In honor of my birth-mother’s up-coming birthday, I decided to jump back into my animal paintings and work up another cat. It is great to be back painting after almost a year away. Completing my Master’s in Creative Writing was fantastic and, while I’m now much better prepared to write Miranda’s children’s book and the novel dealing with the animals I’ve been painting, I did miss working in charcoal and paint. Here is the charcoal value pass on canvas and I hope to complete the painting in another day or so. It took a little while to get the feel for the charcoal again after not working with it for a bit. Before, this probably would have taken me maybe 4-5 hours. This time, I spent 2 days. I’ve been known to rush things and I didn’t want my return to the medium to be sloppy, especially since this one is going to my mother.

The size of this painting is roughly 6″ by 8″.  I am finding some variation in the canvas sizes I buy from what they are labelled. The differences aren’t huge, but the actual scale can vary by 1/4 of an inch or so. I should start bringing a ruler with me to the art supply store. I’m going to keep these works fairly small as that seems to be the size that moves locally and I would love to have more of these on other people’s walls as opposed to my own.