Fat cats, skinny cats, cats that sit on your head....

I hated the fact that I couldn't seem to paint a cat... So I kept at it! I mean how hard is it really to come up with a cartoon like cat? So I also happened to be going through Carla sonheim's book of drawing exercises and her first one was drawing cats, plus I'm seeing a lot of cats on blogs lately because of Amy's free cat classes,(even though I didn't see that particular class myself), so here goes.... I like these cats much better than my last try on canvas. These are in my second altered book, I'm putting a lot of Carla's drawing exercises in this book too. The fat cat is colored pencil, the skinny cat is acrylic over collage, the three
round cats are watercolor over gesso over tissue, and then there's one on a book page with acrylic and marker and the last is doodled in marker over a mailing envelope. The cat that sits on your head didn't quite get finished yet.

I also stuck in another page I did in my goddess altered book.... It's marker and a little acrylic over the book page... I started it because some challenge weeks ago , maybe an I.f., was vanity. I should say, since I don't think you can read the words, that she't not vain, she's just strong, confident and independent! I didn't get it done on time to post it to the challenge, but I'm adding it in this week with my cats, and linking up to paint party Friday and butterfly effect whose theme this week is book pages! I really love painting right on the pages so the words show thru.... More to come soon!


I have been so inspired to create lately!

I've been reading a few art books,

then I've been checking out other people's favorite art on Pinterest, which is totally addicting,

And then I've seen such really great stuff on etsy too while i've been Christmas shopping on there!

So much to make and so little time!

my fat little goddess

I have been watching the videos over on Amy's Flutterbye (see sidebar) that she and Natasha are teaching on book altering. All the classes are FREE! and inspiring!

I love the reasoning behind offering it free... and I'm not sure if these are partially her words from somewhere on her site or mine (!?):

there's enough for everyone,

there's no need for all the artistic competitiveness

so share what you know...


so far they've worked through picking your book, thinning pages, preping, playing, painting the cover and putting in a zipper.... I'm still afraid of the zipper even after watching that one, plus my book is VERY old so the strings may not be able to handle the stress of the zipper. I'm still working on a portrait on one of the pages I collaged on, but here's the cover...

I may not be done, After seeing it here I think it needs some black words stamped in the background or something. Putting her on the cover does sort of make the book about a theme now, but that's OK, I want it to be full of powerful,
 strong,
 pretty
 women,
 and maybe stories of goddesses or such.

She sort of reminds me of the Venus of Willendorf or one of the other old ones, I could see it made of a tiny piece of clay on some long ago altar (minus the bright colors). and... just because I love them....

here's a few goddesses, some are based on real artifacts and some aren't.

Oh, I'm linking this up to the butterfly effect as their theme this week is also goddesses!