Friday, March 02, 2007

Cat? Fight? Catfight!

My goalposts have shifted somewhat just lately, and I feel like I'm actually working towards a style of painting that is a somewhat unprecendented synthesis of all my current influences... Something quite dynamic that I really want to get right... my sense of perfectionism has erumped.

But I've done so many scribbly sketchy drawings that I'm nearly drowning in them... so even though they are scrappy and crappy and really I only want to show stuff that is PERFECT, I've decided to blog more of them, because it might actually help me to keep my house and my brain-files in order.

Todays theme is cats. Kitties. Kittycats. Catpussies. Pussykitties. Felinanators.




A lot of these are burmese.... you can sort of tell by the shape of the muzzle.





Test pattern kitties:





These are based on real lions, but I haven't pursued them very far yet...





Ed Benedict cat cute study business in evidence here:





I suppose these illustrate that I feel like sort of a fraud trying to draw or design or compose anything without really getting a feel for the anatomy and form...









This next one includes a little sketch of a Louis Wain cat:





I was familiar with Louis Wain from seeing his work pop up on the Antiques Roadshow. He has a strong gimmick which makes him collectable... he painted cats and he went mad. But when I looked into it online, I found it all much more engaging than I would have expected...

The early pictures were funnier and more eccentric than I had realised...





And the late schizophrenic ones ones were proper weird fractal hallucinatory visionary psychedelic hardcore stuff, gradually becoming completely abstract:





















Anyway, I'd better learn how to make pictorial cats wrestle, because I don't think I'm allowed to market the images of WWE wrestlers on Cafepress, because those guys... they don't own their own faces. And I don't have permission to borrow them neither.

Someone... I can't remember who, someone at art college once told me that Hulk Hogan had lost the copyright on his own face at one point. I've never really verified that this was technically true, but it certainly caught my imagination. That's sort of a digression from kitties, isn't it.

Anyway I hope to get some sort of cafepress store going soon. It seemed make sense. Prepare to buy chopping boards bearing images of my unborn ghostly manbunnies for your grandmother's birthday!










Back soon...

8 comments:

William said...

amazing! I'm very sketch-oriented so these appeal to me.

For some reason your progression of Mr. Wain's work made me laugh really hard out loud. I imagine it was funnier than it actually was.

Chloe Cumming said...

Hi William,

Thank you for being my only commenter thus far and for being sketch-oriented. It suddenly made sense to post some sketches that... well I'm not despereate for the world to see them, but given the work-in-progress new-content impatient nature of blogs, it's quite nice to expose my sketchy underbelly.

Anonymous said...

Man that Wain guy's art really devolved, didn't it. It's shocking.

I also love how your cats always looks like flames, but solid flames. Does that make sense?

Chloe Cumming said...

Hi Jorge,

thank you, that's a lovely thing to say... solid flame-cats. I could run with that.

katzenjammer studios said...

Hey Chloe!

These kitties are really nice! You're so humble... 'feel like a fraud designing without knowing the form'. I think you clearly have a fairly good grasp of the form, and form in general. These sketches look fun!

I wish I could tell you more, but I think right now, I'm not sure which direction you're heading with these. I know you're gonna do a painting, but is it going to be a silly/serious painting, a narrative painting, etc? I see you doing lots of head studies, so maybe cat portraits? I like what I see so far!

Sandra Khoo said...

I am sooo in love with your sketches,Chloe!!! Your works are absolutely amazing and breathtaking!!! Please don't ever stop posting.

Chloe Cumming said...

Thank you, Sandra, comments like that help lots.

Fossfor said...

these cat skethches are fantastic
I really enjoyed looking at your blog, all those muscles and cats are very inspiring :)

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