Catscape for the Incoming Shitscape

I finally added my uncle’s Brother printer/scanner to my laptop so I can scan and print in two rooms! I finished a watercolor catscape. It took about 2 weeks to finish with the new Mattie schedule. I am going to start on a second one. This one will be listed on Ko-Fi soon. Hopefully this weekend. I KNOW this catscape would have been better as an acrylic painting, but I have to do what I can right now.

The contrast isn’t what it should be. I also used gouache on the houses and trees and such, to boost the colors and use some of the oppacity to get in details. There are little touches of gouache everywhere. But the pot on the right is not ideal. I could paint over it with gouache, but that would be really obvious so I decided to leave well enough alone. This is also my first use of New York Central watercolor paper. It’s 100% cotton. Jerry’s Artarama had them on sale and I bought four 5”x7” blocks which comes to 40 sheets! I originally inked the lines with sepia Microns, but the lines where too faint so I inked it AGAIN with black, then the cat needed a stronger outline so I inked it a THIRD time with a 05 Micron. Next one I will just ink in black to start with. Sorry, I can’t NOT ink.

I nave been thinking hard about what I want to do with my art, and I keep coming back to gallery artist. I don’t mind making merch, but I don’t want to try and hustle at craft fairs/comic cons/ etc. anymore. It may come to that, but right now I can’t afford the fancy booth set-up that has become common these days. I remember when you could just bring a tablecloth and some shelving and it was fine. But the booth game these days is professional grade! And I can’t match that right now.

Art-wise I’ve been doing pretty well. It’s slow going but at least I’m working. The Tiny Art Show coming up in January and for the first time in 3 years I think I’m going to be stuck working with watercolor since I’m not in my studio most of the time. I can’t use the paint on my palette before it dries out so it’s a waste. Where as watercoler is designed to dry out and then be rewetted.

The latest dunb fucking pipe dream I had that will never happen is the artists colony I have always wanted to start. I came across an article on co-housing that reignited the idea How to be not lonely? 'Cohousing' is an answer for some people. It would be amazing to to have open studio space for everyone and a co-working “office” for the writers! There is even a guide to help people start their own co-housing projects The Cohousing Association of the United States. Anyway, it’s dumb. But think about how wonderful it would be, to be surrounded by creatives with access to a full range of facilities to create art.

Well, sorry all I gotta go now before I start spiralling into despair too hard. See you next week. Happy holidays if you celebrate.