Art 4 Shelter 2025

 I don’t have as any paintings as in the past, although I don’t think I did any last year. 

Here’s the one from the homework assignment from the latest session of Kat’s painting class.

I’ve still been working on copying paintings and one of the things I’ve been doing is copying some citrus paintings of Elena Katsyura.  She is on the web and Daily Paintworks.  I love the glow she gets.  I believe she is working in oil.  Given that and the limited palette, I am not getting that, but it’s been a fun exploration.  Here are two from life.  

The last thing to share is a quick drawing with my beloved Neocolor II crayons.  This is not for Art 4 Shelter.  I just wanted to do something this morning and didn’t have much time.  

The ground is from a mixture of color and pastel ground thinned with a bit of water.  It was a 15 minute or so quick study using one of the above pieces. It was fun, since I haven’t had the Neo IIs out for a long time. I am getting a knee replacement in a few weeks and wanted to have some easily accessible art materials to use as a I recover. 

The rind color needs to be a bit more distinct from the background. 

Paint Something In Your Bathroom

One of the assignments for class yesterday was to paint something in your bathroom.  I was planning to do that on Friday, but did not factor in my morning eye appointment.  When I came home, my eyes were dilated and I figured I would not be able to do this.  By the afternoon with my eyes back to normal and carving out an hour to paint, I did this.

This one is for Art 4 Shelter.  

I had so much fun giving this a try and I am pleased with how it turned out.

Between this painting and yesterday’s class, it feels like I have my groove back. I am inspired.  I have a mental list (that I really should write down) of things I want to try.  I want to push myself.  

There is so much to learn and try.  I would like to improve my compositions.  Here are several attempts.  I am not thrilled with the results, but it felt really good to give both of these a try.  Although I got frustrated with the spoon and just stopped working on it. 

 

Off On Another Tangent

I have gone off on another tangent. I think it will be a good one and lead me back to having a regular art practice again. I started following an artist, Jim Musil on Instagram and he started to offer an on-line subscription to learn his process.  At first, I signed up for 1 month, but when I saw the quality of what he was offering, I changed that to a full year subscription.  

His process is very different. One thing he does is create his images from a combo of drawings, photos, and artificial intelligence, so it is heavily composed.  The first month was focused on his painting process, so this will be shared later.  Another big difference is that we also are using fluid acrylics. 

I think it's going to be a good contrast to what I've learned and how I've worked up until now.

There also is a very active Facebook group and it seems like a good group of people.  People are both kind and constructive in their comments.  

We are all working on off of the same image.  Here are the process photos so far the very beginning with creating a drawing using graphite tracing paper through painting the light clouds.  

These clouds may not be 100% finished, but they are far enough along that I don't want to do anything else with them until I'm farther along with the rest of the painting. They turned out okay.  Actually, I feel pretty good about them given that it's the first time trying this, along with everything else that is new.

That's all for now about this. 

I'm not being chronological with this post.  Here is the last piece I did for Art 4 Shelter.  This was with Neocolor IIs.

Several to Share

I have been working slowly and with what seems like a lot of layers.  There are several pieces that I am not sharing, but here are two I will share.  I would like to get better at showing brushstrokes with the Neocolor IIs.

This week I also went to an informative and interesting talk about paper-making at Wet Paint.  Since I don’t work with watercolor, it was not as applicable to what I do, but it was fascinating.

Third Sitting

I'm done.  I added a background and fussed with a few details.  Backgrounds challenge me and after I was done I had a different idea about what I could have done, but overall I had a really good experience with this one.

A few of the others that I've finished recently (not the copies from class) will probably go to Art 4 Shelter.  This one will for sure. 

Also, I wanted to post the last copied piece of artwork from the Neocolor II class at Wet Paint Art.  The original piece was Andre Derain's portrait of Matisse.  I really need to do a better job of lightening my pencil lines before I get started.  I do not like them peaking through.  As much as I love color, it actually made me nervous, especially in the background and in the jacket, to have such differents in color and shapes just next to each other without understanding why.  That means it was a good thing to do, since bumping up against those self imposed constrictions in my brain is part of what all of this is about for me. 

