Sleep well!

 

During our painting vacation we were visited and sometimes encouraged by the old calico cat that lives at the location where we stayed. We were surprised to see her again, she is 18 years old now. Most of the daytime she sleeps in a nice spot and so I made a reference picture with the plan to make a drawing somewhere in the near future.

The last day our teacher and coach Ad van Aart did not have a small/short exercise for me for the afternoon so I decided to make the drawing I wanted to do.

Using my watercolour pencils I made this drawing, only layering pencil colours and not using water - I wanted to keep my brushes dry to be able to pack them that afternoon as it was the last afternoon of our stay there.

As she is old and very skinny, her fur is 'fluffy' and I tried to draw that as well. 

This had to be a quick one, there was not much time left before we were to close the week with a discussion of the works we made during the week.

The information about the materials I have used, the size of this drawing and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.

If you are interested in  my original artwork, contact me.

Lapje - a pencil drawing

 

When I am walking in our neighbourhood, to post a letter, to go to a shop or anything that might be needed that moment, I often meet the cats that live there. Saying 'Hello' is polite, so that is what I do. When I get an answer, we sometimes talk a little (me: 'How are you?' - he or she: 'Meow' and so on) and sometimes I ask permission to make a picture.

This beautiful Calico cat gave me her permission to make some pictures and I used these for a pencil drawing. I might also make a watercolour painting, but when I made the drawing I was at the 'Af-en-toe Kunstroute' and brought only some drawing materials with me.

The title is based on the Dutch name of a Calico cat: Lapjeskat, so it had to be Lapje. She was not very talkative and did not give her name, allowing me the freedom to choose a title.

For the black patches of her fur I mixed some dark colours, just like I would du when painting with watercolour paint because I had no black watercolour pencil with me.  Some of the dark hairs were more brown than black and using the mixing technique I could add brown to the fur without unnatural colour transitions.

The colour mixing may not result in a perfect black, it had to be a natural colour and I think I achieved that.

The information about the materials I have used, the size of the drawing and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.