Cat 50

The painting (above) reworked a few years later, as "Cat 61".

Cat 50, Lizzy on the bed.
Acrylic on canvas. 14" x 11".

Lizzy cleaning up, on the bed. She probably spends half her waking hours cleaning herself, which I find puzzling as she does not have an opportunity to get very dirty, being an indoor only cat. I saw her once covered with cob-webs, after she managed to squeeze in behind the washing machine one day. Not sure what she was looking for back there.

I seem to do 80% of a painting in an hour or two, then spend two weeks fussing around adding and removing layers. Here I was looking for a more complex, twisting position to tackle and this looked promising with the nice diagonal lines. It turned out to be one of those shots that looked believable as a photo, but a little weird to reproduce as a painting. I bypassed a lot of elements which just ended up looking strange when I tried to include them. Looking at it now I'd like to see the paws were more "anchored" to the ground- maybe have more shadows worked in. I will likely go back in and look for a good solution later on, after I've stepped away from it for a while.
I like the warm tones. Using some cooler violet and blue in the shadows worked well to contrast with the warm hues and intensify them.

Cat 49

Cat 49, Don Gato.
Acrylic on Masonite. 12" x 12".

This is Don Gato, a one-eyed cat, on a towel covered chair.
 I liked the intensity of the orange cat on a turquoise towel, but had a difficult time trying to achieve the turquoise color. I tried numerous mixes of blues with other colors, and ended up wiping them off and starting over until trying an old, almost dried out tube of Pthalo green. That did the trick, although the paint was a little too compromised to work properly. I was able to coax enough pigment out to get a workable tint, but could not manipulate the paint very well. I also had to truncate his body a bit to fit into a square format.

After weeks of intense projects, appointments and obligations, I'm finally getting back into painting again. With the relatively short window of dry, warm weather, any major outside projects have to be accomplished during the brief summer months. Roofing, painting and other house repairs left me drained to do much else.