Cat 54

Cat 54, Shitz on the porch railing.
Acrylic on canvas. 14" x 11".
(sold)

After working with all the strait-from-the-tube bright colors, I needed to work on something more subdued.

This is Shitz, (aka "Shitty Kitty"), a cat I lived with years ago. Her unfortunate name came about as a kitten, not always choosing to use the litter box to do her business. She eventually outgrew that problem, but the lousy name stuck. In her senior years she developed diabetes and had to endure daily insulin injections.
Back then it was less risky to let the cats spend time outside and she spent a lot of time on the front porch. Now I have too many predators around, driven in closer as their habitats are taken over by nearby developments.

In spite of her cranky stare, she had a quiet, amiable personality. A little shy.

I never did get around to buying a tube of black paint, so I started with a red ground, and applied alternate layers of blue, green and umber until it was built up to a dark mass. The difficulty was to get an accurate shot- the camera wants to lean the colors towards either red or blue and I couldn't get the shot to read correctly as a photo. The colors seem to separate in the photo, instead of the eye blending them. It might be a perception thing that can't be resolved.
This was as close as I could get to how it really looks. Its pretty close.

Cat 53

Cat 53, Oscar on the quilt.
Acrylic on canvas. 11" x 14".

I was looking at this painting 3 years later in 2016, and had to make some changes. The original (below, left) had enough perspective problems in the quilt pattern, that it had to go- I could not tolerate looking at the strange alignments. Too bad, because I liked the idea of it. The overall composition was unfortunate in placing the cat so close to the right edge of the canvas, with the legs and tail all positioned the same distance to the edge. If I were to do this over I would shift the cat well to the left.
Actually, I think I would pick a less awkward pose. This one was really odd.
There were also some proportion issues and angles within the form of the cat that I attempted to correct. And finally, the intense saturation in all the colors was a bit much. It would be okay for the quilt to be saturated and bright, but not the cat.

2013: Oscar never really makes direct eye contact. He stares at a spot behind your head. Or through you, as if you were transparent.
When interrupted, he freezes and stares for a few seconds before resuming his activity.

He has interesting reflections of colors on his white areas. I also like all the angles going on, but wish I had given more thought to the quilt patterns, instead of winging it as I went. I ended up having to spend a lot of time repainting some areas, because the pattern alignment didn't make sense.

Cat 52

(above: rework 3 years later)

Cat 52, Oscar on the bed
Acrylic on canvas. 11" x 14".

This has got to be the "girliest" looking  piece I have ever done.

The woman who moved into the room my father had occupied came with a large senior cat named Oscar. She has arranged and decorated the room very differently from how my father had it set up, which makes it a bit easier for me to visit there. The room looks quite feminine now and Oscar, weighing in at 19 pounds, looks a bit incongruous lounging on her pink coverlet. So much for Oscar's tough guy image.

This was an interesting challenge with all the bright, saturated colors. Initially I had left the patterns very loose, but that looked odd with the cat being detailed, and I ended up going all fussy with the quilt.
I liked all the angles and the concentrated patches of color on the left, and the visual relief of the more solid area on the right. Initially, the image was very flat with the saturated colors, and adding darker areas didn't help to establish much depth. The solution was to tone down some bright areas by mixing gray into the colors. The broad area of pink did not incorporate in until I thought to add some yellow into it, which finally pulled it together.
I tend to isolate colors which can result in a fragmented, disjointed appearance. Integrating the colors gives much better unity.