My soulmate, WhiteShepherd, wanted to have a nice art piece for his new creation, Furtopia/stories-poems. We talked and sketched and worked on details for about a week and then I started working on the drawings. I had to think about this one. Something that would symbolize reading of stories and poetry. I sketched out the sleek "ShadowCat" and found the perfect picture for the background. It is a picture we took on our trip to North Carolina, Oct. 2001, of the "Smokey Mountains".

I started creating this piece on April 3, 2002.


This is the final product.
(This piece will be displayed at the AC2002 Art Show.)



This is the original drawing. On this page, I turned it around so it would be upright and then cropped it to remove the writing.
As I have found with trying to color a black and white sketch in Paint Shop Pro 5, I always have to fill the background with color so I can use the color palette. Here, I chose a light blue. (giggles) Better than the bright green of my first piece, "The Neon-Fox". I then colored in "ShadowCat" but really need to work on how to highlight a black cat! (LOL) Practice, practice and still more PRACTICE!
Now that I had ShadowCat looking the way I wanted I need a background. Hey, I'm terrible with backgrounds so I have been using photos we have taken on trips and outings. For this picture, I chose a photo of the "Smokey Mountains" in North Carolina, that we took when visiting last Oct.

I brought the photo into Paint Shop Pro 5 and then highlighted "ShadowCat" with the 'lasso' and then copied and pasted her as a "Transparent Selection" onto the photo background. I moved her around to get just the right angle I wanted and then she was saved!		 In this pic I "erased with white" the areas I thought the sun was highlighting to show some realism to the panther.