Freyja has an exhausting day

Yesterday Freyja had an exhausting day, first she had to lie in the unseasonably warm sun, because who knows when that will happen again. Later she would have to decide which of her water glasses to drink out of. (She has a water glass next to my desk, so that she doesn’t try to drink my paint water). The sketch of fiddlers was from a completely different time and place, but ironically she has also had to put up with listening to sight-reading practice on an actual fiddle. It was hard work for both of us…

A Cat may look at a King

With only a few weeks to go before my solo exhibition in Ilminster in July, I started working on some Spelling Animals pictures.I’ve been doing the Spelling Animals for customers for several years, and as cards for the nieces and nephews for some years before that,. but I’ve done any for myself – or at least, since they are still for sale,  for nobody in particular yet. So this was something of a treat: free-range Spelling Animals, willing to spell anything I chose to ask of them. Here is what the cats spelt. And, since this is not for a…

Cat Logic

From my Cat-of-the-Day sketchbook blog I have made a little range of Cat greetings cards, many of which feature informative notes on the Logic of Cats. These may prove most useful to Humans, who often fail to understand the motives and innate helpfulness of these charming creatures.  The current range can be seen in my Etsy Shop, and wholesale prices are also available if you would like to email me.

Swimming in Exhibitions

The Clevedon Tides Festival was fun, even though I didn’t see much beyond the inside of the beer tent (where my stand was), but people came to see me. Got to catch up with several fellow swimmers. I never got to swim in the lake though, which was a shame! I printed lots of greetings cards from the cat-of-the-day drawings (swimming and cats, but no swimming cats), and these went down very well and will also be appearing in my Etsy shop very soon. There are a few cat ones here but lots more to come, including about 15 different…

The Spelling Animals in Action

A couple of fairly recent Spelling Cat names that I have never got round to posting on this blog. If you’d like your own name or somebody else’s spelt in cats, dogs, lizards, octopi etc, do have a look at the Spelling Animals section in my Etsy shop (note: dogs aren’t listed there yet, but I can do dogs too!) It is important to have a good imagination to do this job, because this is what my models usually look like. Here is Freyja, helping:

One year, two calendars: Cats & Swimming for 2016.

…but no, absolutely no swimming cats! The calendar designs are finally finished, and I am awaiting samples from the printers. I have set up a page for each one in the ‘Finished Artwork’ section of this website (links below). There will be a 10% discount for early orders, placed by Sunday August 23rd, after that the price will be £12 each or £10 each if ordering more than one at a time. If these images come as a surprise, they are all selections of my digital drawings from the Cat-of-the-Day blog The images below are just tasters, the links below…

Mezzotint done properly

‘Stripy Cat, Washing’ I do not claim in any way to be an expert in mezzotint, the title of this post is to contrast with the post coming next, which will be ‘Mezzotint done improperly’. I have two new prints to show you which I did very differently from each other, however you will have to wait for the ‘improper’ one. This is a print inspired by the many cat drawings I have been posting on my other blog, Cat-of-the-day. A few months ago I posted a series of photos of the last mezzotint print I made – ‘Percy Cat’….

Somerset Arts Weeks 2014

Astonishingly mild weather continues and the sun is blazing into the studio, as I crouch on the windowsill to get this shot of all the artwork on display. This is my studio – the gallery-wall side of it anyway, all spruced up and glistening with not an inconsiderable number of square inches of gold leaf, amongst the drawings and paintings. So, if you are going to be nearby in the next fortnight, do come and visit! Details of the exhibition as follows: Dates: 20th September – 5th October 2014 Times: 11am – 6pm every day except Mondays I am very…

The Spelling Animals: ‘Kate’ in cats

Happened upon this drawing yesterday, which never made it onto the blog at the time of creation on account of being a surprise present. I have since discovered the letter ‘t’ can be achieved with a single cat, but the cats like a variation in their tasks anyway, so letters are not always spelled the same way. I liked the ‘K’ in this one, it reminds me of how cats are frequently cuddly and nice to each other, shortly before a game of ‘oh did I accidentally bite you?’ commences… The Spelling Animals will spell any name for money, see…

Feline mayhem!

“Noisy guests arrived, and scared the pets” …is the title of this new drawing I just finished. I’m not sure where this one came from, except that I have probably spent too long on Facebook watching compilations of videos of cats, and I had this image in my head of one where a cat that was trying to look big and scary and was arching its back so far that its front feet were right off the ground, and it was walking along like that. And so I spent most of a day failing to convince myself that this idea…