Daily Sketch: Colorful Kelly

Colorful Kelly, watercolor pencils © B.E. Kazmarski

So pretend the blue is black, as I discovered the set does not have a black pencil, but here is tortie Kelly sleeping on my desk. I don’t mind the blue because it’s a complement of orange, the other tortie color, even though the orange here looks like a dark red. But as long as she has the round green eyes and the big rounded ears, she’s my Kelly, and it’s a bonus that she has the little hind paw with the toes spread and the front paw curled so she can bathe it.

This is watercolor pencil again, more fun each time…if only my scanner had a better eye for blue.

The next morning…

I was unhappy with the colors in this—the blue was too purple and the orange was just too dark, no one was really seeing what I was seeing so as soon as the sun was bright enough I too the little painting outside to photograph in natural daylight. Compare for yourself and see if you can find the differences.

Colorful Kelly (same painting, photographed instead of scanned), watercolor pencil © B.E. Kazmarski

Watercolor is difficult because it’s transparent and when scanning, and even photographing, the light shines through it to the nearest opaque surface, which is the paper. Everything from ambient light in the room to anything else that’s in the shot or in the scan can influence the color balance.

And even with this, the sunlight was still too “warm” that early and the whites were a little shadowed; I could photograph it again later this afternoon and it would be different again.

Yikes! Sometimes I spend more time trying to get a good image of my little sketches than I spend actually creating them, but it’s all worth it. Colorful Kelly was very much worth all the effort since she was popular no matter the color balance, and I can see a lot of potential for her!

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Click here to see other daily sketches.

For a gallery of the ones available for sale, visit my Etsy shop in the “Daily Sketches” section.

Read about the reason for the daily sketches in The Artist’s Life: Daily Sketches.

And read about purchasing them and requesting them as a donation item for your shelter or rescue group in The Artist’s Life: Daily Sketches for Sale and Donation.

All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in purchasing one as a print, or to use in a print or internet publication.

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