Watercolor + Scrapbooking

[osprey_archer]

I posted a few weeks ago about an imminent watercolor class, which was then postponed, but happily it finally happened this Monday! So I spent three hours Monday evening learning about watercolors, and ended the evening with a watercolor of two fat birds which I have pinned to the bulletin board in my office. There was also a watercolor of an orange cat which was very cute right up until I added the eyes... somehow they are people eyes rather than cat eyes and give the whole thing a feel disturbingly like the Cats movie.

However, I will persevere! One of my watercolor goals is a portrait of a cat who I met in the Brooklyn Cat Cafe, as I would like to put her picture in my scrapbook (planning a spread called Cats at Work), but I currently have only a blurry video which will not screenshot well... Hopefully I can do Pink Salmon justice in watercolor. She deserves the tribute of a portrait rather than a mere photograph, anyway.

Scrapbooking progresses! Despite Baby Boy's interference (he knocked the table over RIGHT after I had finished laying out the pages...) I am finishing up the section for my thirtieth birthday party. It is ten pages long, which is longer than the spread for my entire 2017 road trip... Well, look, sometimes you just have more things to put in the scrapbook, you know? Not only are there more photos for the birthday party, but I'm putting in many of the birthday cards I received, as well.

Have begun work on my massive 2023 road trip. So far I have a better record than I feared, although to my dismay have have discovered that I have nothing from either (a) John K. King Books - not even a photo of the stack of books I bought! - or (b) the Boston Public Library, which was about 75% of my sightseeing in Boston. Oops. (This reminds me that I was planning to get a little cocktail umbrella and paint it black in honor of A Spy among Friends. Must add to list.)

Because it's so big, I've been sort of storyboarding the road trip pages. I stopped after Boston last weekend, but this weekend I'm hoping to get through the last few weeks of the trip - PEI, Belchertown, and Philadelphia for skygiants and genarti's wedding. (Which I also don't have pictures for! But I DO have pictures from the Rodin museum, including a miniature sculpture of a penguin, which is a parody of Rodin's commemorative sculpture of Balzac.)

Comments

[genarti]

Cat eyes are so hard! You would think they'd be easy enough -- eye shape! slit pupil! -- and yet it's SO easy for them to throw off the whole picture. If I'm doodling a cat I tend to make it a sleeping one, out of cowardice, which is strategic but doesn't help me get better at cat eyes. So maybe you'll figure out the trick of it.

[osprey_archer]

My current plan is to do the eyes early so they don't spoil the picture after I've spent a lot of time painting a beautiful cat. We will see if this helps!

[asakiyume]

here was also a watercolor of an orange cat which was very cute right up until I added the eyes... somehow they are people eyes rather than cat eyes --All those medieval manuscript artists are going, "TELL me about it!!"

[osprey_archer]

Okay, I feel a little better about it now that I know I am part of a noble tradition. A noble, creepy tradition, but still.