The paper clay kitten that dried out on our window ledge this week, has come to life! (And it’s madder than a march hare.)
The 52 Week illustration theme this week is TOY.
Kitten Called Thunder
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Tag Archives: cat
Revenge in 4 stages
Dog performs psychological punishment.
Cat demonstrates turning the other cheek.
The 52 Week Illustration Challenge theme this week is TOY.
Happy Wednesday.
Week 32: PSYCHEDELIC
Cat trouble again
I don’t know if the cat is directly responsible for this little dog’s trippy bad dream, but she is certainly doing her best to mozz him.
Continuous line drawings in French
The 52 Week Illustration Challenge theme this week is LINES.
These are some line drawings done in the car during a rainy soccer training session in half darkness. I am quite pleased with them because they were done from the imagination and without any visual reference. I let the words of the french lesson lead the direction of the doodle. I tried to do them almost completely using a continuous line, except where my pen fell off the page. And above, I did some rather crude scribble in the speech balloon as well.
And below is one of my Calculus Fashion ladies with a bit of colour added. I am quite liking the effect on the parchment and print. 
Sometimes I draw quite complex continuous line drawings in my mind, while lying in bed at night. It’s very relaxing, and the resulting drawings take up very little storage space.
Occasionally I forget where I put them, because I fall asleep :-)
Blue Cornish Shadow Dance – a work in progress
Thunderstorm inking is in progress this afternoon. I stopped to paint a cat on a discarded piece of paper (a piece of paper with two eyes cut out of it for Greyfur the puppet and a great deal of splodgy ink). This is actually a glorified-blob drawing. The blob suggested the Cornish Rex, and then I finished it off and put some shadow play in the background, experimenting with tone and shape in the way that I want to much more in the future. The Greyfur eye holes (bottom right) can be seen but have been filled in with a collaged piece of watercolour paper behind.
But here’s the thing. The original hard copy looks like this (below).
I’m reasonably pleased with this picture as a start. But it needs more tonal contrast and more definition in some areas I think. I shaded those blue areas over the top of this image in PhotoShop, almost without thinking, because I’m using PhotoShop so much to edit and enhance illustration work at the moment. I wanted to see what would happen if I added a further layer of colour and shape.
Now I can go back and add this over the real image if I want to. Or in a different colour and pattern. It’s a handy experiment that I hadn’t thought of before that might be quite helpful with my painting practice sometimes.
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 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
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)
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. 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
Another cat called Thunder
I’m revising roughs on the run. This puddy was a Maine Coon in the rough and needed converting to Rex before inking.
It would be nice to have an auto-conversion button, but actually it’s quite a nice part of my work. The Maine Coon was a bit cranky. The Rex is more comical and sweet. So the pose/attitude needs to change accordingly.
Now for the ink.
(a Cornish Rex of course)
Work in progress (a fragment) for page 8/9 spread of Thunderstorm Dancing.
Judy Watson 