Day 12 30 in 30 Challenge, Ari Cat Bathing

Day 12: Ari Cat Bathing, ATC size

Pentel Pocket Brush Pen on Stillman & Birn Beta paper

Love my stash of the great 180lb white rough Beta paper. I can do anything I want on it - and as you can see, its rough texture still allows fine expressive penwork and yet I can do good pastels or dry brush watercolor textures.

He posed and I sketched rapidly in pencil before he moved. His first pose was even better but he moved his far leg down before I could pick up the pencil. Then he shifted position a bit but was still close enough that I could ink and get the direction of his fur with those loose thick and thin strokes.

The longer I practice with the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, the more expressive it is. For artists who like doing Japanese kanji or Chinese calligraphy, this pen is a fountain pen with a genuine brush tip, a small round with a very tiny, tight point for small marks. Writing with it in English is tricky with its pressure sensitivity. I had no idea how much I bear down on certain marks while signing my initials!

Still to come, I have a nice triad of American Journey watercolors that I got on sale and will enjoy painting with, see how well they handle and blend. Good primary color choices should give me a full range with it. Especially Ultramarine. I can stand knocking back greens a touch but I like getting a good strong purple and a cold red with Ultramarine and a bright yellow is a favorite combination.

Ari Cat Sketches

Ari Cat sketches, some from life

Brush pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Today was a day for just spending time with my cat. Six or seven times he jumped up and took over my lap, sometimes sleeping till my legs went to sleep. He started out by armpitting me first thing when I woke up and spent the whole day snuggling on and off. He shoves his whole face into my armpit and head-bangs softly. It always makes me laugh, he gets so intense about it.

When he was little he'd run and put his head in my armpit whenever he got scared. If there was a storm or dogs barking or neighbors yelling or he had a bad dream, he'd run up and nuzzle my armpit and shiver. Then comfort himself chewing the armpit of my sweaters. He was a serious woolbiter, Siamese like to do that. Now he's a big grown up cat of 15 pounds, 15 years old. And he still likes to cuddle and just be my kitten again for a while.

So I sketched him again during some of his non-lap moments. He's the one cat I've had the most practice with and sometimes the trickiest with his markings.

More pastels tomorrow maybe.

Cat Sketches Page

Yesterday's cat sketch, under two previously posted ones. Also some saplings sketched after a lesson by Johannes Vloothuis on how to distract from it if you have to cross a couple of trees in a background. Ways to liven it up and keep it from just looking like an X including twigs, protrusions, adding more twigs, lots of goofing around to give an impression of tangled twigs.

Ari slept on my pants in the seat of my power scooter and stayed there a good long time. He looked so sweet cuddled up on my pants. He likes laying on my laundry. Many cats will sleep in laundry, it's because they know your scent and think of you as family. Sleeping where their loved ones were before is a comforting situation for a cat.

Maybe it is for people too, if you've ever been married and gotten used to the other hollow in the bed it's that kind of thing.

Cat Sketches

Three cat sketches from the 24th, 25th and 26th. The first is from life. The second, a street tree composed from several different street trees in life with a cat from memory clawing it, third is my Ari again from life in a different position.

All three are done with Winsor & Newton Watercolour Markers on Stillman & Birn Zeta 180lb hot press (smooth) watercolor paper.

I was tagged for the 30 Cats in 30 Days challenge on Facebook, so I'll be doing a lot of little cat sketches until March 5th. If I haven't completed 30 new cats, I'll fill out the number posting some previous cat drawings and paintings.

Till then, even when I'm under the weather it's often possible to do a cat gesture. Ari is usually a cooperative model, at least if I get the sketch in during two minutes. If not, I've sketched him so many times I can usually finish it from memory. I love him so much. The more often I sketch him, the more beautiful everything about him is. Right now he's laying flat doing a good impression of a fur rug with legs sticking out. I'll probably sketch him at least once today too.

#6, #7 and #8 of my 30 Cats in 30 Days. I need to start catching up though, so if I can I'll try to get more than one cat in during a day!

Black Bird, Ari Cat and Rose

Catching up for a couple of days past...

Black Bird

pastel on paper 8 1/2" x 11"

Today's black bird is for the Weekend Drawing Event on WetCanvas, hosted by artbyjune who provided 16 photo references and a challenge. I finished in under two hours so the challenge is there. I've always been fond of grackles, starlings, ravens, crows, any black birds. Their iridescence and dark intensity are beautiful to me and of course this one had a great pose.

Yesterday I sketched my cat in pastel pencil for the first art of 2015, on the same page as Wednesday's colored pencils lavender rose. So the last art of 2014 and first of 2015 are also in the same letter size sketchbook.  I'm having fun with this one, a gift that really got me going!

Lavender Rose in colored pencils 12-31-2014

Ari Cat in pastel pencil 1-1-2015

Happy New Year!

Ari was from life of course, he posed near the door and I sketched him mostly before he moved, did some shading after he changed pose slightly. The rose is from my own photo while I was out at the clinic garden. 

Now if I can just remember to post daily when I draw daily, all's well!

More Winsor Newton Marker Sketches

Winsor & Newton Watercolour Marker Sketches

Ari cat, white daisy, pears with oranges and persimmon group

Stillman & Birn Zeta journal smooth watercolor paper, 7" square

All those sketches are from life, two from yesterday and one from today. I wanted to test the markers for color studies, for combinations with Niji water brush, for various techniques. I made this page for my review of these markers which I'll post on my other blog, Rob's Art Supply Reviews. Link is on the sidebar.

Novel is still slow, I'm only at 20,000 words or so and should be at 30,000 or so to win on time. But it's a good one, it just takes more rumination than I expected. Might get some work in on it today. Weather is severely slowing me down again just like last year.

Yesterday's Cat Gesture Sketch

Ari cat from life

Pigma Micron brush pen

Accordion fold pocket Moleskine

I love that pocket Moleskine for quick pen sketches whether I bring it with me somewhere or just keep it nearby for days when I don't feel up to painting or serious drawing. It's small, handy and interesting. When I stretch out the pages I can see a lot of my sketches together all at once and get an idea of where I was at, what I was doing, whether they improve.

I still usually default to poses where he's standing still. If I'm up to something more difficult like capturing a moving pose mostly from memory, I'm probably going to draw or paint a more different subject in a different journal or something. It's on my mind though, I still want to sketch him clawing his carpet scrap or walking to his food bowl or scampering like a kitten while I dangle the furry snake on a wand - that's almost like a tail, like cats pouncing on each others' tails. I think that's why he likes it so much.

But some days I'm either doing something else or get sick. As we head deeper into fall toward winter, there will be days I'm not up to painting. 

November is NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. I have participated every year since 2000 and optimistically already preordered a Winner t-shirt because all but 2002 I succeeded in writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Some years I wrote a lot more than that. One year I did almost half a million words in seven novels and the last was nearly finished, took a couple more days to finish the final extra one. It's fun. It's my annual noveling harvest. 

So I am shifting from Art Mode into Writing Mode. November is when Daily Art takes second priority over Daily Writing. Some days I don't manage it. That happens with anything. In all those years I have yet to get progress on every single day of November, but I almost always win. 2002 I didn't start till the 25th and still got respectably past the halfway mark. 

So maybe this year I'll win early and get past that and paint more. Or settle into a comfortable chapter a day pace and do both art and writing on the same day - high goal is to maintain this blog and work on the book consistently. Not that I'll get it but I may get closer to it than usual.

Anything can interrupt but disability is the real reason behind that. I can count on doing one thing in a day and this sketch from the 28th is an example of the most I can do on a bad day. In fact it's better than a worst day because I managed to get that in. 

When I get to the end of the long folded sketch page, I'll turn it over and work back the other direction. It's working out well. Gives me a sense of what I like to sketch from life or photos. I'll finish this page sometime, maybe today, maybe tomorrow or the next day. Probably post the whole page when I do.

