Featured Daily Sketch: Cookie Has a Drink, December 20, 2011

December 31, 2025 Bernadette

graphite and colored pencil sketch of tortoiseshell cat drinking — “Cookie Has a Drink”, graphite pencil and colored pencil, 6″ x 4″, 12/20/2011 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

2011: Cookie has a nice long drink many times a day, and her little shape over the water bowl is so very familiar. Because she approaches the water bowl in my studio from the same angle and even holds her tail the same way, I could do this sketch in shifts, first her outline, then her dark areas, then to reinforce the fact that she is a tortoiseshell calico I added orange and yellow colored pencil to fill the color and blue in the bowl.

Because she does this frequently enough and holds pretty still for the entire time she is drinking, I think I’ll pursue ideas involving other media that take a little time to work, and also a different base, such as watercolor or oil pastel.

Here’s a sweet memory, and another one I’m glad I caught in one of my first daily sketches from 2011, Cookie, having a drink in her favorite water bowl in my studio, in 2011. My daily sketches, because I create them in the moment and create them by hand, remembering every stroke and decision, have an immediacy that photos do not.

Cookie was quite ill at this point and I would lose her about six weeks later. She was my second “partner” cat, the one out of many who was always with me and we moved through life together. In her last two years she mentored Mimi, who became my next partner cat after we lost Cookie in February 2012. You can read her rescue story in A Little Tortie Kitten Who Became Cookie.

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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Copyright

All images and text used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission, although links to your site are more than welcome and are shared. Please ask if you are interested in using and image or story in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of an image or a product including it, check my animal and nature website Portraits of Animals to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit Ordering Custom Artwork for more information on a custom greeting card, print or other item.