Why I Like Painting Pears cartoon

Once in a while I get a silly idea. This is one of those times. I'm still down with a cold, still not up to serious art, but a comment by my daughter about her cat's plumpness just gave me the idea. So naturally I had to draw it up!

The best cartoons come from a moment's silly thought. The best cartoonist I've ever known said "You don't have to be able to draw well to do cartoons. You just have to be able to draw consistently and get really funny ideas."

So here's one for a laugh. 30 Cats in 30 Days turned into a retrospective. I posted seven older cat pieces on Facebook yesterday and later today I'll do six more - subtracting any serious cat art or real Ari sketches I do. Tomorrow I'll finish with seven more cats and at least share 30 cat s in 30 days.

But this teaches me something - doing the same subject as daily art doesn't work as well for me as just "Daily Art" in general. Also finishing one intens daily art challenge followed immediately by another can be too much. Your mileage may vary, probably will since I'm still wrestling the Fourth Bad Cold Of The Worst Winter In A Decade. Yuck. I didn't think I could get this sick for this long in a good climate ,but maybe it can happen anywhere. There seem to be some obnoxious ones going around this year, other people seem to be down with colds a lot more often too and all are in very different parts of the country.

Day 12 Penguin Cartoon

Penguin Cartoon on Hummingbird Page

W&N Markers on Moleskine WC journal

Yesterday when I painted the hummingbird I placed him to the right because of the direction his head pointed. I wanted him pointing at the other painting on the page. I had no idea how well this would work till I finished the penguins cartoon from oldrockchick's WDE photographs. By accident, it looks like he's reading the caption and startled by what the penguins are doing!

The birds came up with this. I just drew it. I looked at the photo and the caption just popped into my mind - one of them folding his head back down to hide it in the middle of his back as if embarrassed, the other one putting his beak up all snobby as if to say "I'm not with him." I realized as I sketched it that this was just mutual, they had the same moment in different ways!

Sometimes a good idea doesn't come out perfect. There's a botch in the cartoon where an area of ground got too dark and the Moleskine paper let me lift it more or less to a better value, but also damaged the paper surface. Now I know not to scrub and lift these watercolor markers on Moleskine watercolor paper. Every painting is an experiment. Even failed trials are worth learning from.

But if I were going to publish the cartoon I would either clean it up in GIMP or I'd redraw it from this version. That's fine. Call it a preliminary painting and move on. That's what journals and sketchbooks are for!