So wish me luck on my noveling adventure! I will be back to "daily art has priority" in December. 

Meanwhile, new art supplies are in the offing. I have the happy choice of three affordable art treats. Two out of three would leave my budget completely reasonable with no doing without treats. All three would take a very minor tightening my belt over it. May well be worth it since each of them is very likely to improve my productivity.

Though the two things that most boosted the amount of painting I do is a boost when I got 120 Unison Half Sticks and again at getting 60 Rembrandt Half Sticks.

120 Unisons gave me a visual incentive to use my pastels. It worked directly getting me to set up and use the big set to have all the colors I need right at hand, more than any other set. I put it into the aluminum case that came with my 72 Professional (just general assortment) set on sale and slid the cardboard lid under the tray so the pastels are visible unless I move. For taking it out of the house I'd put the cardboard lid back on. But seeing this across the room made me want to paint, a lot of times I looked at it and picked up a smaller set next to me.

Unisons 120 half sticks

That can be inspirational! Even if your pastels are mixed brands organized in a different box, putting something clear over the tray will give you the sight of all those colors in spectrum array. A colored pencils artist with a studio rack organized by hue and value gets the same effect. Seeing the spectrum with tints and shades and neutrals organized creates an urge to use those tools. 

It'll also tell everyone that comes over that you're an artist, if all the art on the walls doesn't. 

The effect of the 60 Rembrandt half sticks was just as profound and that's more disability related. I wanted 120 half sticks but they were sold out of that new item. I decided half that would make a good plein air set because I've been frustrated at not having the right pastels in an easy form to use when I go out. So I bought it specifically to use on my twice a month trips to the clinic and hour painting in the clinic garden.

Only to find that what works for plein air also works for days when my back won't let me get up. If it's in reach I will use it. After months of Unisons across the room inspiring me to use hard pastels in reach, I had pastels in reach that size. Finally I got a little folding table that holds the larger Unisons set in reach, so I'm actually much better set up for pasteling.

Moving 5 Tints and 5 Deep Darks and a Painters 10 assortment in Pan Pastels put those in reach of my limited space and I used Pan Pastels more too. For that my pastel journal is awesome - good paper, sanded if I want to prime it but good if I don't have the energy to prime and so far going very well.

I was doing several pastel paintings a year, at best one or two a month on the Spotlight challenge when active on WetCanvas. Now all of a sudden the logistic is solved and my supplies are in reach, easy to use along with reasonably lap sized pieces of paper and pads. I bought full sheets of Uart paper and cut them down to 9 x 12" or 12" squares depending on shape in 3 grits - 500, 600 and 700 or 800, the finer grits. I like them all but working small it's better to have a finer grit. With more than one piece in those grits I started using them.

Staying stocked up on needed supplies like paper and getting tools that fit my real situation more than my daydreams helps a lot. 9 out of 10 times my obsession with plein air supplies is that they are marginal day supplies. If I can't get outside, I can still go there in memory and paint it.

I'll post again if I paint today. This may be another cat sketch or a good painting. I won't know till it's done. Might just be a writing day as November draws nearer.

Edit on the 30th: forgot to post again but did do another drawing on the 29th. A friend asked for critique on a portrait and I did a loose diagram of face shadows to explain what I meant by breaking the face into two main tonal areas to get the likeness. So here is my diagram of their model's pretty face. Not perfect but gets the gist across!

Face diagram and Ari sketch page

pocket accordion fold Moleskine

I could have added more details but didn't, left out some of the small shadows in the light side for one thing. And linear accents like the eyebrows themselves and so on. But it is a map for where to look for shadows on your model's full face photo or in her face with side lighting. Your shapes WILL vary. These are likely places to find light and shadow values. Eyebrows and eyelashes and the line between the lips or even the teeth in a smile are details. Ears are not in this sketch because they weren't shown in his portrait - either he or the model didn't want to show them.

