painting the cat
Actually, to be clear, painting a picture of the cat…
My daughter came over today for some R&R, and had asked if she could do some painting. It’s hot here at the moment in the UK, and my attic studio room gets extremely toasty, so we sat in the shade in our beautiful little garden and had a marvellous time painting our cat, Sausage.
I acquired Sobbage (as he’s affectionately known) a week or two after my gorgeous cat Ozzie was run over, and I decided that Sobbs would be a housecat. As well as reducing my concerns over safety, it also removed my dilemma about domestic cats and their natural instincts to hunt – not just birds and mammals, but butterflies; frogs; bats; pretty much everything that moves. My daughter isn’t in a position to have animals with her current living circumstances so she has to come back to mine for some time with the animals. Rose, being the youngest, spent more time with Sobbage than my other two children, and she also happens to love cats. Consequently she really misses having the animals around her, so it’s nice that when she comes over to visit, she gets to spend some proper time with her extended family.
Here is Rose a few years ago with a tiny Sobbage and a tiny Ned:
So, fast forward to today, and I organised an A4 sketchbook for Rose so if she decided to take any out to decorate her flat, she could use an off-the-shelf frame. We were working in gouache and in the hot weather, the paint was drying almost as soon as it hit the paper so it didn’t take long at all to finish our pictures. Rose loves reading, so added some books to hers.
An unintended consequence of AI is that most people are feeling more confident about tackling art, as it’s so personal and imperfectly perfect. Here we are with our artworks:
