The dogs had their day, now it is time for a few cats. Not Batman this time. My son Matt and his wife Eva have two cats, Wallace and Francisco. Francisco used to be named Steve for a short time, but it didn't catch on and they changed it up. Dave and I thought for sure they'd name him "Grommit" since that was a favorite video of the boys when they were young. We visited Matt and Eva in October. Usually their cats are indifferent to me, but they have some competition in their lives now: Luke. Yes, a human baby was born to Matt and Eva and now Wallace and Francisco are not the center of attention.....so they were willing to hang with me on this visit. I loved the photo of them at the front window. They spend quite a bit of time there, being tormented at times by the bajillion little lizards that are all over the outdoors in Florida. I painted the window version of the two cats first, and it went pretty quick - I think because it didn't involve trying to get their faces painted. Free-hand drawing once again tonight, I felt pretty good about this one.
So I moved on to a second try at the little white cat that I photographed at the Pumpkin Patch. I had done the cat on one of the tiny easel canvases 3 months ago. By comparison this version is huge (perhaps an exaggeration, it is 5in x 5in). I free-handed it again and it went down pretty quick. But then I decided to "fix" the paws in front, which then led to a cascade of fixing the next nearest thing (more white, less white, more shadow here, no take that shadow out, etc etc etc). Finally, I put it down.
With still time, I went for a third cat. This time Wallace alone. He was sitting at my feet one day, sphinx-like, as if he was guarding me (perhaps in case any of those lizards got in the house). I took some pictures, and of course he pulled in one of his paws, losing his sphinx pose, but still a paintable photo. Well, this painting turned out to be traumatic for me. I think I've spent about 6 hours on this one, and I STILL can't get him right. And then I think, if I had just done a simple tracing I could have finished him in an hour...a simple tracing, why didn't I just do a simple tracing. But then why didn't my drawing suffice, like it did for Stella and Jack? Frustrating, very frustrating. I played with the chin, over and over, repainted the eyes, the ears, the stripes...nothing made him look like Wallace. Grrrrrr!
 |
| Is this a cat, or a rat? It needs work!!! |
 |
| After hours of messing with the painting, he's more cat-like, just not Wallace-like. |
 |
| Weeks later, I messed with him again and I'm finally going to put down varnish and call it quits! |
 |
And....I continued to mess with him, even after I decided to call it quits.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment