Kitty sells a kitty

Office visitor, upon spying the cat print - my proof of "Best foot forward" - that i have propped on my desk: "Ooh, is that a real print?"
Me: "Made with my own two hands..."

Told him about how i came to make that one, said that yes, i did have several left from the edition, let him know he could get it from me directly, scrawled out the Etsy shop address, and mentioned a local consignment venue too - though he said he'd much rather get it direct. (Suits me!)

Turns out, he's a local sculptor and longtime buddy of the founder of the wee local arts nonprofit where i toil away on development. Yesterday he stopped by again to pick one up for himself. And apparently showed it to anybody who would hold still long enough, on his way out... i was flagged down by the owner of the little leather shop next door on my way out, with "You made that print Malcolm had...?" 

So i'm glad he was tickled with it, and it's a nice little ego-biscuit for me, too.

Meanwhile, lots of prints are going to various auctions for organizations around the area. There's always a flurry of them in the spring - this week it's the Virginia Association of Museums, the dances run by Bluemont Concert Series, and the Lincoln Elementary PTO. Go forth and support your local cultural institutions, folks! And maybe get some fun art in the process...

Whew.

I could have - and probably should have - chosen the easier route for this commission. There were two photos of a young black cat to work from, one of which would lead to a pretty straightforward print, requiring only a bit of fiction to make the background carve-able, and the other, which looked more complicated every time i peered at it.

Naturally, i picked the more complicated route, a neat shot of the kitty perched on a section of worm fence. It ended up needing four separate blocks, printed in layers - light green, then dark green, then grey-brown, and finally black. It was fussy to do, and there were inconvenient hitches like an arm injury that set things back, and it ended up taking far longer than i'd expected, based on the original plan of a simple, single block print. Feeling a bit guilty for getting the timeline wrong, i decided i ought to do a print from the other photo, too (and in fact, that was something i was able to put together pretty quickly, while finishing the last stages of the original choice). I finally drove out and delivered both today, and was relieved that they were greeted with oohs and aaahs - commissions, while they're fun challenges, are always a little nerve-racking, and this one was for friends, the proprietors of my favorite little used bookshop.

There's an edition of each, so they'll be making their way to the shop sooner (for the simpler one) or later (for the four-color monstrosity, because i haven't even completed the edition yet, and i'm going to need more ink).

And i think i've had enough of carving wood grain for a while...

Shhh...

...it's a Mother's Day present:

The hand-colored version of the tiny little cat nose - the printed image is just two inches square. The frame is a made-to-order job from fellow Etsy shop signedandnumbered.

Mini Scrap Exchange

Print exchanges are fun - you get to see what other folks are making, and get artwork you might never have found otherwise - and using up odd bits left over from other projects is satisfying, so when i saw a note about an exchange that combined the two, i signed up right away. This one hadn't really very many rules, except that your prints had to be on two inch by two inch or three inch by three inch pieces of paper.

I haven't had a chance to photograph the goodies that arrived in the (wee tiny) portfolio, but here's a print from one of the editions i submitted, all framed up as a birthday present for a friend... and if you think you need one for your very own, i have a hand-colored version in the shop (one less than i started with, though: there was an unmistakable Maternal Hint that i should send one to Delaware for Mother's Day).

Follow-up

So, that stray kitty who turned up here a couple years back...? Yeah, he lives here now. I tried - really hard - to find a sucker to take him in, but one after another got cold feet, or another cat, or any number of other excuses. And then the spouse named him. And that, as everyone knows, is the start of the slippery slope...

I've got to admit, he's a good kitty, mostly. At first, he had the declawed cat tendency to nip first and ask questions later, but once he learned that nothing really terrible happens to him here, he mellowed out on that. He's also a drooler. But that's my only real complaint. He's a conversationalist, and he's got a great big grunt-y purr. He was a bit shocked about the existence of other cats, and unaware of any foodstuffs other than kibble, but he's learned a lot - especially about the foodstuffs part.

Fluff

Too hot to think straight, so it's a good day for cute cat pictures. So, without further ado, i give you the Social Grooming Totem Pole of Cats:

Keeping warm

Everything is chilly and soggy here, and i am waiting on a replacement part for the woodstove. Until that arrives, i can't do much to warm things up. And until it does, i'm thinking warm thoughts. With that in mind, here's you cute cat photo of the day:

(Cooper, the sort of speckled tabby at the top, prefers to use various siblings as pillows; here, he's with Lucy, the elderly Manx. No, i don't know how he manages to breathe.)

Variance and seredipity

Just as i was contemplating hand-coloring the eyes on a few of the new prints, i discovered a loud but serendipitous lime green frame... i expect i'll have to go back and pick up a few more.

Paybacks

Lulubelle J. Fuzzbutt (it's a long story) was, briefly, my grandmother's cat, but landed here after Grandma died. She loves people and attention, and bullies other cats. She isn't actually dumb as two thick planks, but has a tendency to hurtle through life without thinking (e.g., an attempt to rub against my leg turns into a somersault, which turns into tumbling down half a flight of stairs...). She's cost me an astronomical amount at the vet's, mostly following her decision to eat a spool of thread.

I decided it was time for her to help pull her weight around here - and i was looking for something straightforward to carve in between the hen blocks and a half-hatched idea for another multiple color print - so i adapted a photo i'd taken, and sat down to carve.

I'm still trying to work out what to title the print... (if inspiration strikes you, feel free to leave a comment!)

Warm, and the measurement thereof

We just replaced the catalytic combustor in the old woodstove, so things should again be humming along to keep the house warm, which means that the hearth will once again be covered in kitties.

In watching the cats try to form a sort of living hearth rug, i developed a new theory: the warmth and comfort level provided by a stove ought to be measured in CCs. That's right, "Contiguous Cats" - for the number of felines that are drawn in to make a pile in front of the stove. I think i could probably set up as a testing lab for this certification scheme... here we've got a (fairly modest) three CCs, namely Winston, Fitzgerald, and Lulubelle J. Fuzzbutt.

Warming trend

We have, at long last, fired up the woodstove.

The cats approve.

Winston Stout

All cardboard boxes must be investigated. Period.

Experimentation

Finally finished that pesky lino block, with the image of Hellion melting in the windowsill... it gave me the opportunity to learn all sorts of things, to wit:

• The only transfer method that had any effect whatever was washing the scanned-and-printed sketch with white vinegar. But even then, grey linoleum doesn't show lines worth a darn.
• The bit about heating the linoleum to make it easier to cut? Works like a charm.
• I really, really like vintage lino cutters.
• Inking the lino is quite a bit different than the soft rubber blocks.
• It doesn't like the same sort of paper, either - wants something much softer in order to get a good impression. I switched to a mulberry/bamboo paper in the end.

And the finished product, framed up with what was around the house, mostly:

An unexpected guest

I had hoped that once we got Zelda spayed, she'd hold the territory up here, and we wouldn't have other cats wandering in... but since the kittens are grown and (more importantly) since new neighbors - who feed their cat out on their porch - moved in, Zelda doesn't see much reason to slog all the way up the mountain to our place.  There's a more convenient meal ticket for times when the hunting isn't so good, and she never liked to admit how much she liked the belly rubs, anyway.

So now i've got a stray who's wandered in: plainly a housecat until fairly recently, neutered, declawed, very sociable, and you can still see where a collar sat on his neck. I made all the reports to the shelter, sent in pictures, the whole lot, but the weeks are stretching on with no match, and it's starting to look like maybe the poor guy was dumped.

I've got no openings for kitties at present, so i'm starting to check with friends who might be in the market, knowing that the rescue groups will still be full with the glut of spring kittens.  I've got at least one friend who wants to meet him, so i hope she'll fall in love when she does... who could resist this guy?

Gearing up...

I'm really, really trying to carve out time (yeah, bad pun, i know...) to get some new designs ready for printing: i've got a little show scheduled for the fall, and in order to fill up the space and rotate things a bit during the exhibit, i'll need some new blocks.

Here's one i'm working on, from a photo that appeared here last summer:

Packaging

(Gee, you can get anything from Amazon these days...)

Winston's recent favorite sleeping spot (proximity to the woodstove is not coincidental, i'm sure), in a box that's just his size... barely.

Eliot Pie

I brought a couple of Pyrex pie plates back from Grandma's place, because who can't use an extra pie plate?  Apparently, this universal truth also extends to the kitties:

He's not, of course, supposed to be on the stove, or indeed curled up in a pie plate.  But it's really hard to yell at him when he's being so damn cute (or when i'm laughing that hard...).

Nap hard

Napping - it's not for sissies.  Eliot demonstrates his technique:

Two tabbies, take two

Here's the second version of the "Tabby love" print, this time on black paper, and hand colored:

Instead of listing...

...i finished up carving this block today - well, it's technically yesterday, by now.  I still want to do a version printed on black paper (using the same brown ink), with a few white bits hand-colored.  But i think i need to make a little trip to pick up some art supplies first.

I did this one from a photo of Eliot and Winston... Tabby love.