the kitty: mostly photos, a painting and some drawings

Did you know I recently acquired a cute baby cat?  I did.  Her name is Pyewacket, but we pretty much only ever call her 'kitty'.  And even then it's usually 'kitty stop that!! no biting! KITTY!'

 Look at those claws!  Fierce!  Ferocious!

Here she is in action, trying to eat the buttons off my shirt.

Button consumption causes sleepiness.

So this weekend, when I was asked last minute to do a painting demonstration at Nucleus during the It's a Small World show opening, the little squirt became my muse.  What's a painting demonstration, you ask?  It's when you paint with a bunch of people watching you.  It was actually pretty stressful.  I was sweating like crazy, but you can't tell, thank goooooodness!

There were two other artists doing demos: to my left was Israel Sanchez, who whipped up a flawless gouache sailboat, and to my right is Patrick Awa, who made this totally lovely piece appear out of nowhere.  We had about 45 minutes, I think.  

Here's what I ended up with:

Except kitty never really brings me pretty flowers.  In fact I think she hates plants (she destroyed the potted plant in our living room by shredding it, the booger).   When I finished it was raffled away to a lucky winner.  I hope they like cats!

I didn't have a sketch or anything for this, I just did it on the fly!  It was very small, only 5"x5", and you can tell from my giant paint tubes that I used acrylic.  I did, however, have a little practice drawing the kitty:

She is hard to capture.  Like most cats, she has a very serious, and often psychotic expression, yet she is also stupidly cute.  

A got a couple good Lila drawings in there, too!

In case you were wondering if my household was turned upside down by the arrival of kitty, let the following photos assure you that she is fitting in quite nicely with Lila the dog.  

She's much bigger in this second photo...Lila likes to look out the window into the courtyard and then bark like a crazed banshee when anyone gets close.  

Yay for pets!  Furry little muses.  

there is just one moon, and one golden sun

....and a smile means friendship to everyone!

This is my piece for the Gallery Nucleus It's a Small World show that opens this Saturday, September 17.  I made a diptych, which is fancy speak for "two paintings that are supposed to go together".  They're both about 10"x20" and acrylic on board.

I wanted it to capture the happy, peaceful, slightly psychedelic feeling that you get from the ride.  I have been on that ride (at Disneyland, and once at Tokyo Disneyland!) a lot of times.  Once, we got stuck inside in the same spot for about 15 minutes, which could easily be obnoxious, but there's so much amazing design to look at that it was actually nice.  Slightly hypnotic, but nice.

Messing with the colors was a lot of fun, and I actually indulged and bought new, non-bargain price paint for this project!  Well, I say "indulged" but most of my paint was pretty much dried up crust in a bottle and not usable.  Plus I've got more gallery shows coming up and I like to be prepared!...or try to be.

Classes at CalArts started today!  I'm teaching a class about making awesome portfolios (a class I wish had existed when I was there).  I'm slightly nervous, more because it's hard to get up in front of people and talk than anything else.  My first class is Friday, so I still have to time to prepare!  I'm going to practice my lecture on my dog.  We'll see how that goes.

Work work work!!