Yesterday was mostly a zombi-day, but I did get in a sketch that'll get listed on Nov. 1 on eBay for Theme Week. November's theme is "Beverage Containers" and this counts, though it's not as showoffy as some of the things I'm sure others will do like detailed Coke cans and stuff. I'm just so not in the mood for trying to do a Coke can or whatever in realism.

ACEO Owl is in pastel on Tobacco color Canson mi-Tientes. I used the Mont Marte pastels for it.

ACEO Behind the Rose is the first piece I did tonight when Lisa came over for our weekly Thursday Night Art Jam. She did a spectacular piece of a moon goddess shooting a heart-tipped arrow down from the sky, very dreamlike and evocative in mixed media.

I also did another butterfly for Lauren -- this time an Australian one!



I worked on Cat in Garden a bit too, but it's only blocked in and not really that presentable. I snapped a phonecam shot of it and might post that as part of a WIP series when I get it done, the Colourfix will take many more layers -- and blocking that showed me where the wombat has to go when I block that animal into the same garden in the pair! It's a cute cat though, and in the drawing has mangled several tulips to lay in and has this look as if to say "Well, you planted this garden for me, didn't you?"

I've been running into problems on Cheetahs Fire Dancing and need to keep working out how I'm going to do the forward cheetah without a photo reference. I may have to just cartoon it as a wire diagram and walk it around to get it into the right place and then work up the anatomy...

ACEO Portrait of Ari Cat (Oils) dried fast after yesterday's varnishing, so I scanned it and listed it for auction. It came out great. I love how his paws look so soft turned in toward each other the way he sits sometimes. He did pose for this when I did the original sketch, held still for a significant amount of time to let me get it right on the canvas board. I did most of the painting watching him in different positions but getting his markings and coloration right. The last thing I did yesterday was use a coat of Da Vinci Retouch Varnish to deepen the colors and give it a nice glossy texture. It works as well as using gloss fixative spray on gouache paintings, definitely enriched it!

That leaves two oil paintings to finish of the four I started all at once so long ago. The twisted tree and the flying hawk are both still in progress sitting on my easel.

ACEO Sunrise is the fifth of my Wednesday night paintings, posted and listed yesterday on the 6th but not posted here yet. So here it is. I've gotten some great comments on it at eBay, apparently my memory must be good because people are muttering about "perfect fishing weather" and suchlike!

Tonight just past midnight I posted another ACEO. Y'all have seen it before more than once, but this is the Special One. Print #5 of 24 of ACEO Really New Kitten (Dizzy) is for A4FH -- Art For Fieldhaven Cat Rescue. 50% of the proceeds will be donated to FieldHaven.



ACEO Really New Kitten A4FH is priced a little higher than usual to start because it's the special one and 50% goes to support cats and kittens at FieldHaven. There is more utterly gorgeous cat and other art being listed to support FieldHaven -- lemme get that widget! Edit -- my first try did not work but this one did.

ACEO Cat-Ass-Trophy is back as a Limited Edition Print! With a Buy-It-Now listing if you just can't wait and don't want to be sniped. It's been one of my most popular ACEOs ever and now your cat has a chance to win the No. 1 Disaster Award.

Tonight I also listed another of last Wednesday's pencil-free watercolor paintings -- the most difficult one. This was pure insanity beginning to end that actually worked. I did more painting and tilting and playing with it and letting it dry and hurriedly tilting again on this than I even like to think about, but it came out right -- with no sketch. None. Not even watercolor pencils. All the details went in with a 20/0 liner brush.



ACEO Pigeon Point Lighthouse was painted from a photo reference by greybear, a photographer friend on DeviantART. I changed the reference significantly, especially the weather, but also removing some fences and other annoying details that didn't seem as esthetic as the bushes, road and main buildings. It is very accurate minus the fences. And I did no sketching under it. I look at it today and that weird little fact is freaking me out, how I managed to get its shapes and proportions that accurate without sketching it.

Sunset II was done with the same colors and mixes as Sunset I in a previous entry, another Wednesday Night painting. This one was wet on dry on Fabriano Artistico paper, still hot press but not as thick. I'll be posting these one a day till they're all up on eBay.

Today has been a painful and slow day of feeling exhausted from everything I did yesterday and over the weekend, a relax and rest day. Also happily my two Terry Pratchett books that I ordered just before I realized what a good resolution it would be to buy one every time I put into savings came, and I am enjoying Men at Arms first. It's a reread but it's been years and years since I last got to borrow it from someone.

