Sometimes My Brain Operates At The Same Level As A Fruit Fly

I have been known to tell people, "sometimes, I'm smart, but sometimes I'm that other way". I asked Google, "what creature has the smallest brain" because I was so mad at myself for how I started this painting. After deciding that I was going to slow down at the start, be deliberate about my goals for all new paintings, and document what I hoped to accomplish before picking up a paint brush, I found myself well into this painting before I remembered all of those good intentions.

Guess what? This painting started out poorly. I ended up covering up most of it with gesso and putting it away for a day. When I returned, I thought about what I wanted to accomplish, documented it, and mostly started over. For my last painting, everything just worked and I never felt as though I was fighting myself or the painting. I never got to that place with this one. In fact at times, I think I was trying to paint a cat, rather than paint shapes and values. However, starting again and setting intentions made for a better outcome than I expected given this one's rocky beginning.

Other than remember to start effectively, my takeaway from this one is is seeing and painting the rounded triangle of the inside lower part of each eye.

It's the end of the month of painting cats. For the next month, I need to mix it up and step outside my kitty, comfort zone. It was a good month. The painting notebook should help me going forward. I saw improvement in painting cat eyes. I worked on making my values more distinct (thanks to the Ipad and Value Viewer). I made some discoveries in mixing paint colors.