One last thing.....I found a new app that I like.  It's called DrawingGrid.  There is an Apple version and an Android version.  It is very easy to use and it has a diagonal feature that I like.  It really helps my drawing.  I have finally made peace with the fact that while I want to continue to learn how to draw it works 1,000 times better for me to use a grid when I am drawing something to paint. I just don't see well enough.  The grid and diagonal lines both are a useful tool and they help me see things and relationships better and I am finally okay with that.  

Occasionally if I am planning to paint from something relatively simple in nature like this one I might free-hand draw it, but otherwise it's the DrawingGrid for me. 

 

Hodge Podge

Before I started the class at Wet Paint, I pulled out the Neocolor IIs and started a piece the way I used to use them (small piece on its side and layering up color).  It didn’t get finished before class started.  When I  pulled it out to work on, I tried doing what we did in class last week on top (filling in color and activating it with water).  Last night, I decided to finish it and I scribbled, painted, or whatever.

One of the many things I love about the Neocolor IIs is their opacity, making it possible to try and fix things.  A lot of the time I find that my lights need to be lighter. For this one, I used the side of a white piece, plus some scribbles to make that happen.

The photo I used was from a trip I took in the fall. I didn’t know what flower was, but I liked the crazy center part.  Using Google Lens, I believe this is a Japanese anemone.

Keeping Up The Habit

I have been creating, but have not had much time for posting.  Here are two recent paintings for Art 4 Shelter.  For the second one, normally I would take another picture and crop it better, since the picture I took was very crooked but I don’t have time.

Here is another one that I started.  It’s a little wacky, but I keep finding myself wanting to look at it.  I’m thinking that I should continue to push things like this and see where it takes me.  I wish painting class was still going on, so I could get some feedback about it.  I will do a background, but I’m going to wait a day or two.

Rest Day(s)

Since painting class finished up, I’ve painted somewhere between 5-6 days each week.  While I would like to be at 7 days per week, deciding up front that painting most days or a the majority of days during the week is the right place for me.

I can take responsibility and commitment too far and I think that contributed to losing my art practice during most of the pandemic.  I kept at it because I felt like I should do it and I wanted to do it, but I was also burned out and lacked the energy or the right type of energy to draw and paint.  I pushed myself too far when it would have been far better to turn down the responsibility and turn up the rest.  

Rest may sound like a funny word to use for this.  However, I’ve been thinking about rest in a different way.  I’ve started exercising regularly with 5 days of exercise and 2 days of rest.  I really need the rest days.  They support and allow me to show up more fully on the exercise days.  

When I’m a certain combination and level of brain and body tired, painting drains rather than nourishes.  Sometimes, I’ll push through and paint anyway, but sometimes taking the day off is a better choice. 

Here are two paintings from this week.  I’ve painted from this photo before.

I did not have a plan when I painted this one, plus I rushed in places and was not careful mixing colors.  This will not being going into the stack for Art 4 Shelter. Even so, I wanted to document it. 

Winter Robin

Welcome to a new month, even though I am always a little sad to say goodbye to March.  March brings some of my favorite snow.  I love the big, wet snowflakes of March.  In addition, it’s always such an unpredictable month.  Usually, there are several teaser days in the high 50s or low 60s and everyone seems to radiate an inner joy that the cold dark days are over or at least approaching the end, because, of course, it’s still March. Those teaser days happened 2 weekends ago and it was glorious to have them fall on a weekend. After that, it’s been back to cold, snow, and one recent morning, where we got freezing rain, rain, sleet, and snow, all within a short period of time.  

March is a little like being on a roller coaster, emotionally and weather-wise. 

