Cosmo, my new kitten – first sketch.

This is the new family member, Cosmo, asleep on the back of the lounge. He is not asleep now. He’s helping. ……hgffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff09vvy G -/uuuucxvcdddddddddddddddddddCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCW/////////// >

if you see what I mean. Helping with the typing also.

He’s a seal point ragdoll kitten aged thirteen weeks. I have had him for three weeks. He is very confident and independent. A toe-biter in the night for a while, but improving now. The first photo is the day he came – aged ten weeks. vvvvIMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

When he is asleep is the only time he stays still. The second photo is last week, making kitten stir-fry in my new little wok.

I sketched him with a dark brown and a white Prismacolour pencil on toned paper.

Himalayan kittens – help!

This is an old sketch of my recently departed cat, Casper. You’ve probably seen many sketches of him over the years. He was with me for 16 years.

Before I had Casper, I had Yeti Mungo and Bollinger, so it is 26 years I have had himalayan cats. I thought it would be easy to go out and get another one, but not so. The lady I got Casper from is no longer breeding them.  Back before I got Casper, the Cat Fancy changed the show standards for himalayans. This article on Wikipedia explains to two face types. You can see quite clearly that mine have the doll face.

Here is Casper as a kitten with his ‘long’nose. Unfortunately for me, the standard is now for the short nose  – the ‘peke face’, so those still breeding himalayans for showing have fallen into line.  I have tried without success to get a response from the Himalayan Cat Club, and I am wondering if they have disbanded, because there are so few breeders of himalayans  in NSW on the net.

This is my beautiful Yeti Mungo as a kitten.Yeti became ‘the most beautiful cat in the world’.  You can even see from this pic that he had a ‘proper nose’. I had Yeti and his half brother Bollinger for ten years. The cattery they came from no longer exists. Bollinger was a party animal. Loved visitors. Favourite food was strawberries, but also liked cherry tomatoes and mandarin segments.

So I am asking, does anyone know anyone who breeds himalayan cats, or even has a himalayan cat (in NSW) who they can ask if there is anyone out there breeding doll face himalayan cats?

Sketching on my iPad

This week I bought a brand new iPad.

Last weekend I had lunch with my sketching friends to hear all about the Urban Sketcher Symposium in Santo Domingo from Liz Steel who attended.
Liz brought me back the most wonderful gift – a sketch in watercolour and pen by Simonetta Capecchi I will have to photograph it and post it, with Simo’s permission of course.

Liz told me that France Belleville had recommended Procreate as a sketching app on IPad. I’m pretty sure Procreate owned Painter at one time. When I went to the Apple store on Monday morning the girl who attended to me also recommended it, and she said she’d tried them all. It was my first purchase from the App Store.

Last night I tried to figure it out and did this pencil drawing, but more importantly, later I worked out how to download the User Guide. Tonight I read it, then did a little tweaking, and hey presto, here is my first image from the iPad.

This is also my first blog post from the iPad, so I haven’t worked out if I can preview yet, or it I just have to go for it.

EDiM21 – What makes me happy

Blue skies make me happy. We had NO summer, but a lovely autumn with blue skies & warm enough to get out and sketch. It’s over now. Dark skies today and tomorrow we’re expecting a ‘rain event’.  (Meteorologyspeak?)

My cats make me happy and this is the one who sits with me all the time. They’re both very old now, and costing me a fortune at the vet. Casper was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy over 6 years ago and they said he had 6 months to live.  A lot of my sketches of Casper are at night when he sits on the end of my bed. I get the sketchbook out and we have portraiture sessions.

The other thing that makes me happy is bright colours. This  is my newest doona cover. It is white with a large band of these bright colours across the bottom and on the pillows.

Casper

I thought Casper had cats’ alzheimers but I was wrong. He has always been a mother’s boy and stuck to me like glue. For a couple of months he stopped sitting on the end of my bed, or on my knee. He was behaving as if he didn’t know who I was any more. He is 16 years old, and has cardiomyopathy. That was diagnosed over 6 years ago and he has been on medication ever since, quite a lot of medication. I was told he only had 6 months to live but he is still here & in reasonable health considering his age.

I used to grab him at night when he was sitting on the end of my bed and give it to him. I decided to try giving it to him in any other room than my bedroom. Now he sleeps on the end of my bed again. He knows who I am all right – he was just avoiding me.

New solar plate etchings

At the end of October I went to my last Printfest of the year. That’s when I take my plates along & just print all day.  I had two new solar plates this time, made from my own sketches.

For some reason the ink on the big roller with the blend on it wasn’t cooperating, and I got stripy areas with less pigment. No matter how much I wiped the roller, replenished the ink & rolled it up again, I still got some stripy variations in the pigment. Maybe it was the weather.

This first print is from this drawing. It was inked up in sepia with red on the flowers. Unfortunately we lost the red because of having to roll over more than once to get rid of stripyness. That’s printmaking for you.

The next plate is my blue-point Himalayan cat, Casper. These two prints were done by laying threads on the plate, then rolling across with a hard roller with a single colour on it. Then the plate was rolled over again with the large soft roller with the blend. The ink only picks up where the previous ink missed. (Read about viscosity printing on my glossary page).

This plate was taken from this drawing on the lower right.  I think I prefer the blue, because he is blue-point, but both colours were available, so I tried both.