Human ears are silly looking and placed funny, so I can completely understand!

Quick pen sketch of my cat from life

Ari cat was on my lap for this one. Yesterday was "artish" rather than any drawing or painting. I matted the Colourful Tomato and got it up on the wall, then with the help of my home care worker sorted through a big pile of stuff in front of the closet. Looking for the plastic fruits my friend CeCe gave me when I moved, which I thought were in the boxes by the closet, I found out the closet had a lot more space than I thought. So the pile got sorted and moved into it while the fruits bag was discovered hanging neatly from one of the hangers inside. I hadn't found it because I hadn't gotten into the closet for months.

So that was amusing and hilarious. Still haven't found the two green pears I knew I had, but a yellow pear is in the bag so I can go back to pear studies. It doesn't matter what color the plastic one is, pretty easy to vary that from memory. I have enough to set up some still lifes now just as I planned when CeCe first gave me that basket of artificial fruit. They're very good ones, look quite real. The apple looked so real a different home care worker picked it up to eat it instead of one of the two similar real ones that were sitting next to it.

The big advantage of artificial fruit is that it will not rot or go bad. You can create a setup and leave it up for weeks if you use a slow painting method like colored pencils or even if you just get interrupted. Or rearrange it and redo it knowing you're working with the same objects. Since I often have a problem overbuying real fruit on account of its beauty and wasting it, I was glad to get these. The green grapes even have little brown spots on them like real ones and the same translucence, compared the last time I had real green grapes.

Like photo references, objects for still life are useful but memory comes into it too. It may help to look at dented and bruised fruit and do quick studies of the blemishes so they can be added to paintings set up with artificial fruit. Or artistically added to the fakes with acrylic, why not?

I also worked some more on Clouds Coming In... with Terry Ludwig pastels. I'm not happy with it, needs some more work. Thinking of making changes to the left side of the land area so as to break the symmetry and bringing in some different pastels because I worked with a relatively limited palette that wasn't right for this subject. I'm okay with the distance and more or less okay with the right side, it just needs more work. And maybe more simplification.

Ari cat sketches in pen

Ari cat life sketches

Pigma micron 02 

Pocket moleskine accordion fold

Just a page in the little pen journal today, a couple of life drawings of my beloved Ari cat. I love it when his knees or elbows puff out his fur and his back curves down between his knees. He's so beautiful, I never tire of drawing him in his many poses.

Still fighting this cold, but today wasn't the worst and I have some hope it's starting to break up. Maybe it's on its way out. I sure hope so.

Charcoal life sketches

Charcoal Life Sketches

9" x 7" approx.

Charcoal on hemp paper

Scavenger Hunt list is a new one. The last one was great and everything on it was awesome, but I got sick so didn't do page after page of sketching. This one there's some items I'll want to skip, just don't have access to them for life drawing or if I did wouldn't want to draw them. I don't get moved by a "washer" though I suppose I could just do a simple metal washer, a donut shape with a thickness to put under a screw. If I have one around. There's a lot of household stuff and Comfortable looked like the only way to squeeze in my cat. 

Eh, they vary, but it's a starting point, something to get my life sketching going.

Cat portrait, pen sketch

Ari Cat Portrait

Pigma Micron Pen on

Pocket Moleskine Accordion Fold Sketchbook

Nothing yesterday, when I started coming down with the flu. Achy, nauseated, coughing deep and painful and feverish, I nonetheless hauled out a good photo reference of my beloved cat. Penciled first, then inked this slightly larger than most sketch of him. Didn't try for reserved white whiskers though, Not today on a bad day, just another cat study because I love him and wanted to get in some daily art.

I don't know how long this will last. Hopefully just a couple of days, but then I never know if it'll linger for weeks. Pretty annoying when it happens. But I'm still trying to hang on and do something, that and remember to post when I do.

Today was a win despite the flu.

