a book, a blog and lab #1

I found this book mentioned on a blog that I follow, so I went to Amazon and took a look at it. It’s called Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists. The exercises in the book sounded fun…and I’m always looking for new creative boosts! So I ordered it and have really been enjoying some of the labs in it.

The author’s blog is here and Carla is offering an online course that begins on September 15. I think I’m going to sign up. I could use a good dose of Silly right about now.

Take a look at my attempt at lab #1 (“draw cats in bed”) from the book. It captured my attention right away…anything with CAT in the title is bound to do that to me. 

The assignment is to take some white card stock paper and a sharpie and go sit  or lay down in bed. The softness of the bed gives you a looser drawing. I think I drew for about 10 minutes. Something like that. In the end I had three 8.5x11 sheets full of cats.

I picked a few that I liked really well. Traced them onto watercolor paper using a lightbox and then added some color. 

I liked this one. When I did his left eye, it sort of looked up, so I had to make the other match.

Of course, cats sleeping. Which is about the only pose I ever see at my house.

After a while, all my cats started looking alike so I switched the marker to my left hand. I got this fat cat. I added the other swirly lines while I was painting.