Featured Daily Sketch: The Sunny Upstairs Window, 2012
From 2012: Mimi and Mewsette enjoy the morning sunshine in front of the sunniest window in the house.
Friday morning was the first of several completely sunny mornings after a row of somewhat dark and rainy ones. All the cats were gravitating to the back of the house, facing east, as the sun streamed in the back door into the kitchen, and in the sunny upstairs windows at the top of the stairs and in the bathroom.
I also recently took all the geraniums outside, so this top level of the wardrobe is now accessible, and a perfect spot to enjoy a sunny morning.
In my studio for part of the morning, I used the very Italianate Fabriano Tiziano Pastello drawing paper and a small set of my Sennelier pastels. Typically, what I have easily available downstairs in my toybox of art materials is not this quality of stuff, but in my studio I can play around with other things.
From 2018 (when I shared this sketch again): Years ago a gallery wouldn’t accept one of my paintings of cats because they “didn’t show cats”. They didn’t mean that one particular painting because they pointed out that it was in good Impressionist style, but because art of cats had become so stylized and cute that no matter the actual style cats as a subject were not considered “real art”. One of my goals with painting cats, along with capturing that one incredible moment to remember in all its detail, was to paint and sketch cats as I do any other subject like a vase of flowers or the landscape, to move away from stylized media and themes and to present them as a subject for fine art. I like to loosen up their shapes, use non-representational color, just capture my “impression” of a scene.
If you’ve been following my sketches for any length of time, you’ve probably seen gradual changes that begin with a particular sketch—adding new media, using a new color palette, finding a new style, even using a new and different paper. In my everyday life as an artist I took the time to experiment far less often, in part because I did less art, and because my visualization and aesthetic senses moved more slowly. With my daily practice everything happened faster, and with more daring, I’ll add.
Up to this point I’d done most of my sketches away from my studio, with my toy bag full of older, lower-quality and well-used pencils, pastels, charcoal, pens and even sketch pads. The sketches were just for practice after all, and I didn’t want to use “good” materials on what was basically a quick and temporary item.
But leading up to this with oil pastels and ink and watercolor, this particular morning I picked up my imported pastel paper and my really good pastels and quickly came up with this sketch, and it was truly inspired and enhanced by using the better materials. The two girls have such dimension and interest all over their tiny figures, the light streams in and changes tone and color just as natural light tends to do, and even the shadows have dimension. Let that be a lesson to me.
From 2026: This captures not only the inspired image you see but my sense of Mimi and Mewsette at the window, in that space doing what they do as cats and as friends. I remember this sketch well because it flowed and happened so quickly. I was immediately happy with what I’d produced and knew this would always be a memory of them. I sold the original to a cat lover who only purchased original art, in a special dusky blue frame and dusky purple mat board I still use for the prints. Of all the sketches and photos of Mimi and Mewsette, this is for me their portrait together.
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.
A collection of 34 images of feline artwork
The award-winning* Feline Style Sampler
Now in its third printing since 2013! Daily sketches, illustrations, commissioned portraits all in a small coil-bound gift book. Click here or on the image to read more or find this book on Portraits of Animals.~~~
*Certificate of Excellence, Cat Writers' Association 2014 Communications Contest
Gifts Featuring Cats You Know!
Originals and Prints inspired by rescued cats from Portraits of Animals!
I sold the original of this sketch, but prints on paper and canvas are available. Read more and purchase.
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.
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Love the upstairs windows! It captures that sunshine moment that every cat owner knows 🙂
Absolutely! I have so many sketches of them on the wardrobe in the sun so it must be something I enjoy too.
Fascinating discussion of your art, and of the art world’s perception of cat pictures, Bernadette. I was about to do some posts about art and cats on my blog, but the computer is down, so no telling when I can do that. Anyway I was a visual artist but I worked mainly for myself, didn’t really try to sell art or prints, though I did sell a few. Illness caused me to lose the arm strength and hand precision needed. I was going to say that posting photos of cats is sometimes a way for me to do art now, especially when I use photo editing to change photos around a bit, with both landscapes and cats. It’s ridiculous to put limits on what can be art subjects. I do detest AI as an art technique though, I’ll never ever use that.
Oops, looks like this comment should have been on another post that came about the same time ? With a more expansive explanation?But still this seems to refer to the same topic of accepting cats as fine arts topics.
No, this was the one! Not sure if it posted twice or some other odd thing, but they happen sometimes.
I was very surprised by that reaction and explanation from the gallery owner. Didn’t stop me from entering my cat art in exhibits, and two or three years after that one of my cat paintings won an award, and since then a few more. I do my artwork to share my moment of inspiration so I have to share it or I’ll burst. The best way to do that is exhibits, people come to see art rather than just encountering it, and I love to spend time with other creative people. I’m so sorry you are too disabled to do artwork!