Pink Polka Dot Dreams

Who could be more happy with himself than this royal cat? Pleased with his polka dots, and glowing in his orange suit, he poses proudly against a bejeweled turquoise sky.

I guess you've noticed a recent cat fixation. I do have two adorable roundish sort of cats that inspire my artwork, but I promise to show more people, plants and animals of a different order. But for now please endure one more cute kitty.

This picture is a detail of a much larger painting, but I love the simplicity of this little corner, not to mention the adorable character depicted. I used a stretched canvas, Arches watercolor paper for the cat body, acrylic paint, and dimensional paint for the outlining and stars.

The cat's body was painted pink, then covered with circle stickers and painted over with orange. The circles act as a resist, and when peeled off, reveal polka dots. The cat stands out dramatically from the background because the orange and blue are complimentary colors (opposites on the color wheel). The blue I use most frequently is pthalo blue. I love the intensity of it. I do tone it down with the addition of white and perhaps some pthalo green to make that gorgeous turquoise.

A is for Art

Here is another example of one of my favorite techniques of collage art. Claudine Hellmuth is one of the most prominent artists using this technique today. It consists of gathering vintage photos and using part of that photo, usually the face of a relative or in the case of the above art piece, oneself. Yes that is a photo of me in one of the cute little hats my mother made for me. The face is mine as well as the hands. The rest of the piece is drawn, painted and collaged. I started with a heavy application of white gesso onto an 8"x10" stretched canvas to provide the texture, then added the blue for the sky with Liquitex acrylic paint, a dark turquoise green for the ground with a lighter, more neutral green brushed lightly on top to reveal the darker green underneath. The purpose of the different layers and the texture is to create more interest than just one solid smooth color could do.

The band across the top was created by layering different papers and distressing them with Distress Ink Pads. I used a commercial rubber stamp for the letter "A", and outlined it with dimenional Scribble Paint in gold. I hand lettered the word "Art". The word "Love" was hand stamped onto a sheet of shrink plastic and heated in the toaster oven until it thickened and shrank in length and width to about 30% its original size. Again, I outlined the shape with dimensional paint in gold.

Simple shapes were drawn and cut from decorative papers for the dress and feet. A little bit of line drawing was done with a waterproof fine tipped felt pen for the shoes and socks and the number on the dress was stamped onto paper and outlined with the gold dimensional paint. All collage elements were adhered using either Liquitex acrylic matte medium or gel matte medium depending on the heaviness of the material. As I went along I coated all collage elements with the matte medium as I adhered them and brushed on the medium over the entire canvas when I finished the piece. The number 12 refers to the date of my birth in case you didn't guess. And I don't mean 1912. I mean the day of the month. That's all I'll say.

I would be glad to answer any questions about the techniques used in creating this piece. Just leave me a note in the comments section for this post.