Cat 45

Cat 45: Toby Chester in the woods.
Acrylic on canvas. 12" x 14".
(sold)

Its been a tough month of family crisis erupting, and as a result I have not been productive. After dabbling at this for a couple weeks and am at a loss where to take it. It may not be finished, but I think I am done with it for now. 

I was still frustrated over not getting the face of the orange cat in #43 correct, and had to try again after receiving a better shot to work from.
And, as it turned out, it was the tail that I was really interested in.

Initially I had the face so large it was filling most of the canvas. I ended up removing as much paint as possible, covered up what I couldn't get off, and started over. This time I free-handed directly with the paint, instead of drawing first. This worked much better.
I was so focused on the cat that I gave no thought to the background and ended up with a vertical problem. And no clue about what to do with the rest of the canvas. I went through numerous trials of different backgrounds before I opted for the trees. I initially thought adding more verticals would be a disaster, but it worked surprisingly well. And, I've been wanting to paint trees anyway.

Once again I did not allow enough space around the subject- which still feels crammed in to me- and had to retrofit the cat back in. Why do I keep doing this?

Cat 44

Cat 44: Karma.
Acrylic on Masonite. 12" x 14".

This is Karma, a cat with a distinctive personality who lived next door to me for a few years before moving to a different state with his owner.
He's built like a miniature lion, with the exception of not having a tail. And sensitive about being a Manx- he did not appreciate being laughed at. Karma visited nearly every day, first to the garden for some fresh catnip, after which he would wander into the house to say hello, and inspect.

I have a lot of  pre-cut 12 x 12's to use, and finding it it takes some thought to come up with a good composition that works well with that format. It often seems to fall short of what I am trying to do, and I end up adjusting some elements to get them to fit. So I was quite pleased to discover this 12 x 14 cut piece in my stash of boards.

I got about halfway through this painting before realizing I was being too heavy handed with the dark areas, so I wiped off what I was able to get off, used sand paper to take off the rest, then applied another thin coat of gesso to establish a fresh surface to work on.
This time I used chromium oxide green to build a lot of the shadow areas instead of the deep burnt umber, and like the effect a lot better.

I initially intended to have a lot more detail in the background which was a mix of gravel and dirt, but decided it worked much better to leave it soft focused and vague.