I'm getting ready to start writing at midnight tonight.

Every month there's a Theme Week and I usually do the art on the 1st of the month. However, because I will be pounding on the last third of my Three Day Novel on the first, I can't do my usual Theme Week $4.99 contest special ACEOs. So, because I don't like missing Theme Week either, I painted one of them today.

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Cheetah Study for Cheetahs Fire Dancing commission. I worked directly from the best reference I had, the one for the cheetah that's on the far side of the fire. I'm still looking for a good pose reference for the cheetah on the near side that's wearing the bracelet, but the next step is to try doing some from imagination and just try to keep the body proportions accurate. I know how cats move. It should not be impossible to block in how she moves. I see her clearly enough in my head, it's time to go beyond that and start getting that onto paper in some form to put it all together. This study was also paying attention to the shapes of the spots, how sometimes they become elongated in certain directions by the angle of that part of the cat's body and other times rounded or blocky, and where they're placed, where they trail off to unspotted areas.

I also worked on my Alkyd Oils ACEOs in progress. I did a lot on Ari's oil portrait, everything but his whiskers is done, but I can't add them till he's dry tomorrow or they'll pick up the dark colors they're going over. He's upside down on my easel drying. So I went from working on him to using the same colors to work on my Flying Hawk WIP.



This is the one where the sky gave me headaches and had to be completely redone. Now the head is finished and detailed, along with the neck and the highlighted part of the chest. A swipe of titanium white is on the highlighted area on the tail, which will get detailed and worked into with colors. I used Burnt Umber, Paynes Grey and Titanium White so far, but have a little Raw Sienna out too so I may use some of that in the shadowed areas. The underpainting is pure Burnt Umber thinned. The sky is Ultramarine, Titanium White and Payne's Grey.

Cheetah is again in Daniel Smith watercolors, another study to familiarize myself with their markings and body proportions and details. I think it came out fairly well and I love how the background worked. It pops forward as the warmest element in the painting. I fixed any number of errors on it, one of the most serendipitous was foliage in front of the tail when some color flicked up and broke the tail outline. I pushed it around to a more leafy shape and let it cross over part of the tail for overlapping, pushing the cheetah's tail behind the foreground bush.

I'm having fun using strong hues in watercolor and mixing them on the paper either wet in wet or wet on dry. The background is all blacks made up of dark cool colors and a little brown here and there. It's lively but it also recedes. I'm having fun with this medium, and going to be using it for more of Lauren's pieces. Especially since I brought some Winsor & Newtons into this one, a little Hookers Green in the foliage along with the mixed greens. I got all the colors laid out in palettes now and redid the main Daniel Smith one onto the last of the new palettes.

The old one was just a bit larger, just enough the lids don't fit it. I could get it on but only by making it seriously buckle in the middle and it took about half an hour to get it on the one time I did. So I'm going to pass that one down to Lisa and I made a new one for myself on the last clean new palette, so mine do have the lids. This'll be a little easier for her to use than the bit of watercolor paper with sample dots I gave her last time though.

I don't use plastic palettes for mixing much. They're for this. I need to get more though before I start buying more watercolor colors! Need to keep that in mind when I get caught up and get the Tinted Charcoal Pencils from Blick -- two or three more of the lidded cheap palettes will still stay under the shipping limit, they're like getting pencil sharpeners or something. Stuffers to get the most out of the shipping I pay. And handy as it gets. I have one set up with the Marie's Chinese colors already.

Now maybe I can get to doing some sketching... or some more ACEOs if I still have trouble doing anything large right now. I could always do the Wild Rose one too and then I'd have one entire task taken care of, all Swap Cards finished...

Cheetah in Shadow is one of two remaining Endangered Species ACEOs that I'm swapping out in my August themed swap. It's also a study for Cheetahs Firedancing. It occurred to me that if I want practice doing cheetahs, doing cheetahs for the last two swap cards would be a good way to start getting more familiar with their body proportions, patterns, details whether they're in the same position as for my big pastel painting or not. So here's a watercolor cheetah, and the next one will likely also be a watercolor cheetah. Only one swap card to go, then the last Thankful For swap card -- a wild rose.

And the bigger artworks... it's still so early too! I'll get a lot done today.

Plans never survive contact with reality unchanged. But sometimes they can come close. I sometimes get more done if I do plan my time loosely.

