Little Grey Kitty

Another fun painting using pieces of cardboard box! Seeing that I love to shop online and receive some of the purchases in parcel boxes, I thought it would be a great idea to recycle a bit, cut out a piece and paint away. We also know that cats love to play in cardboard boxes right? So why not dedicate this project to cat paintings! The other day it was with pastels in Ginger and Her Fish. Now comes the next in the series, and this time, with watercolor!

Prime Time

Before we paint away, we firstly need to prime the cardboard piece with some watercolor ground. The purpose of this is to firstly smooth out the ridges from the cardboard, and secondly, to provide a surface for the watercolor to adhere. And enter Watercolor Ground by Daniel Smith! What makes this special is that unlike gesso, the watercolor ground absorbs water. I evenly applied it with a wide wet brush as per instructions with no difficulty. Although the ground comes transparent, white, gold and black, white was selected for this painting.

Sketching Away

Once evenly dry, my cat was sketched with Caran d’Ache aquarel pencil. I was quite amazed how rough the surface was, almost like sandpaper, and thus went light-handed with the drawing so I don’t run the pencil lead down! Decided to make my cat grey this time, recalling the big grey cat my neighbor had when I was living in Amsterdam years ago. His name was Bram, and he loved playing with the empty card box boxes I had been trying to dispose of. And now my mini version of him is relaxing a bit after a good play around.

Let’s Get Coloring!

Time to color our cute grey cat! This time, I opted for monotone greyscale. Introducing here then a new product: My set of Kremer Pigment Watercolor I had ordered from Germany the other day. This company, which I had come across on FB, develops pigments in all different shades along with pans of handmade watercolors. One of the sets I got hold of was the greyscale series which come in 14 shades of grey, and they do indeed come out beautifully, even on a piece of cardboard box. In fact, so intensively have the colors turned out that you’d think this was a graphite pencil sketch! I can’t wait to try the other colors soon. And now, here is my sweet little grey kitty!

Another inspiring experiment painting on cardboard! Despite the limitations of working on an uneven surface, it’s great to play around with various possibilities. And having tried pastels already and now watercolor, I am curious to see what happens with other mediums. Gouache? Acrylic? Oil paint sticks? Wonderful to continue with the cardboard box project with cute little kittens and looking forward to more!