Tag: Cats

Categories
Drawing Food sketch Ink and watercolor wash Painting Sketchbook Pages

Coconut Flour Zucchini Muffin Thief

Coconut Flour Zucchini Muffins, ink & watercolor 5x7"
Coconut Flour Zucchini Muffins, ink & watercolor 5x7"

I love zucchini muffins so was excited to find a recipe for grain-free version made with coconut flour. I got carried away grating zucchinis in my ancient Cuisinart food processor before realizing the recipe only called for 3/4 cup. Oops. But it turns out there are many other good uses for grated zucchini

The muffins turned out really well. I set them on a rack to cool and left the room. When I walked back into the kitchen an hour later I found muffins scattered about the floor with the tops chewed off and  surrounded by crumbs. Bad Kittie Fiona!

I should have known to hide them from the little calico carboholic instead of leaving them out to tempt her. She once stole a box of Ak-Mak crackers and somehow dragged it under my bed to eat them. She’s even chowed down on dry spaghetti noodles and Cheerios.

I rescued the rest of the muffins and set them on a plate to sketch (above). Then I ate one with a cup of tea. Yum!

Categories
Animals Daily Paintworks Challenge Oil Painting Painting

Busby Berkeley: The Cat

Busby Berkeley, Oil on Panel, 6x6" - Portrait of a Cat
Busby Berkeley: The Cat, Oil on Panel, 6x6"

When my tabby cat Busby Berkeley decided to sit in my still life light box and pose, I decided to paint him. After all, what’s more of a still life than a cat (except when they’re running through the house and pouncing on wrinkles in the covers when you’re trying to sleep)?

I painted from the photo below, displayed on my monitor near my easel.

Busby still life
Busby still life

Busby spends most of the day sleeping in the closet, my bureau, or a kitchen cabinet so painting him from life wasn’t an option. Even drawing him from life is tough. In the same way cats chose to sit on the one person who doesn’t like cats, they also get up and leave if they notice you watching them.

This was the first time I’d painted a cat in oils and it was fun and challenging. I’m about to try another from a different Busby photo to see if what I learned the first time will make it easer the second time. This painting is available here on my Daily Paintworks page where I am in the process of placing selected paintings from the past along with current work as I paint it, when/if I’m ready to let it go.

Categories
Animals Daily Paintworks Challenge Food sketch Oil Painting Painting Still Life

Happy Boy Radishes in Oil (Paint) and Still Life with Cat

Happy Boy Farms Radishes, oil on panel, 8x8"
Happy Boy Farms Radishes, oil on panel, 8x8"

Every time I paint I learn something. This time I learned some new tricks with different brushes and mediums and also about how much easier it is to paint in a good mood than a bad one. I painted the radishes for last week’s Daily Paintworks challenge, “Paint your vegetables.” It is available there on my new Daily Paintworks page.

I painted the radishes over Sunday’s painting of cucumbers that didn’t work because of my bad composition (or my bad mood when I was painting it) not sure which. I liked the lemon slice in the painting so I took a photo before I scraped off the panel for reuse.  Here is the happy little corner of the painting with the lemon slice (and without the two big ugly cukes at the top):

Cucumbers and Lemon, section of trashed painting
Cucumbers and Lemon, corner of painting

And here is the promised Still Life With Cat, shot when I put the radishes back in the fridge and silly Busby decided my still life light box would make a nice kitty sauna.

Busby still life
Still Life with Cat

I’d probably look grouchy too if someone tried to take a picture of me in the sauna!

Categories
Art theory Oil Painting Painting Still Life

Tea and Lemon, Surface Quality Study #1

Tea and Lemon, Surface Quality Study #1, oil painting on panel 8x10"
Tea and Lemon, Surface Quality Study #1, oil painting on panel 8x10"

This painting is a study based on the exercise in Peggi Kroll-Roberts “Surface Quality” video. I watched the video, then turned it off and painted from my still life set up, trying to incorporate the lesson: paint the darks with thin paint (so that they recede, don’t reflect light that hits lumpy edges, and don’t draw attention to themselves) and paint the light areas with rich, thick paint (and of course mix the correct colors and values).

When Peggi demonstrated this exercise she used a cube of butter (in her still life, not to paint with! though her paint is very buttery). I had to replace the butter with the yellow lemon because while I brewed the tea in the other room, my cat had a little feast, licking my only cube of butter into a misshapen mess.

