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.

Still Drawing

I am still drawing every day, but have not been as disciplined with my practice. Here is a quick sketch from Saturday night of my replica, Galapagos tortoise. Figuring out how to show the shell, in terms of volume, depth, and markings is a challenge!

Confession

I like to paint. This seems obvious, but I mean something specific. The deciding, planning, drawing, mixing, and so on are all perfectly fine things to do, but what I like best is applying paint to a surface. At the last demo Kat did, I noticed that she seems to spend more time thinking about where a paint stroke goes or mixing the right color than actually putting the actual paint on the surface.

I've been thinking about this, but was also distracted and a bit frantic getting ready for out-of-town visitors last weekend. Now that things are quieter, I decided to put this to practice and, also, to start keeping a painting notebook. To keep track of my paintings in the notebook, I randomly decided that this one is #143. Before I put any paint on a surface, my goal is to write several intentions for the current piece. This should also help slow down the process a tiny bit. Most times, I just start and I don't think that serves me very well.

There were two goals for this one. While the background of this picture was dark, the lighting on the cat's face was dramatic. I wanted to play up or, at least be, true to the values by having a stark distinction between the lights and the darks. I also wanted to have bigger and bolder paint strokes.

One thing I learned was that mixing browns or oranges tending towards brown requires quite a bit of blue.

Background

The cat theme continues! This month, I've been thinking more about backgrounds. There's all of this space. While it's not the focal point, it is important too. Many times the actual background from life does not work, so you have to decide what to do and move forward. Most of my cat backgrounds this month have had a strong color and it's been fun deciding what color to use and how to shift the values to denote the light. Last night, I decided to go in a different direction and experiment.

When my cats are in the kitchen, frequently, the background is a striped, flat pillow. The fabric is busy and from time to time, I try a different way to represent it.

On this one, I had to do the eyes twice. I painted over the first attempt. The picture really captured her eyes and I'm not sure that I captured it. Still, the intensity of her look / stare is there. I also painted over much of my original colors. At first, my colors were too blue-gray. While both of my gray cats have a warm, blue undertone to their fur, I tend to over do it. When I thought I was almost done, I mixed some grays which were more neutral. To my eyes, these grays are actually a tad ugly when they are on the palette or the brush. The color looks sickly to me, so I was hesitant to use it. On the black gesso, I liked how they looked so I toned down some of the blue gray tones. I must remember this for future reference!

It's A Trend

It's another cat. I mostly finished this one last Thursday. I had family in town visiting from Thursday evening to Monday evening, so I didn't get back down to finish this until today.

Wingnut is a dark brown tabby and I have trouble figuring out how to mix colors that look right. This cat is a real character and he photographs beautifully.

Another Cat

I have family coming to visit this weekend. The more typical / normal housecleaning that this would inspire turned into a frenzy to to really, really get the house clean, driving me to the craziness of doing things such as mopping every single floor in the house and vacuuming the fronts and backs of all of the area rugs. Why is this relevant to this blog? I've been scheduling short painting breaks here and there as a way to recharge and keep my sanity.

I finished this painting this morning.

I thought that it was finished last night. When I looked at it right before I was going to take a picture, I saw two things that bothered me, so I made several minor tweaks. It was interesting. I wonder if anyone else would even notice the things that bothered me and I wonder if anyone else would think that the changes improved the final outcome.

It might be a good practice to get a painting 99% done, put it aside, and come back to it a day later to finish it. For some reason, my eyes need the rest in order to really see. I should not be surprised by this. For two years, I worked in the national office of a large CPA firm and 90% of my job was writing and editing. I quickly learned that I needed to take a 2-hour or longer break between the time that I wrote something and the time I could effectively proofread it. If I had to proofread my own work sooner than that, I found that I was reading what I wanted to see, not what was on the actual page. Why should it be any different for looking and evaluating something visual, but not based in words?  Also since I try to proofread these blog posts right after I write them, I shudder to think of the many, many errors that I miss.  Ah, the perils of a semi-perfectionist.

The owner of this cat is a good friend.  This cat is very elderly and is having some significant health issues. I felt compelled to a paint a picture of this cat from a picture taken a year ago when she was healthy.

Completed

I completed this one. When I was mostly done on Friday, I was not happy with it. At first, my thought was just to move on. However, I decided that trying to "rescue" a project was a worthy skill and one that I should develop.

I finished it today. While it does not look like the cat I was trying to paint, it turned out much better than the original version and than I originally expected.

I am still keeping up my daily drawing, although it's not been 30 minutes every day. Frequently, the house cats are my drawing subjects. For a long time, I was a bit obsessed with drawing ears and most of my sketches started with them. In the last few days, I've been focusing on and starting with noses and spending time with cheeks and chins. Some good things are happening with this.