Daily Sketch: Mewsette as a Rainy Spring Day
Something about the light today and Mewsette with her calm quiet look, back to the window, watching me, I got out the oil pastels for the colors, then started experimenting.
I remember years ago with a weekend part-time job in an art and framing store—after a week of being a typesetter it was a joy with the added benefit of huge discounts on materials and meeting lots of local artists who came in to have their work framed. I was just beginning as an artist, had produced my first four cat paintings an decided I needed to look into this. What I learned form being there was invaluable.
A young man came in one day with a long narrow painting of a farm with a big sky done in oil pastel, totally foreign to me at that time. I worked up his estimate and studied his painting to see how he’d applied and blended the pastels, and saw that he not only had layers and blends of pastel, but in some areas he’d actually scratched away pastel for effect. What I was as a rail fence was actually where he had used a fork to scrape away the oil pastel for the highlights on the fence rails.
That memory never left me and years later I’ve been working in oil pastel now and then to develop a familiarity with it. Here I’ve applied many colors, rubbed them into the canvas paper, scraped others off and layered another color in its place, then used what was handy as a scraper, the edge of the cap of a pen, to scrape away the pastel in the shape I wanted.
I had intended something else entirely, but what’s here is fine. I did another painting of Mewsette in oil pastel a while ago, Mewsette in Blues and Greens, and another later one, Mewsette as a Sunny Spring Morning.
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Click here to see other daily sketches.
For a gallery of the ones available for sale, visit my Etsy shop in the “Daily Sketches” section.
Read about the reason for the daily sketches in The Artist’s Life: Daily Sketches.
And read about purchasing them and requesting them as a donation item for your shelter or rescue group in The Artist’s Life: Daily Sketches for Sale and Donation.
All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in purchasing one as a print, or to use in a print or internet publication.
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Absolutely purrfect – and all my favorite colors, too!
I thought of you, Chris! I’m going to be exploring this further, especially with the dimensional carving into the layers.
I LOVE This and the other artwork you linked to of mewsette..and i love hearing the stories behind your pieces Bernadette 🙂
Tamar, thanks! I was initially intending to draw and scratch some leaves and flowers into the oil pastel, maybe next time–this is just a quick sketch after all, but it’s so much fun to explore and find new ways of expressing my cats.
Nice! Amazing how a cat can look so dignified in a storm… 🙂
Ilene, thanks, Mewsette is such a calm personality that she is the epitome of a quiet rainy day.
Ii love cats and often draw them in my art but cannot have one at home; husband is highly allergic. Sniff.
Ilene, if you ever need a feline fix, just give me a call!
Thanks, Bernadette; will do!
Absolutely beautiful. Perfectly captures the colors in a black cat’s coat.
What black cat? But that’s part of the challenge!