Cat Portrait and Crooked Tree

 "Croggers" memorial cat portrait

Derwent Graphitint pencils and wash on paper

Crooked Tree Demo 

8 1/2" x 11" pen on paper

Croggers the cat was beautiful and his photo was posted for this weekend's Weekend Drawing Event at WetCanvas. I felt for the little guy and did a portrait drawing, paying close attention to markings and exact features and expression. Successful portrait, and he has that sweet meditative look that well.

Derwent Graphitint are tinted graphite watersoluble pencils, very soft, 8B softness. They dissolve fast and color brightens with water. I used them on my large Moleskine watercolor journal.

Then did a promised lesson on tree anatomy and shadow direction for my new student. She'd done a scene with one bare tree in an autumn landscape.  I let this be a winter one and implied snow with the bushes bending and stark values of the black on white. Could have added blue shadows, didn't, just kept it simple. But I like the design and may develop it into a more refined painting or drawing.

Day 15: Winter Dreams

Winter Dreams ATC

Monochrome Winsor & Newton Watercolour Marker, Raw Umber. I like the feel of an old time photo that monochrome brown gives a painting. This one was an exercise in values and shapes, an icy creek and snowy landscape with scattered pines and some other grasses or bushes. Even the sky is just pale clouds and slightly darker color.

Monochromes are fun. Not always black, any dark color will do. 

Light colors obtained brushing a wet Niji waterbrush over the tip of the watercolor marker.

European Blackbird on Winter Cattail Day 17 of 30 in 30 Challenge

European Blackbird on Winter Cattail

Pastels, pastel pencils on paper 7" square

This is one of the paintings done after Blackbird 2 earlier this month. DAK723 gave me the cattail reference in snow, but it looked more like a component of a landscape than an actual scene. It needed something and I knew from first sight what it needed was a bird.

So this was in some ways one of the easiest paintings I've done and others one of the hardest, having to redo that bird an inch long was tricky! I like how it came out though, it makes me smile. Also first use of some of my new Terry Ludwig pastels.

Winter Boulder day 5 for 30 in 30 Challenge

Yes, I signed up for the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge. I was nervous about it but I have done four pastels in five days, so I'm only behind by one. Today's painting is a loose sketch of a winter landscape from a photo by DAK723 on WetCanvas.com, a scene I hope to revisit with an animal one of these times.

Winter Boulder

8 1/2" x 11"

Rembrandt pastels on paper

That basic drawing book I got for Christmas is getting a workout. It's handy, it's white, I don't feel bad about experimenting in it and the paper's toothy enough I can do at least general loose paintings on it. 

I have some new sanded paper too though, so I want to develop some of these things a bit more. That boulder really needs a big cat on it. My first thought was a cougar, but now I think a lynx or bobcat would fit even better, lurking to see if a rabbit or something comes down that trail. Bobcats are fun and I haven't done one stalking in the wild yet. So this is a preliminary.

For my 30 in 30 challenge, preliminary paintings do count as long as they're in pastels and in color. They have to be more than just a charcoal sketch, that's all. So far I have 4 out of 5 so that's not bad at all.

Then later tonight I did a little watercolor sketch of Ari cat for a sketching challenge - use primary colors. So I painted a brown cat in primaries.

Ari cat in Primary colors watercolor

Little horses in Winsor & Newton watercolor markers

I sketched Ari from life of course and the little horses are from a Johannes Vloothuis watercolor demo.

Pine from Memory

Pine from memory

5" x 7"

Rembrandt pastels on gray Strathmore Artagain paper

Experimenting with sky holes, asymmetry, graceful shape and painting from memory, I wound up giving it dawn light and snow on the ground - but not on the branches, where it blew off in a strong wind. I've seen pines in a snowy area that lost their snow to wind or sun before all the snow on the ground melted.

I should have been doing my novel, but I painted first. Happily the book's going well now so I took a break to post this. Onward with both! Sometimes it's good to break away for a little while just to paint.

Bridge Scene and Cat from Life

 Bridge landscape painted in acrylics on Sunday, May 20th during Johannes Vloothuis online Paint-Along hosted by WetCanvas Live! I simplified the source photo drastically and used stronger colors than Johannes did, also made other changes. This is one of the best landscapes I've ever done in my journal, perhaps the best. Both this painting and the next are in my Stillman & Birn Beta journal, which has 180lb rough bright white watercolor paper. I love that paper. It stands up to everything I throw at it. The paper never bleeds through either, it's very easy to paint on both sides of a page.

I've been out of it dealing with medical issues and resting up from appointments. Chronic fatigue can get rough when I have to go out immediately after having gone out the day before, then it takes longer to rest up to the point I can do anything. Very frustrating, so this month's "as can" is a very slow daily painting attempt. However, I'm approaching 20 small paintings and already happy with my progress!

Below is today's watercolor life painting of Ari, my longhaired colorpoint cat. He's a "street Siamese" with no official papers but clearly has the markings. I did a quick gesture in pencil while he more or less stayed in that pose. He turned his head, but not till I'd gotten his face sketched. I decided the sketch was too light and so painted in watercolor.

I don't usually do pencil sketches under watercolor, preferring a purist look without guidelines showing. This time I just let it show and painted anyway. The final embellishment is white whiskers sketched in with a white gel pen because this is in my art journal and I don't need to be purist in a journal.