Art Journal

Here's another cat, Minsy. She's three-legged, but you can't tell in this pose.

I was once again going for the 3 values. Here's the original plan, the underpainting and the final painting.

Minsy, 8 x 10

Here's the second painting of Oliver looking very regal. This one is also a three value study. It was particularly tricky with all his faint stripes and markings.

Oliver 2, 12 x 9

Oliver is a very aloof beast, an acquaintance cat. If you pet him he tries to bite, but not really seriously.  It's more of a "don't annoy me".

But he's gorgeous. Here again, working on  three values if possible. This is the first painting of Oliver; will post the other one next.

Oliver 1, 10 x 8

Noodle is another cat portrait.  Noodle is very talkative and compliant. Once again I was working on cutting down the values to three if possible.

Noodle, 10 x 8

Here are two cats belonging to my daughter.  They are yet another pet painting exercise. Once again I was trying to stick to three main values and get a likeness down of these two characters.  Here they are sitting in a backlit window area. I was also trying to get the backlit effect to work.

Mister B is in front, Mister Mu is in back. B is for "Brilliant"

The Orange Crew, 12 x 9

I did a couple more pet paintings as they are great practice. It's kind of like doing portraits of people, only with pets it doesn't quite matter if you know the "person" being painted.  You might not want a painting of your next door neighbor but might indeed like a painting of the neighbor's cute cat. At any rate I've been doing some pet paintings as exercises for value practice and to hone my skills at capturing likenesses. This cat painting was from a royalty-free photo but looks amazingly like a cat of ours called Luna, who is now sadly departed.

Luna 2, 8 x 10

I did this painting for the Boulder Art Association  (BAA)  show  which stars in December. They got the idea to have everyone do an 8x8 sheep painting in honor of the BAA so this is my sheep painting, in addition to the painting I am entering in the show. I went to photograph sheep at a local farm in Berthoud. The sheep all looked at me wonderingly and all hung about lurking and watching me. I though they were curious. But the owner told me they have been getting halloween pumpkins brought to their pen by the neighbors,  which they love to eat, and that they are all pregnant and hungry all the time.  So all the time they were wondering when I was going to dump in the pumpkins. Alas no pumpkins from me, so I called this :  Who are YOU and where's the food?, 8 x 8, SOLD