This is a portrait of my son Franky (Forturnato) holding a black cat. I really enjoyed drawing this portrait. It would be the second time I drew a portrait of my son.

Initially I was not going to darken my son's shirt as it was in the photograph I used to draw this portrait. My thought was a sharp contrast between his shirt and the cat would be more appealing. So I went with a lighter shirt, but once I finished the piece I realized the shirt had to be darkened.

I was a little apprehensive about doing this because it might destroy all my efforts thus far, and there would be no way to undone the changes. I have learned in the past that I could ruin a piece if I made a bad last minute change. So I was a little afraid to move forward with this change. The piece actually looked perfectly fine as it was and I really didn’t need to make this last minute addition.

But after a few days of hemming and hawing, I decided to go ahead and darken his shirt. Specifically black, the same color as the cat. Now my next fear was I could lose the cat within the darkened shirt. So I used a different type of pencil for the shirt as I did for the cat. This proved to be the perfect solution. As you can see, the cat is clearly not part of his shirt.

Having solved that slight problem, I am very pleased with the results. I truly love this piece, and I had a lot of fun drawing it. I hope you like this drawing too.