I recently painted this for a fellow blogger who goes by the handle “Intense Guy” – follow the link, and you can read his blog too.
This was an interesting assignment, as the cats were not together, so I had to use a little artistic license. I love to paint cats, so if you have a cat that needs a portrait, give me a shout.
This time I combined my love of pottery with my passion for paint, and switched to postcard size. My favorite glaze is called Shino, it’s a mysterious glaze that was developed for its whiteness, but its reactions with iron make it a really colorful kind of glaze, with all kinds of creams and orange and almost red, and even black can appear. When reducing the painting size to this tiny format, a bit of the flexibility in doing the leaves is lost, so I had to depend more on composition to get an effect.
Although this was painted in landscape view, I discovered it also looked nice cropped to portrait. Vivid colors and contrast, but I still did not get the effect I wanted on the leaves. The colors here continue to change, inspiring me along the way.
While it is true that I am a crazy cat lady, there are some breeds of dogs that I think are incredible. The African Painted Dog is one of them. They are one of the most endangered dog species, and also one of the most beautiful. They have a complicated social structure and thrive in very inhospitable environments… If we humans could just let them live. They will care for weak and injured pack members, and hunt cooperatively. They only have 4 toes on their front feet, unlike all other dog species.
I love their coats, they seem like giant calicoes.
This is the first of a series of exercises intended to attempt to capture the amazing colors that i see everywhere this time of year. My favorite colors at that.