Pants Anyone?

This is Spooky, my number 1 cat. He especially likes to be in confined spaces and one of his favorites is any pant leg he can crawl down into. Jeans are better than anything, as they stay fairly stiff and don't collapse on him. Which means they don't get full of claw marks as he makes his way from the waist to the hem.

One prerequisite for him is that they must have been worn by either my husband or myself, clean clothes won't do. For this I am thankful.

Now this was much more fun to do when he was an only cat. He could crawl inside and take a nice long, restful, safe and snug nap. But with a younger brother and a much younger sister, I'm sure you can imagine what happens these days! One or both of them are all over the outside of the pants leg, chewing and kicking to beat the band until he has had enough and out he comes. So this game now gets played, only when the other two are otherwise distracted elsewhere in the house.

I have a lot of photos of Spooky inside things, you might remember Burka Kitty from earlier in the spring. The problem with a black cat who likes to hide inside things is that my poor photos come out blurry as the camera doesn't know what to focus on, and when I use a flash, you know what happens to the eyes - cat version of red eye - glowing green.

What I liked most about this painting was the hem on the jeans, I think I got that just right.

Baby Gremi

A couple of years ago some friends of ours had to make a very hard choice with one of their cats. It was devastating for them. They had this cat since he was a cute little kitten.

I had only recently started painting again, but I did have a couple of paintings of cats under my belt so I offered to paint Gremi if they supplied a photo.

The photo they came up with was one of him buried in a basket of clean towels as a kitten. I knew I could manage the towels, was reasonably comfortable with the kitten image but the basket absolutely terrified me. Even though it's just a small part of the painting and not something you focus on, to me getting it right was as important as everything else.

Our friends were moving to England and I had the painting completed and framed before they left. It is a small 8"x10" panel, nothing too big to pack or that would take up too much room in their new home. I believe they were pleased with the result.

I also have a photo of Gremi all grown up, him mom is a great photographer. One of these days I may also tackle that. It's a bit more fun to paint an animal with more than one color on it's fur. Although when I am painting a one color cat or dog, I don't have to worry about getting the stripes or spots in the right places.