There are some passages in this painting I like very much, such as the lemon, its leaves and blossom, the tea, and the way the tin in back is kept all in shadow.

I did buy another cube of butter to try the exercise again, and that will post tomorrow while I’m off at Peggi’s workshop.

Categories
Albany Animals Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Life in general Painting Places Sketchbook Pages

Urban Nature: Swimming Rats, Smiling Cats

 

Sunday Morning Nature Sketch, ink & watercolor
Sunday Morning Nature Sketch, ink & watercolor

 

It was a rainy Sunday morning and at first glance out my window the world looked gray and bleak. Then a flock of seagulls swirled by in the clouds and I looked a little closer. A dove sat nestled on a wire, a few ants straggled along my windowsill, a bee sniffed around a flower–a rose–beautifully blooming in November! The more I looked the more I saw and sketched. My cat Fiona joined me in looking out the window so I sketched her too.

 

Swimming Rats and Ducks, Pitt Brush Pens
Swimming Rats and Ducks, Pitt Brush Pens

 

A couple of days later I drove my car to the Toyota dealer in Albany for an oil change (and free car wash). They offered a ride home but though chilly, it wasn’t raining, so I decided to walk the 3 miles instead. I stopped along the way to watch the egrets and ducks in the creek next door to the Pacific East Mall.

I was stunned to see a big rat swimming across the creek. Then another rat swam by and disappeared under the concrete bridge. I sketched (above) while I waited for another rat sighting to take a photo. And then…

SCREEEEEECH…. KABOOM! I heard tires screeching and looked up as a driver on Pierce Street tried mightily (but unsuccessfully) to swerve and avoid crashing into the car of an old Chinese man who had suddenly turned left in front of him to enter the Asian mall parking lot.

 

Swimming Rat and Duck, photo
Swimming Rat and Duck, annotated photo

Then an old Chinese woman stopped to talk to the ducks. She told me that she brings them bread every morning. I asked her about the rats and she said, “Oh yes, they live under the bridge” we were standing on; she didn’t mind them eating her bread too.

 

Categories
Animals Painting

Orange Maine Coon Cat, Watercolor

Toby, Orange Maine Coon Cat, watercolor
Toby, Orange Maine Coon Cat, watercolor, 6.5" x 8.5"

This morning a watercolor student brought a photo of her Maine Coon cat and a couple of paintings she’d made of him. Her paintings were delightful and full of personality but she wanted to learn more to enhance her cat-painting abilities.

I thought it might be fun to play a sort of duet with paint, sitting side by side, painting together as if at a piano. I set palette and water between us, pinned the photo to the bulletin board in front of us, and we set up our boards with watercolor paper. I did some “thinking aloud” to demonstrate how I consider various options (glazing, wet-into-wet, layers or direct painting, etc.) to make a plan of attack before starting out. Then I tested out a couple of ideas on a piece of test paper and finally demonstrated one step at a time as she painted along.

We got about 2/3 of the way through painting the kitty before our session was up. I think my student got the help she needed to successfully complete her painting at home and I enjoyed finishing mine this afternoon.

I took some liberties with the background colors as you can see from the reference photo below and I’m not sure you’d necessarily recognize Toby from the painting but I sure had fun painting him.

Reference photo of Toby
Reference photo of Toby

Maine Coon Cats

I was curious about the Maine Coon breed (thinking erroneously about raccoons) and found some interesting tidbits. Maine Coons can be the size of small dogs, weighing up to 20 pounds, and are highly intelligent, playful and friendly, with big tufted feet. The legend says that British Captain Charles Coon sailed up and down the New England coasts in the 1800s and took some of his seafaring cats with him when he came into port. Those cats mated with resident felines and people referred to their offspring as “Coon’s cats.”

Categories
Animals Colored pencil art Drawing International Fake Journal Month Sketchbook Pages

Cat Translation Spell (Never Mind!)

Cat Translation Spell, ink and colored pencil
Cat Translation Spell, ink and colored pencil

I’ve often wished I could understand what my cats were saying but I should have known! Fortunately the Cat Translation Spell has an Unspell to reverse the effects.

This is another page in my Fake Journal for International Fake Journal Month. I was excited to get to this page where the black paper transitions to the brown pages. It’s so much fun drawing with white and gold gel pen on the black and colored pencil works beautifully on both of these papers.