With that, welcome to April.  In addition to keeping up my creative habit, it’s time to start gardening.  It’s too early to do anything outside, but it is time to get seeds started in the basement.  By mid-month, I should be able to transplant the violas into pots, since they can handle some cold, and move some of the hardier herbs from the basement to the enclosed front porch.  Some years, I do plant arugula outside, but more towards the end of the month.  

From a painting perspective, I am still working slowly.  I think I worked on this one for 4 days and it’s only a 5” x 7”. 

Barred Owl

I worked on this for several days and took my time.  It is a 5” x 7” for Art for Shelter. Tonight, I added some finishing touches.  I am really pleased with this one.  First, it brings back wonderful memories of a weekend spent up at our friend’s cabin.  It’s the first owl that I had ever seen in the wild at this point in my life and my spouse is the one who spotted it.  Me and another bird-photo, crazy friend grabbed our cameras and took a lot of pictures of this barred owl in a tree.

The other reason I’m really pleased with this is yesterday, when I started to paint the owl, I finally dropped into that wonderful state of flow.  I can’t say that I’ve been fighting with myself since I’ve gotten back to my daily creative practice, but the state of flow has not dropped by to visit until yesterday.  

The colors, especially the greens, are actually a little brighter than this, but I don’t want to wait until I have natural light tomorrow to post this!

Huzzah, It’s the Weekend

I felt beyond tired all week, so much so that it was one of those times that I switched to Frnch in my head to describe it to myself.  I used to say “I am fatigued” to myself in French, coming from a less-than-basic knowledge of French.  When I mentioned this to a friend, who understands these types of quirks and who also is fluent, she taught me the word “epuise” (without the appropriate accent marks over the two “e’s” since I don’t know how to do that).  It’s a much better word.  It’s pronounced:

• “A” (say the letter “a”)
• “Pwe” (say the word “we”with a slight “p” sound like from the word “pop” at the beginning”.
• “Say” (just say the word “say”)

I gave myself a break and skipped painting on several days, but I also pushed myself on several days to paint, anyway.  On those days, I went back to doing negative space trees.  

On Thursday, I started something that I want to put into Art 4 Shelter and I finished it last night.

That also gives me an excuse to post the other painting I’ve done for Art 4 Shelter. 

One Last One

Here's the last one for Art 4 Shelter. I decided to paint from one of my recent bird pictures. 

Trumpeter Swan - Crex Meadows Wildlife Area 

Have I mentioned lately how much I love the Neocolor II crayons?

Art 4 Shelter - The Cats In Knitted Hats Series

Today, I finished portrait #6 of a cat in a knitted hat and I think it might be the end of the cats in knitted hats project, at least for awhile or at least for Art 4 Shelter for this year. The first 3 were dropped off awhile ago, along with several other pieces. I will get the last 3 dropped off some time soon.

Although I posted about the project from the time it started back in January, I wanted one post where I can go back and look at all of them easily. Here they are in reverse order. The first two were 8" x 10".  The rest are 5" x 7".  

All of these, except for the first one were drawn from project photos on Ravelry. Looking up cats in knitted hats on Ravelry was a pleasant diversion during the pandemic and the people I reached out to kindly gave me permission to use their photos. I included each cat's name, even though the cats in question might have preferred to stay anonymous.

While it was fun working on these and I found that I adore the Neocolor crayons, it was also a good learning experience. I had to work on creating backgrounds, making minor to major adjustments from the source photos, and finally working a piece to completion. It also was a good challenge to mostly work on smaller pieces, since that's what Art 4 Shelter prefers.

Since I am adding some additional information to this post. I traded several messages with Sylvester's owner via Ravelry and it turns out that he was a rescue cat, actually a bottle-fed kitten rescued at 2 weeks old . It's nice that the (hoped for) sale of the art inspired by his cat-in-a-hat picture on Ravelry will support Simpson Housing Services in providing service to 1 person for 1 night at their shelter.  

