That which is small

"That which is small"

I felt that I was needing a creative urge to start  painting again. This hot weather in Texas really makes you very lazy and so you tend to sit around when you should be doing something. 

I already belong to one challenge painting group  and this is in a blog format.
 PaintandDrawtogether http://paintanddrawtogether.blogspot.com/
 A challenge painting is set by the webmaster and then the artists are challenge to paint a work using a photo as a starting point. A set time is given, usually about six weeks and then as each artist finishes their painting during that time, the painting gets put on the blog. Each artist is encouraged to comment not only on their painting but on all the other painting that appeared during that time. It is more a way of seeing the different aspects of painting and drawing and the  creative work that will happen at the hands of different artists rather than a competition.

So I was very happy when I found another challenge group. This is called Monthly Painters Challenge and it is on Facebook as a page. 
This has a different format. A challenge title is set at the beginning of each month and at the very last day of the month, each artist posts their painting or drawing on the Facebook page. 
Again all the artist are encouraged to make their own comments about their own and the other paintings. Also the artists are asked to LIKE the paintings which really appeal to them. The painting which receives the most "likes" is the challenge painting of the month.  The artist of that painting gets to choose the subject/title of the next challenge.

These are fun to do as both challenges work in a different way.
 The challenge for August  on Monthly Painters Challenge was "that  which is small" and the artists came up with some very creative ways to paint the subject.

I felt that I had fulfilled the subject even though I didn't think the painting was very good, too rushed but when Mike looked at it, he thought it was a picture of sun flowers and didn't even then notice  the small ladybird that I had painted which was the subject of the painting.

Oh well on to the next challenge!

Memorial painting of Lucky

Memorial painting of LUCKY

As each of my pet have died I have tried to paint a picture of them as a memorial so that we would remember them. As we have had many pets over the years we now have pet paintings in many of our rooms. And now Lucky will be  joining them.

I knew when I started out painting  Lucky a black cat, that this would be a challenge as photographing black pet is difficult enought and painting them is equally difficult . So I selected a couple of photographs and chose two which I thought I could manage to make into a presentable painting.

I started out by doing two water color paintings to see how that would look and realized fairly soon that I would need to use acrylic paints to get the depth of color that I needed.

Water color just didn't get it !!

This painting shows Lucky when he was an adult cat a few years ago.
Every time I see a black cat, I still miss little Lucky.