Category Archives: cats

Puppet Challenge… Weaselly Wolves and other unfinished creations

Weaselly Wolves – painted in 2013 for ‘One Word One Day’

Finding myself trying to make Greyfur too anatomically kangarooish was making my puppeting challenge hard. Indeed, my son asked me if the incomplete Greyfur face was a dog or a deer.

Other subjects I’d earlier considered making for the Puppet Challenge had included the following. All have been covered by other puppet challengers as it turns out.

The Big Bad Wolf

The Big Bad Wolf is a favourite topic of mine, as I’ve been a fan of Angela Carter’s writing for many years, but he’s not a local myth like Greyfur. I also find wolves pretty easy to draw because along with their doggishness is the fact that the BBW is now such an icon, that he is recognisable in any kind of shorthand format and is way above any kind of need for anatomical realism.

Wolfish types (above), bearing little resemblance to Canis Lupus.

Puss in Boots

Puss is also not a local tradition. Angela Carter does a fabulous rendition of this fairy tale too. And as I seem to be obsessed with Cornish Rex cats at the moment, my Puss in Boots sketches were distinctly Cornish in flavour; black, big-eyed, big-eared, narrow-framed.

This one was for the 52-week Illustration challenge, but I was thinking about Puss in Boots for the puppet challenge at the time.

first sketch, always too naturalistic, but he almost captures the devil-may-care nonchalant cat personality I was going for.

shadow puppet perhaps? I like the idea of the sail-like ears being semi-transparent and the rest being solid black card.

shadow puppet perhaps? I liked the idea of the sail-like ears being semi-transparent and the rest being solid black card.

a further attempt to get whole figure on the page!

marionette? With Yarn body and wooden boots?

black yarn knitted or crocheted body?

Back to the shadow puppet idea. I drew the shadow puppet ogre and the mouse that he turns into, foolish fellow. I also drew the king and had a couple of goes at the lad.

Troll with Billy Goats Gruff

We live by a creek with a bridge so this had some local relevance. And this was the first one that I considered using the crumpled paper for. I had it in my mind that the curling horns of the goats would look great if made out of crumpled and twisted paper. And I was intrigued about the challenge of making three goat characters and capturing the varying ages and personalities of the three (a theme I had a lot of fun with in The Middle Sheep by Frances Watts.)

Three goat siblings I drew for ‘The Middle Sheep’ by Frances Watts

I seem to have misplaced my puppet goat sketches. They’ll turn up somewhere unlikely one day…

Greyfur the Kangaroo

A couple more sketches I found while I was looking for the goats!

So anyway… I went back to the wolves in the picture at the top of this post! These two rather weaselly looking wolves are plotting mischief together. Below are some photos of the fun and messy creative process the other night on my kitchen floor. The boys were having a fantastic time for much of the evening, playing with a sack full of puppets that I had tipped out onto the floor. Puppets really do inspire all sorts of creative play.

Two (Big, Bad) Wolf Brothers

starting point

eyeballs

one weaselly nose and some fingers with claws drying in front of the fan heater

three toes before strapping together to make a hand. I was careful this time to make the outside and inside fingers the right length.

strapping together to make a hand

adding a thumb

two hands, one with a wrist

two hands with wrists

positioning some eyeballs!

adding eyelids (with rough dots for pupils)

time for some teeth after the lower jaw added

I wanted the teeth to be very crooked and uneven

both with eyes and with ears under way

All ears connected. The Brains (left) has narrower eyes to make him look more sly. Brawn will have the lolling tongue.

Indian ink on crumpled paper. A very satisfying process

Would you buy a used car from these two?

Black paint on. I may add more later.

This guy is just asking for a tongue now.

tongue ready to attach. Teeth and eyes with some white added. Brains will have moving hands. Brawn will have a moving mouth. (This is probably rather counter-intuitive but there ya go!)

with tongue, painted mouth, bloodshot eyes and Granny’s bonnet.

Would you buy a used car from these two?

This is where I had to stop. If I have time Brawn (Actually, I think his name is Willy) will get a nightdress slightly stained with blood on the front, and lacy sleeves from which will protrude his long, black claws over the bed clothes.

Brains (Hmmm… Ernest, perhaps, because he’s anything but earnest) will have working arms, but I’m not really happy with the high attachment I’ve started here. I think he’d be more impressive without such a distorted scale. I might give him long arms and move them with rods instead so that they can creep in from the side in a lurking sort of way. I think these two should look rather long and rangy like their original drawing, rather than dwarfed versions of themselves.

I’d love to add whiskers, but not sure where to get those twirly feathers from that people use on puppets. I could modify some of my chickens’ feathers I guess… But I’ll have to leave these rascals for now.

Cornish Rex (again)

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The finished head – because he is three dimensional (or at least high relief) he looks different from different angles.