This week is the end of August. Next Friday at midnight the end of Friday is the start of the Three Day Novel that is one of two great novelwriting highlights of my year. If I don't make time to write a novel any other season, I will slam one out on Labor Day Weekend and I will log in at Nanowrimo and do at least one more during November. This year's plan is probably just one good one, because I'll be busy with other things. But who knows? I might finish early and do a second just for the heck of it in Novelwriting Month.

More under the cut...
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I just designed the cover layout, and it will fit perfectly. Especially if I draw and paint the title in hand calligraphy instead of relying on typesetting with a limited choice of fonts. Details below the cut, including other design decisions like medium.

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Art on a Plate: The ACEO Cookbook is finally available at Lulu! Click on it and you'll go there. Wonderful art and toothsome recipes. I contributed the easiest Dummy one in the book and wrote a review based on my experience working on it. You'll want this book if you like art or like eating. Since the recipes are contributed from people working in home kitchens, they won't have that logistic problem of coming out different (and worse) than cookbooks from famous chefs who invented them in restaurant kitchens and just scaled down the quantities.

You can search about 15 pages online too. I didn't mention it in the review, but I believe that all proceeds are slated to support the contest committee of "ACEO Art Cards Editions & Originals" to provide cash prizes to art contests. It's either that or the book's out there at cost, but I recall a long discussion on using the POD proceeds for contest prizes like Blick certificates and cash prizes. So it's also a club fundraiser that supports the arts. Tessa did such a brilliant job editing and introducing it that I'd have voted her a royalty but I think she did it all as a volunteer. The book rocks. Read my review. It's a good cookbook. I want to eat some of the things in it and I'm buying it for Kitten to feed my face.

Long Entry Follows, with No Spoilers. But there's goodies about Steel Guardian and other very cool things including ATC swaps and art commitments. Read on...
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ACEO Norwegian Forest Cat was painted from "Astonish Leaving" by Wazabees on DeviantART. Astonish was twelve weeks old, on his Cathood Day, ready to claim his own new home and humans. He was always one of my favorites. Wazabees did not put the cats outdoors, I thought of doing a Norwegian Forest Cat out in the forest as soon as I read the name of the breed, so I changed the lighting to reflect foliage onto him rather than the peach-colored backdrop of the photo reference. I found yet another use for the Daniel Smith Luminescent paints, his blue eye has just a touch of iridescence and I like how that worked. Astonish was always one of my favorites among Wazabees' kittens. His eyes are the opposite of his dad, Baltsar's. Wazabees had twelve kittens in his house all at the same time, and when I think of that scale of havoc, my mind boggles. But doesn't this cat have such wonderful dignity, even at that young an age?

After I finished him, I still had time so I started one of my six Endangered Species swap card, doing a Sea Turtle from the "Turtles" pack at Unrestricted-Stock. I used Derwent Inktense and washed them. I love that big set, I got so many different shades of green for it!

ATA August Challenge "Clear" Marble Splash is my entry using two of the reference photos for the "Clear" challenge. One was a Tomato Splash photo from the Tomato Splash pack from Unrestricted-Stock on DeviantART, the others my photos of marbles and glass objects. Two of them. I changed which marble I was doing midway through because it started getting too dark to be the faintly tinted pure clear one, but looked better darker.

This drove me nuts to paint it. It kept changing while it dried. I kept tilting it to move paint around within the marble. I kept putting in more paint and more water to push the paint around on the marble and finally had to poke it with wet cotton swabs to soften some edges and create some soft highlights. So it has a lot of experimental techniques, at least for me. Sitting there watching paint dry wasn't passive.

A new issue of Watercolor Artist had arrived earlier and I read half of it, so that led to some of the experiments. Also, the second package from Blick with my delayed pencil sharpeners and the Arches Size 3 Squirrel Pocket Brush arrived. I thought it'd be about half the size of my Size 6 brush, the Arches one. Bigger than the tiny pocket brush, useful for broader areas, still basically a small brush. Nah. This looks like a cigar case when it's closed. I am not kidding. It's a good sized cigar. The brush itself is gigantic! Fluffy, not even sized, holds a good point, would make big gloppy washes on half sheets or big pads, not just little watercolor journals. I'm going to have fun with it. Maybe I'll do more big watercolors sometime, since I've got a brush big enough for the larger blocks.

