Cat 35

Cat 35.
Acrylic on canvas. 11" x 14".

In the evening, Lizzy often ends up in an old overstuffed rocking chair, enjoying the heat from the wood stove nearby. It's a great chair for reading with a floor lamp set up next to it, but as soon as I vacate the chair she jumps up and settles in on the warm seat.
Here she had taken over my place when I got up to add another log on the fire and was very busy cleaning her foot and pausing to look at me to see if I was going to try to reclaim my seat.

I like the soft texture, warm lighting and the hesitation in her action.

Cat 34

Cat 34.
Acrylic on Masonite. 12" x 12".
(Panini #2)

Being generally displeased with where Cat 33 was heading, I started a different painting. Working from a photo of my cat I tried the idea of modifying it and applying characteristics of the orange tabby. I doubt it really looks much like the cat I was commissioned to do, but I think it will work better as a companion piece with the painting she already has (see Cat 26).
This was done using one of the boards that I had started a painting on, and rejected. I sanded the surface down as far as I dared, applied a thin layer of gesso to create a more neutral ground and started over. This yielded some interesting textures. I wish I had left a little more open space on the left, so the paw is not so tight to the edge of the painting. This is called failing to adequately plan ahead.

Cat 33

Cat 33.
Acrylic on Masonite. 12" x 12".
(Panini #1)

This is a commissioned piece, from a photo provided to me. I made numerous attempts was not pleased with any of them- I ended up sanding down all the boards except this one to use for something else and kept this version intact, in hopes of resolving it.
I did a lot of initial experimenting by building this up in washes, then applying the paint in puddles of water allowing the pigment to dry in granulated pools which made some interesting textures. Later I painted over that as it became too visually busy. Eventually I overworked the surface to the point of  no return and had to take some of it back off with sandpaper..
This was a case of the photo looking reasonable, but it did not translate well as a painting.
I find straight on frontal views extremely difficult to work with. The foreshortened angle of the cat and indistinct overhead lighting flattened the image.

I am really liking the window blinds in the back (aha! More stripes).  What I learned from this piece is that sometimes I am better off departing from the photo.

Three Train Engines

Three Train engines.
Acrylic on Masonite. 48" x 36".
(sold)

The trains kept getting larger- this canvas is four feet wide. I really like the colors and the bold graphics on the Southern Pacific, Union Pacific and Santa Fe engines. I wish Amtrak had come up with a jazzy color scheme- maybe that would increase their ridership.
My reference photo for this was a 5 x 3 inch postcard I bought at the museum, a stock photo of these engines lined up in an urban train yard. I repositioned them out on a rural prairie and naturally had to throw in some buffalo, partially to keep this from being too symmetrical. Adding diagonal clouds also served to add suggested motion kept the composition from being too still.

Southern Pacific No. 10

Southern Pacific No. 10.
Acrylic on Canvas. 44" x 37".

Years ago, I took a trip on the Coast Starlight train from Seattle to California. The route ran through the snowy coastal mountain ranges as well as along the ocean. Amazing scenery. I kept a sketchbook and did a lot of drawings of that trip.
While staying near Sacramento, I dropped in to take a look at the train museum and emerged with a head full of trains and a handful of postcards. I really like the saturated pastel colors of the old linen cards produced in the 1940's and decided I needed to make a large version for myself. The promotional images often showed a train running through an orange grove, something I never actually witnessed but I liked the idea. Maybe that happened further south down the line.

Train Engine 1701

Train Engine 1701.
Acrylic on canvas. 36" x 29".
(sold)

This is an older painting. I don't recall the exact source for the image other than it was from a small black and white photo of a train crew taking a break to pose on a steam engine, probably around the early 1900's. The photo had been cropped off at the top.
I liked the composition, scale, perspective and strong shadows. I also wondered how it would look in color, and decided to add my own color.
In retrospect I wish I had gone to the trouble of researching the engine and included the stack at the top of the engine- it still disturbs me that I cropped it where I did.

Cat 32

Cat 32.
Acrylic on Masonite. 12" x 12".
(sold)

This was done from an older photo I found of "Spud", a cat who lived with me years ago. He was rescued by someone I knew, found as a tiny kitten wandering on a busy four lane road in danger of becoming road kill. I agreed to watch him for a weekend while the person who rescued him was out of town, and he stayed for 15 years. He had a very easy going personality but also painfully shy with people he didn't know.

The background surface went through numerous experimental evolutions before I reverted back to the stripes. He was actually outside, napping on the bleached root base of an an old cedar log, which had weathered with patterns very similar to fabric, and I ended up inventing the fabric by imitating the patterns in the log.
I like the circular activity happening here. It is an interesting balance of visual movement with a sedate pose.

Cat 31

Cat 31.
Acrylic on canvas. 20" x 16".
(sold)

Lizzy in the back window, in the late winter sun.

Influenced by the late winter foggy morning light, I began by painting the entire canvas a light pink. The stand of alders and western hazelnuts in the background were still barren trunks, creating a silhouetted pattern in the fog. The Pieris Japonica in the foreground was in full bloom, adding to the overall pink cast. Working on the Pieris got me interested in trying more foliage. I need to learn how to pant trees.

I had problems getting a good shot of this painting. The colors in the foreground are are actually more saturated than they appear to be here (obscured by a reflective sheen) but I had to sacrifice that to get the background to read correctly.

Cat 30

 Cat 30.
Acrylic on Masonite. 11" x 14".
(sold)

 This is Lizzy squeezed into a small shallow box lid, in a sunny spot on the table.
I started this by painting the entire board a solid red. After it had dried, I built up lighter and darker layers on top of the red ground. I am seeing a pattern where I shift back and forth between working "tighter" and "looser". As the previous painting was more detailed, this one loosened up.
I really like this one with the high contrast, strong back lighting and the subtle reflections bouncing off the table onto her white fur.
The straight shadows cast across the table from the cat used to be cast by the window frame in the background, which I eliminated later. The shadows no longer make any sense, but I left them in. Curiously, no one ever brought that up to me. Is everyone really that polite, or did no one notice?

Cat 29

Cat 29.
Acrylic on Masonite. 12" x 12".
(sold)

Lizzy snuggled into a white goose down comforter on the bed, on a cold afternoon. This was in the days before I set up a heating pad for her.

I was drawn to the folds, and the soft shadows and reflections in the white fabric, as well as the high contrast of her dark areas against the white fabric. And I liked the impossible angle of her front leg folded under.
I wish I had that kind of flexibility.
The composition makes an interesting "X" shape with the diagonal direction of the torso and the opposing diagonal of the head and leg.