Sunday, September 18, 2011

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.  







5 comments:

Daron Leah Nefcy said...

Oh you painted kitty! how nice!

Chingyi said...

the kitty is adorable!!

I was the lucky winner, I am so in love with your little painting! you did so well at the painting demo, it was very impressive that you could do that in such little time!

oh and I do like cats <3
I will cherish it forever!

sylvï said...

eee! you could totally make a million bucks from pet portraits! if only i had a cat, i'd commission one this instant.

this post flared up my kitty fever again... been catless for two years, first time in my life, and it's just not the same.

Desiree said...

I love kitties!!!

Great painting!

Unknown said...

Great sketching! All black animals are the bane of my existence, I can never draw them properly, no big patches or spots that you can cheat with, you however have no such worries!