Score for the month is spectacular. Eight pastel paintings. Three serious watercolor and pen pages. That's amazing when most months if I'm lucky I get in one pastel and maybe a page or two of sketching. I have ramped up successfully and will try to continue this. If the weather knocks me down again, then it does... but September is a good month, maybe the best weather all year.

Cat gestures in ballpoint

Ari cat gestures in ballpoint

Moleskine accordion fold pocket sketchbook

When I'm busy and a lot is going on, as happens some Saturdays especially, I try to at least get in a quick gesture sketch of my cat. I did two of them yesterday before settling down to work on the Red Flowering Maple painting. Tonight though, having bathed and dealt with three or four stressors and had home care over, I wasn't up to getting dusty. So I opened it up to fill the last space on the page. 

Ari moves around a lot! Even when he's sleeping I can't count on a pose being more than two minutes. He can be sound asleep but he'll stand up and turn around to lay the other way. He's not paying attention to what I'm doing, it's just how he sleeps - fidgety. Maybe this is the secret to how cats can sleep 18 hours a day and still get plenty of exercise. 

To be a cat lover means getting used to the sight of a sleeping cat and find that adorable. I don't often wake him up but when I do, he purrs and loves the attention. He's also left me the most astonishing cloud of pale undercoat fluff on the middle of my bed, which has black covers this week. Announced his presence with maximum contrast! He sure is a champion shedder!

I love the fuzzy boy and the more often I default to drawing him, the better I am at abstract forms and all animals.

Charcoal sketches

Charcoal life sketches for Scavenger Hunt #376 on WetCanvas.com. A new list started today, I've got ten days for 26 items. Most of which are tough ones for me. I shouldn't really say tough so much as things I'm less interested in drawing. Everything on the list was "stuff you use for..." things. Vague enough I could find substitutes although the thing is, the things themselves would be depressing to draw. They don't draw me out into the wilderness or the microcosm of a flower or small natural objects like stones.

It becomes a matter of looking down at my life and seeing again how different it is, how circumscribed by chronic disease and deformity. I don't exercise, that's all pain and no gain, usually winds up with sports injury knocking down my function even farther and long recovery in which I don't have the capacity to do the things I actually can do. I don't cook. I don't clean - but I got my pastel rag in for that because I do clean off my pastels and my hands after painting.

I don't look down. When I paint I want to look at color and beauty. Painting my art supplies is invigorating, always makes me want to use them. But reminders of all the Activities of Daily Living that I can't do for myself brings up that endless bitter frustration. Most people can knock that stuff out in a short time and get on with what else they'd rather be doing.

I don't like being reminded of those limits when painting and drawing are the things I can do well, that get my mind off the pain. It's probably why I don't do contemporary fiction either.

Today was a pain day anyway, thus no serious painting, just Hunt sketches. I love the charcoal/white combination for fast powerful rendering though! This page is decent enough to go on the sketch wall - and I got Ari into it, that always makes me smile. I wonder if I can get him in more than once...

Five more Scavenger Hunt 376 items, and I did get my cat in one more time as "Soft" along with one of his toys as exercise equipment. He does bang around the room with it so fast and wild that you'd swear the thing came to life! Bat and chase at high speed! Plus a bottle of olive oil, a water bottle from a watercolor kit since I don't actually have anything resembling a makeup bag and a pill case as something to store things in. Well on my way with this one but I seriously doubt I'll get them all unless I come up with more good substitutions. Yes, I keep food on top of my dresser because that's where the microwave is. I don't have a kitchen in this room or any counter space, so the dresser top becomes that.

Pencil gesture of my cat Ari

Ari Cat Gesture

6B clutch pencil on Moleskine pocket accordion fold journal

Sorry I forgot to post this yesterday, got very tired and distracted by home care visit. Saturdays tend to be intense, especially if I'm attending a Johannes Vloothuis class online. I don't usually paint along with him, just take notes and pay attention to what he's doing. It drums his principles of design and painting in deep and then I reinterpret them in my style. I'm much fonder of saturated color and especially greens than he is.

