Featured Daily Sketch: Garden Sketch With Mimi, 2013

June 27, 2025 Bernadette

"Garden Sketch With Mimi", watercolor, 5" x 7" © Bernadette E. Kazmarski — “Garden Sketch With Mimi”, watercolor, 5″ x 7″ © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

Though I painted this sketch on June 27, July is an important anniversary month for Mimi, and of course this is the first July she’s not here to enjoy this particular anniversary. July 10, 2007 is when we lost Lucy, I saw Mimi in my garden on that very day, nearly in this very spot, very pregnant with the four big black cats you see here every day, hunting for chipmunks to feed herself and her growing kittens, the day all our lives changed.

In this sketch, here she is now and she owns that garden, napping happily while working as an artist’s model. No more hunting to feed kittens, no more running from unneutered male cats and neighbor’s dogs, no more mincing down icy sidewalks on those tiny paws. Mimi’s nominal birthday is July 29, the day she came here with her little beans. Of all the art and photos I’ve created of her, this one represents her change in status best of all.

It’s also one of my favorite paintings, ever. As I’d said below when I’d originally posted it, I’d planned something different but came up with this. What was I expecting in the five minutes or less that Mimi actually napped here and the 15 minutes total I had to do the sketch before the sun moved enough to change the shadows?

This was not what I’d intended but I like it anyway. It’s Mimi napping in the shadow on the cool bricks among the geraniums, near the vintage aluminum tub where I grow pole beans. Mimi was so happy to be outside she only rested in each position for less than a minute, and the sun was in and out behind the clouds. The temperature was in the 90s and we weren’t doing much but looking for a comfortable spot.

I had wanted something a little tighter in detail, but I like the details this one has. I did a light pencil sketch underneath because it’s so small I knew I’d run out of space if I didn’t give myself some guidelines about Mimi, the geraniums and the barrel, but aside from that I just painted.

In part I was using the quick and easy eight-color grade-school watercolor set that’s easy to carry and use. I really need to get a set with a greater color range if I’m going to paint outdoors.

But what was my purpose with this painting? Sometimes I sit down to capture the details of the moment, and some day I’d like to do just that with the reference photos from this, but with my actual sketch, and all my daily sketches, my purpose is just to capture the essence of the moment and share what moved me to render the scene.

In this case it was a relaxed Mimi in the shade on a hot morning, stretched on those familiar bricks next to the cool anodized aluminum tub where I’ve always planted pole beans and surrounded by my geraniums saved from year to year, a spot loved by many other cats before her. It was a scene I loved for my love of my garden, my appreciation of Mimi relaxing in a place she’d once hunted for food to feed her kittens, and the memory of the generations of cats before her who enjoyed that very spot, this little patio and the verdance of my garden.

Read more about Mimi and the day our lives changed from Mimi’s perspective, and from mine.

This painting, in the moment

I remember dropping everything, taking a quick reference photo thinking what a nice painting it would be, then deciding to sketch the scene right then, perhaps as a study for a final painting. Quickly—color? yes! Geraniums, mimi, leaves, sun, bricks. Pastel? colored pencil? watercolor pencil? I could see the brush strokes. It could only be watercolor.

I do try to work directly onto the paper with watercolors when I do them as daily sketches just to practice my confidence with the brush, but in this case the perspective was tricky, and I knew Mimi never stayed in one place in the garden for more than a few minutes. Watercolor is tricky in that you need to let one area dry pretty much completely before you paint next to it, or the colors will flow into one another. Sometimes you want this, sometimes you don’t, and sometimes if you’re not careful you end up with muddy water on your paper. This one had to be bright and colorful so I sketched her first, making sure to catch her air kneading with her front paws as she relaxed, then the outlines of the flowers in relation to where she was, the anodized aluminum planter and the bricks, then just some swirly lines where the leaves were and knew it was time to start painting. I was glad I’d remembered a little jar of water kept with my art bag in the shade.

Again, I began with Mimi in dark blue, then as I began to blend in the black for her shadows, she was up and gone at some noise further in the garden. When I’m not directly with her, I clip her harness to a long leash so she has mobility, but I don’t have to drop my painting, or the laundry or the vegetables I’m harvesting if she decides to chase something into the neighbor’s yard.

I continued working around with the red and pink geraniums next, then the greens in the background, then the bricks and the leaves around the geraniums, just getting basic colors down to block out the areas, letting each dry enough before painting into it or next to it, adding color where I could as the painting quickly dried in the heat.

I got all but the deepest shadows and the blue background right then because I needed for it to dry completely and couldn’t decide on a background color. Later I added the darkest areas, blending a bit where necessary, and decided the blue made me think of the little bit of haze in the air on a hot, humid summer morning.

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Where to find this art

Garden Sketch With Mimi Daily Sketches Gift Bag

You can always find Garden Sketch with Mimi in the listing on Portraits of Animals. And because this painting is so popular, you can also find her as a greeting card, a gift bag, a garden flag and plenty of other items like coasters, wooden tiles, wall plaques, chalkboards and more which are often one of a kind.

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or visit Fine Art and Portraiture on my main website.

A collection of 34 images of feline artwork

Feline Style Sampler

Daily sketches, illustrations, commissioned portraits all in a small coil-bound gift book.

Click here or on the image to read more or find it on Portraits of Animals.

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.