#6 - Sylvester

#5 - Habibi

#4 - Kaki

#3 - Penny

#2 - Wolfie

Last, but not least, here is the cat who started it all. If Chandler was not such a sweetie and let me place my partially knitted brioche hat on top of his head and take a picture, none of this would have happened. Since that time, he has developed more sense and does not pose for hat-related pictures. 

#1 - Chandler

You Would Think After Five Years I Would Remember

You would think after five years I would remember to stop mid-way through, step away, and view what I am working on from a distance, but I don't.  When I'm done, either with "the session" or on a piece, I will finally step away and take a look.  As a result, I get surprised by my own results.  

Up close, I thought the face and eyes were okay.  From a proper viewing distance, I am really pleased.

I keep saying it, but I love the Neocolor crayons and I also really enjoy layering. 

It’s Absurd and Ridiculous

That’s what these drawings of cats in hats are.  Absurd and ridiculous.

Cat in Knitted Hat #4

They are also a lot of fun and they make me smile.  Nuff said.

I Am Not A Reindeer

 I am not a reindeer.

I did not voluntarily dress up as a reindeer.

I do not want to play any reindeer games.

Wolfie Contemplates the Choices He Has Made In His Life

So far, I have heard back from 4 people, who have given me permission to draw from their photos of a cat in a hat. Meet Wolfie. To me, he looks as though he (or maybe she, I don’t know) is contemplating every choice he has every made in life which has led him to this point. Actually, he looks like a good-natured cat who is hoping this will be over soon. 

This project is going to be a fun challenge. For this one, I had to make up the body below the chin, since the cat was being held by a person and because of that, I also had to jazz the background. It also was challenging to figure out how to try and capture values of a dark gray and white cat in an interesting manner.  Lastly, it was way different trying to capture this hat rather than the brioche hat in my first drawing which start all of this. Simple brioche knitting looks like columns and that was easier to do. 

That doesn't take away any of the fun of this project or working on this drawing.  

In closing, it always surprises me when eyes are in shadow, how little is needed to capture them. I also really like the right side of the face (which is lighter).  The value transitions built believable volume and shape, especially on that side.  

How Many Cats In A Hat?

So I decided to do a little rework of my portrait of Chandler in Neocolor color II crayons and I like this slightly revised version better. By the way the pattern on Ravelry is this one, although when I took the picture this drawing was based upon the hat was only about 1/2 done.  

I had so much fun doing this that I would really like to do more portraits of cats in hats and I was thinking about donating them to Art 4 Shelter. However there's a problem with this plan.  Both orange cats have more or less decided that they do not like having their picture taken while wearing a hat.  The best follow up picture that I've gotten of Chandler is this one.

Hammet is even less cooperative.  Although I can't really blame either of them.  

Here's my possible solution. In 2015, an author by the name of Sara Thomas came out with a book called "Cats In Hats" with 30 separate knit and crochet patterns. I just went on Ravelry and looked for projects linked to the patterns in this book and am reaching out to the people who made projects and who took the best project pictures featuring a cat, which I think I could use for a drawing.  

I'm partially writing this blog post, so I can include a link to it when I reach out to these people and ask permission to use their photo.  

Wish me luck!   

Should Not Have Been A Surprise

I think my partially knit, brioche hat either makes him look like a king, a bishop, or a pharaoh and it works much better cropped. 

Than, not cropped. 

Although I thought the proportions in the picture were off when it came to the front legs and paws and how the back of the body cut off, I decided to try and draw it as is.  That was not the best decision.  

It was an especially silly mistake to make since I freaked out earlier this week when I wanted a straight on picture of myself to compare with a self portrait that I drew.  I tried taking a selfie and was appalled at how my face looked.  The first thing I notice was that the ears on the side of my head looked really small and the rest of my face just looked weird.  I had Daniel take a picture and my face looked normal.  After that I did a little research and found this.  

I must be the last person in the world to take a selfie and to become aware of this phenomenon.  It's not just selfies, of course.  Chandler was on my lap, so this was a really close up picture as well. 

Last, but not least, I am having a blast with the Caran D'Ache Neocolor II crayons.