Today I'm going to ink this cat gesture, still observing the real cat. I haven't used washes in this journal not wanting them to soak through to the back. I plan to do the entire journal in pen work - so this ephemeral pencil drawing is recorded for now. Check this entry later for an added image, or I'll do a new one later.

Now he's inked, but I'll start a new entry if I do something more elaborate than inking my cat sketch.

Inking this sketch has given me the urge to go back to the Zeta and do another pen-watercolor page of some kind. I love how those turn out.

Last sketches of 2013 - Happy New Year!

Okay, I'm posting this page on January 1st, but I finished the last of the art at about 11:45pm. So these are the last drawings of 2013... a nice page of my cat, mostly sepia with some hints of other colors in the colored pencil portrait.

7" square, in Pigma Micron pen, watercolor, colored pencil and white gel pen. Had a go at white whiskers on the colored pencil portrait. I love him and this was mostly from life, the large face portrait was from a photo taken last night.

Here's Ari posing with his sketch page!

He's so beautiful!

Happy New Year! Hope you have a great 2014! My resolution is to work on becoming self supporting again, whether it can be done in one year I don't know but I expect to be closer to it next December. That and paint or sketch more often, it always keeps me on an even keel!

Flower and Furball, Yesterday and Today

The top painting, Bird of Paradise, in pen and watercolor, is the subject of my latest demo on Rob's Art Lessons.  You can see stages in the creation of that big folded sepal the flower springs out of on the other blog. It's from a reference in the "Plant Parade" challenge at WetCanvas.com where there's a reveal date on May 25th.

Today, I noticed Ari laying on the folded down white sheets of my bed and painted him very fast using the same Sakura Koi watercolors, touched in a couple of whiskers with a Pitt Artist Pen.

So even though these aren't stand alone paintings, I've got two more daily paintings in. This is a good thing. I have had a lot more sick days lately than not, also days when going out to appointments meant I was too sick to paint once I got back. Glad to get back in the groove again.

A Page of Little Ari Drawings

Technically this isn't a painting - it's a 9" x 12" page of life drawings of my cat Ari. It's a serious project. I used an archival Pitt Artist Pen, black brush tip for its expressive line, on 100% rag watercolor paper. Every one of these little drawings is from life. The dates come in two clumps, back in November when I first started the project and then picked it up again late in April when I realized my winter slump had lasted that long.

This piece was difficult not because I don't have a lot of practice drawing my cat, but because I had so many little drawings of him and was determined to give the page a decent layout. The more of them I finished, the tougher it was to use the remaining space well, have everything leading in toward the others with a good eye path, create a good page as a whole instead of "cool little life studies."

I love my cat. I could and do draw him endlessly. I also don't mind having a lot of bad sketches of him crop up in my sketchbook. I lighten up when I do these gestures and don't worry so much about whether each of them is a good drawing or even an accurate likeness. This project, I wanted to do my best on them.

It's part of an art trade with Charlotte Herczfeld, my pastel teacher, a Swedish Colourist who heads up the Pastel Guild of Europe. She taught me how to handle color, how to handle pastels and depth and distance. She freed me from literal adherence to the photo and from sticking to local color instead of what I see. She also taught me how to create any hue I want with optical mixing and use a limited palette in pastels.

I've got several other artworks in the package. I'm nowhere near her level of skill, honored she liked so many of my works though. I'll be packing them all up this week to ship to Sweden and then wait for a wonderful, glorious package containing a painting that went right to my heart. I need to order a good frame for hers too, need to set aside that budget and not unpack it until I have a frame big enough - though I have mat board and can cut the mat for the painting myself just as I did last time.

I'm so thrilled about this and honored. I'm also vastly relieved that A Page of Little Ari turned out so well! I can't believe I managed, with all that care and patience waiting for good days and of course waiting for the cat to hold still in good poses, to fill the page just right. He is a great beauty of course, there was no question of the model's competence in this piece.

A long project completed just right! Nothing compares to that feeling!