Meow Mood

Another “and then now what..?” moment when starting a new painting and getting stuck. Then suddenly getting some inspiration and coming up with one layering idea after another. This time I was in another cat mood and creating something strangely kawaii and abstract.

I was going to do another self-healing project from Tamara Laporte’s book and began designing the background using my ink sprays and new cats stencil. However I guess I wasn’t quite with it as this project required finding photos which I didn’t have handy and also required cutting out 6-7 heart shapes and painting each one individually in different designs which was a bit tedious. Besides I was not happy with how the stencil work turned out so…

So I decided to cut out some heart shapes from that and use them as collage material. And also cut out some shapes around interesting patterns like a pair of paws. For this piece, I used four of them and put away the rest in my collage stash for future use.

Then I got out my Mixed Media sketchbook and started randomly making splotches of blue from different paints and inks and doodles of yellow from my Cray-pas oil pastels, one layer after another. Paints included the Golden Fluid Acrylic paint in Cobalt Blue and Dina Wakely’s paints in Ocean and Turquoise. Acrylic Inks by Royal Talens and Daler Rowney both called Turquoise but are different in shades. Another ink I used was Light Blue by Daler Rowney. Then to fill in most of the white bits and to play down the blue, I brushed on some baby pink paint (Light Rose by Royal Talens) in random areas,

Among my stash was a cat template which I also used in a previous painting. I thought it would be appropriate for this catty theme so I flipped the sketch book to portrait orientation and traced the cat. Once I was happy with the placement of the collages, I glued them on with gel medium and coloured in the cat with black gesso. I chose black gesso because I wanted a fully opaque appearance with even and thick coverage. And once painted on, the eyes would look intense.

I felt more could be done to the painting so I experimented with yet another medium. Using a palette knife, I spread some heavy bodied acrylic ink, more precisely in Light Violet by Golden. I found it quite pleasant to use given its buttery texture and would definitely use it again and next time alongside fluid acrylics to see the difference, On top of that, I stamped some Distress Ink in green and yellow shades using bubble wrap. Then painted in the eyes using Dina Wakely’s paint in Ocean, with the lining and whites of eyes drawn in with Uni Posca pens. These pens in orange were also used to outline the earlier prepared collages, and white ones were used to add random dots in the background. And now…

Again another relaxed day of painting whatever comes in my head as I progress. It’s the part of painting I enjoy as it keeps me creative. I also love painting cats and making them kawaii yet simple. Actually this painting looks a bit Halloween doesn’t it? Then I must make it a note to use the rest of the orange and yellow collages for a real Halloween theme coming up in a month’s time!