeing more pictures from you in the future.Feedback is available to members of CBA, to learn more about membership click here.