Cat 59

Cat 59: CopodeLeite.
Acrylic on canvas. 11" x 14".
(sold)

This is the same cat as in #57 and 58. She has very complex coloring and markings, which I'm having a challenging time trying to emulate and/or express.

Earlier in the course of this painting, the gold colored bed sheets were so saturated and intense that the cat nearly disappeared in spite of bumping up the contrast in an attempt to balance it. Although intrigued with the vibrating warm colors, I ended up scrubbing out and wiping off most of the yellows and dropping the intensity by adding grays and purples until the background color calmed down.

This is a shot sent of CopodeLeite with her pictures, which finally arrived after a very long trip:

Cat 58

Cat 58: CopodeLeite.
Acrylic on canvas. 11" x 14".
(sold)

Cat 58 was an interesting challenge- the photo I worked with had the background buildings brightly lit and the cat in nearly total shadow with its eyes closed.
So I made some modifications to put the face in light, and opened up the eyes. I referenced several other shots of the same cat taken at different angles to attempt to get it reasonably correct. I'll never really know, as nothing exists for a direct comparison.

I ended up changing the color of the table cloth and the curtains in the background building. I wanted the table cloth to compliment the eyes so that went through a succession of blues.
The color of the curtains in the back have changed numerous times. The colors in the photo seemed to fight a little with the overall tone.

At one point the cat became so hard edged that it had taken on the same concrete look of the buildings. Which might be an interesting direction, but not what I was after for this.
I suspect the problem is that I became too focused on the the buildings in the background and the cat became almost secondary.

Cat 57

Cat 57: CopodeLeite.
Acrylic on canvas. 14" x 11".
(sold)

CopodeLeite was found in a forest as a tiny white kitten only hours old. Later she developed tortie coloration with tabby markings, and very intense cobalt blue eyes. Maybe some Siamese ancestry? She is a beautiful cat, living in an apartment in Rio de Janiero.
The relaxed, odalisque pose appealed to me, especially with the closed eye and the folded ear. A lot of personality coming through.

At one point I had  a good deal of fussy detail in the foreground, including striped sheets, but that proved to be so distracting that the cat was getting lost, so it was simplified to suggestions of folds and shadows.

Cat 56

Cat 56, Lizzy in the chair by the wood stove.
Acrylic on canvas. 14" x 11".
(sold)

It's been below freezing for the past week, and getting progressively colder each day. Approaching the single digits at night, we are running the wood stove pretty much non-stop now.
Lizzy has abandoned the heating pad in preference for the overstuffed chair near the wood stove. She only leaves it to eat or do her business.

Having done a similar painting of her in this chair I decided to reinvent her as a gray cat to make it more interesting for myself to work on.
I wanted to include the wood stove in the picture, and had to figure out how to paint fire. Its going to take more experimenting to figure out how to achieve that intense glow of the burning logs; dropping the adjacent color saturation and values helped, but didn't produce the glow I wanted to see.

This painting was about impossible to get an accurate shot of. I kept getting an intense reflection off the surface in the dark areas, and depending on how I angled the canvas, odd looking areas of blues or reds. Adjusting the white balance on the camera as well as different lighting produced various results, but none that really nailed it.

Cat 55

(Above- the painting reworked a few years later... )

Cat 55, Oscar in the corner
Acrylic on canvas. 14" x 11".

While visiting with my mother the other day, Oscar wandered into the room, parked himself in a corner, and made a big production of grooming while peering at us from a safe distance. He never looks directly at anyone- just stares at an invisible point slightly to the side or through you. Maybe he has a vision problem. More likely he is not comfortable making direct eye contact with these relative strangers invading his space.

I liked the twisting angle of his body against the straight lines of the walls and floor. Getting the odd angles of his torso to read correctly was a challenge, and I ended up having to reposition the size, angle and details of the head several times and make subsequent adjustments to the surrounding torso before it looked plausible to me.
In retrospect, I wish I had pulled back and allowed more room for the walls and floor to emphasize the empty, personal space around him. I'm still not sure that I like the saturated yellow wall, but when I cover it up the painting goes a bit flat for me.

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.