I wanted to do five ACEOs for ACEO YBAC Animals-Wildlife... and ACEO YBAC Animals-Wildlife In the Shade (Tiger) is the fifth! Posted just before midnight even my time, though they count the contest till what's 2am for me, midnight Pacific time.

I could try for a sixth, but I'm feeling a bit tired and not real sure if I will. That is a lot of cats. They all came out better than I hoped, and two already have bids -- the first lion and the Florida Panther will have good homes.

I did the tiger in that resting meditating pose because I loved her flat hips and the way it shows a cat's real proportions -- big and broad seen in profile, flat as a fur rug when laying down. She even had her eyes shut. I did some fun things with the background too including that light yellow-green variegated wet in wet blurry light area, and like how that worked to push her forward.

I need to do more tigers sometime. It's really fun doing their stripes too.

ACEO YBAC Animals-Wildlife The Sentry is my second rendering of that interesting two-toned male from the Lions Packs in Unrestricted-Stock on DeviantART. The club provides wonderful quality stock photos you can draw from, manipulate, collage, do whatever you like with. I use their packs constantly. All of these ACEO YBAC entries start at $4.99, so it's like Theme Week ones for the chance of a bargain.

Four so far and the evening is still young. My goal for today was to do five, if I can do six then I'm really happy with today's series of Big Cats. I think I'm going to continue just focusing on Big Cats for it though, do other wildlife for my swap cards. I signed up for a sixth Endangered Species swap card, so I'm going to be stuffing my album with a baker's dozen new ACEOs this month -- six Open Swap on anything, six Endangered Species and one Junior Swap.

ACEO YBAC Animals-Wildlife Florida Panther is the third of the series I'm doing for this month's Call to Art challenge. I love drawing and painting animals, but Florida Panthers have a special place in my heart since I got to meet one twice in two successive years at NecroNomiCon in Florida. Big Kitty loved a crowd, and was the guest of honor at the con several years running. I got to pet him for a good long time because I donated a lot of art to the fund to raise money to buy a female cub and raise a mate for him. A decade later, I got a postcard from the WWF that showed a Florida Panther cub on a stump... and knew that the cats loved the idea of that fund too, at least they sure contributed more cats to it!

Big Kitty purred. Cougars are the only Big Cat that's capable of actual purring. He also washed my hand starting at the fingers and going all the way up to my armpit, because I did a pastel painting of him during the art auction and handed it up to the auctioneer as soon as it was finished. Good thing I used nontoxic pastels! He gave me this look like "Don't you know how to wash your hands? Let me show you." Plop went the giant dish-sized paw down on my arm, and then the two or three inch wide sandpaper tongue got going. His teeth were over an inch long. His whiskers were gigantic, they spanned wider than my shoulders. He purred while he did it and was very gentle.

At one point during the auction he got bored and went to sleep on the table they had him up on so that people could see him while buying art. He kept sliding toward the edge. His curved back went over the edge, about four inches... five... six... seven... as he neared the point where most cats go over the side and wake up on their backs confused, Bert his handler reached down and grabbed two legs in each hand. Pulled him straight up in the air by all his legs with a big grunt (he was strong, but that's 180lb worth of cat!) and flopped him back on the table.

Big Kitty went on sleeping in the other direction. It was hilarious.

He was calmer about wearing a collar than any small cat I've ever known, and Bert would walk him up and down the halls several times a day. I loved that cat and that con. I hope he's still out there raising funds for the cause and helping repopulate the endangered subspecies of Florida Panthers. The last thing I heard on them was some success at introducing some Texas cougars into their limited gene pool, a drift that's natural and happened repeatedly across their territory but was limited by development and highways for a while.

ACEO YBAC Animals-Wildlife Lion is the first of two entries I've done so far. Every month on the 15th, the ACEO YBA (Year's Best Aceo) has a Call to Art challenge to try one of the categories in the annual contest. Last month was Domestic Animals, this time it's Animals -- Wildlife. I'm using references from Unrestricted-Stock on DeviantART for them, as they have some wonderful exotic animals packs. And leaning toward big cats because I love them.



ACEO YBAC Animals-Wildlife Cheetah is the second. I used one from the Gepard Pack in Unrestricted-Stock's stock packs for it, adapting it a bit and really liking the shadow creating dark and light areas in the foliage.

I'll be posting more of these later, watch for new entries! Today is an art day -- and when I get a themed challenge with a theme I love, I like to keep going with it till it hits eBay Midnight... Pacific time. So I may be at this till two in the morning!