Starting a new Painting - Bonnie this Time

 I was looking through my photos the other day and I found a nice one of Bonnie snoozing on the carpet.  My carpet is a light pinky beige - without any design like the one here in the drawing - but a streak of light was coming across it, including the shadow of the edge of a lace curtain.  I really liked the streak of light and the lace but thought it was a bit plain.  Maybe a patterned carpet would be better.

So I searched the internet for carpet patterns and quickly found on that I liked.  But how to place that complex pattern correctly under her?

My solution was to print out a photo of the carpet pattern from the internet.  I then laid it on the counter at an angle that I thought was the same as the angle I was looking down at Bonnie from when I took her photo.  I took a photo of the carpet photo in that position, then printed it out.  I now had the photo below, showing how the carpet would look on the floor viewed from an angle.  I put a grid over the photo - sizing the grid to get the approximate scale I wanted - then just drew it in around the cat that I had already drawn.  A good trick, I think. 

I need to discipline myself for the next step - a step that I most often skip but that I think will be expecially important for the painting - the value sketch.  Tomorrow's task.