Cornish Wraps…
Cornish Rips…

Whatever, it’s Cornish again. And he’s made with crumpled brown paper sandwich bags. I think this medium could be a lot of fun to pursue in all sorts of directions. This is actually a ‘card’ for Dad’s birthday. A kind of weird card perhaps, but it comes with lots of love.

It wasn’t completely out of the blue. I started using a variation on this method a couple of weeks ago to produce a puppet for the Puppet Challenge. I’ll post on that as well. I love the feel and flexibility of the crumpled paper. It’s soft and flexible but has enough stiffness to have a bit of expression of its own that it contributes to the shapes you make.

So here’s how he was made.

After thoroughly crumpling and squishing a few brown paper bags until they began to soften in my hands, I started folding here and there until a face emerged (a bit like playing with blobs) and then added a daub of glue here and there to hold sections in place.

I started with the head. The corners of the paper lunch bag practically made the cat’s ears on their own.

The flat nose piece is (from memory) a separate piece glued on top of the architecture of the nose and upper jaw. I liked the way the edges of the bag where there is a fine zig-zag cut are reminiscent of the curly coat of the Cornish Rex. So I made use of it on the cat’s wrinkled brow.

He now has a neck, and mouth

A body begins to emerge

legs and tail – not particularly happy with these, but no time for second takes

The application of ink was a little rushed because I was due at Dad’s birthday lunch in a few minutes

I added the eyes. I wanted them to contrast with the rest in their bold blockiness, not crumpled at all. The Cornish has huge glossy eyes.

I added the eyes. I wanted them to contrast with the rest in their bold blockiness, not crumpled at all. A Cornish Rex has huge, glossy eyes. I didn’t quite get the effect I wanted, but it had to do for now. He does look alert, I think.

Lastly, he had a quick toasting in front of the fan heater and then we had to leave for birthday celebrations. The hugs and kisses were added later with the waitresses’ black texta :-)

toasting by the fan heater

Happy (belated) Birthday Dad. xxxx

Putting Thunder Cats into Perspective

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Here’s a little peep into the book illustration process for Thunderstorm Dancing as roughs are edited on the fly while final art is being produced. For this spread, the Cat Called Thunder, needed to be inserted into the veranda scene, and I played around with various poses and movements until I found one that had the right character and jaunty expression.

…I realise Cornish Rex cats are not really characterised by jauntiness in the face of a thunderstorm. But this particular one is a Picture-Book-Cornish-Rex. And they are a specialised breed.

The problem was that the little fellow I liked is in full profile, and the illustration required him to be viewed partly from above. This can be a tricky adjustment to make (especially with drawings of people). But I usually give it a whirl by dotting in some rough suggestions of where the skeleton and joints might be, and take it from there. It puts the character into a three dimensional space in my mind.

My improvised sketch to alter the viewer's angle of Thunder and my guesses at the location of the joints. I was wrong about the shoulder as I found out later.

My improvised sketch to alter the viewer’s angle of the Cat Called Thunder and my guesses at the location of the joints. I was wrong about the shoulder as I found out later.

Here’s what I came up with to shift the view point. And I was happy enough with that to move on to inking stage, and to add in any further detail during inking.

A cat skeleton showing the position of the shoulder joint at the front of the cat, rather than up around the area we would call the ‘withers’ in a horse.

Looking at the skeleton above you will see that my shoulder joints were in the wrong spot, but as it happens it didn’t really affect the drawing. My made-up shoulders took a shortcut from the top of the scapula through to the elbow joint, skipping the humerus. (Very efficient, methinks;-)

The Cat Called Thunder struts across the decking as the storm approaches.

The Cat Called Thunder trots across the decking as the storm approaches.

Here’s the Cat Called Thunder redrawn in ink and in position against the un-inked veranda. I think he’s sufficiently jaunty for the most demanding of viewers, despite his overbite which would make orthodontists blanch.

Brian, the greyhound with an overbite

Here’s Brian with a similar jaw. I think the overbite gives these two a bit of an ‘oops’ expression.

The Three Demon Cats

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If you mentally rotate this 90 degrees anticlockwise, and imagine the faint grey wash without the black ink details, you will be seeing what I painted a few weeks ago for page 14 of Thunderstorm Dancing. They were shadows on the floor for the cat I’m calling Thunder.

I picked up the piece of paper with three grey blobs on it today and looked at it in bemusement. ‘What are those three weird, rounded-yet pointy-blobs? They kind of remind me of something, but I’m not sure what…’

After working out what they were for, and given they are no longer needed, it seemed a shame to waste a piece of perfectly good paper. So I turned them into demon cats.

I could have turned them into nice cats. But their shape was somehow not really wholesome… more gothic. But don’t be alarmed. I will keep them in an iron-bound book and they will be unable to escape. (A small nod there to The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O’Shea.)