Featured Daily Sketch: A Good Scratch, 2012

March 9, 2026 Bernadette

“A Good Scratch”, charcoal pencil, 9″ x 6″, 3/3/2012 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

From 2012: Kelly has a really good scratch on the shelf in front of the window by my computer. You can see by her expression this is taking a lot of concentration, and by her tail that she is thoroughly enjoying it.

The shelf is just a cheap wooden thing intended for use in the kitchen, over your faucet, but it works fine here keeping kitties from sitting on my phone, adding machine and other things on my desk as they enjoy the view. It’s pretty wobbly and very well-scratched as most of them have a go at it some time or another. Kelly is a regular scratcher of the shelf, though.

Action sketches like yesterday and today are best done in pencil for me. When I’m trying to catch them in action, and catch the essentials of their action, I want a medium that is most familiar, quick and simple. Pencil is my “first and favorite” medium, as I drew with one of my mother’s yellow-painted No. 2 pencils from a very young age, and I still say that I can “think in pencil”—watch my subject and draw on the paper nearly without looking, trusting my hand to follow what my eye sees and to exert the right pressure and angle to create the best line.

In 2026: It’s good to see this simple sketch of Kelly. We had just lost her best friend, and mine, Cookie a month previous and Kelly was a little lost, as was I, but not like Kelly. Seeing her doing her happy Kelly things was a real joy and a reason to capture it in a sketch. We lost Kelly in August that year, and though I didn’t know that would happen I’m still grateful that she spent a good bit of time with me and I captured her in many, many sketches in those months. This was very early in my daily sketches—four months from the very beginning in December 2011—so I also get a little talkative about my technique. But I still do, don’t I?

Daily Sketches 2011 to 2015

I think I accomplished what I'd set out to do three years ago today, a challenge to me and entertainment and enjoyment for you: to create a quick sketch of my cats each day as a way to practice and experiment, and present the sketch on that day with no editing, no waiting, no excuses, just to do the sketch and share it.

Read more about the reason for the daily sketches in Daily Sketches: the Idea, Most Popular, Awards.

Click here to see other daily sketches.

For a gallery of the ones available for sale, visit Portraits of Animals in the “Daily Sketches” section.

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“A Good Scratch on the Deck Rail”, charcoal pencil, 9″ x 6″, 3/3/2012 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

This original sketch is still available. If you’re interested please let me know.

Copyright

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