Cool cats

Actually, she's not a cool cat at all but Alex is. This is Little Cat who together with her sister, Big Cat, moved into my Mum's house from next door. We never found out what the neighbours thought about this but they seemed to be fine with the arrangement! She's very greedy (she'll pretend to anyone coming into the kitchen that she hasn't eaten all day) and a bit of a slob and has become so fat I've now named her Big Little Cat - Mum never gave them names, I wish she had because it still seems years later like they are visitors. She appears to have been born with a slightly damaged right eye.

It was too hot to draw last week which was very frustrating, so as soon as the temperature came down a couple of degrees, I got going. The basement is the coolest place in the house and Alex went down there to play a computer game so it seemed like a good place to start.





















Sketches don't scan so well, but here he is, engrossed in his game and listening to music on his earphones. His hair needs a cut and he hasn't had a shower yet so it's a bit of a mess but Alex is definitely not a neat freak! Every morning when he gets out of bed, I could swear he has grown in the night and last week I discovered that is now taller than me which makes me the shortest in the family.

After drawing Alex, I made up for lost time by starting three cat drawings, with another I'd like to do so there will be a series of 'cats in the family' soon!


















Since I like to see other people's materials, I thought I would post mine. The novelty of the Moleskine has worn off slightly (wish they would make them with proper cartridge paper - the pages remind me of those old buff folders of the sort you used to find in office stationers) so this weekend I decided I was going to use one of the three books I've been afraid of spoiling. One is a lovely leather sketchbook that Mark bought me in Budapest, the other two are pictured. The brown one is from Winsor & Newton, has the perfect paper and feels and looks gorgeous. The black one has lovely paper, just a little thinner than I like but it's absolutely the perfect size and shape - not too small and not too rectangular. It came in a box with The Sketchbook Kit which is a super little book but it means I'll have to buy another if I want the sketchbook!

I picked up the black one and started drawing a leaf from the Hibiscus plant. Almost straight away the fear evaporated. I don't use up so many sketchbooks that I need to catagorise them but I think it would be nice to keep sketches of the family in this one. There is something about it that inspires confidence!

Also in the photo, my Faber Castell HB pencils (sharpened to needles), a piece of bark from a plane tree, and two of the lenses I normally use on my Canon camera - a 28-90mm and a 75-300mm (photo taken with a 10-22mm), my trusty laptop and Danny Gregory's Creative License which arrived last week (excellent!).