aka “How to furry up your bald cat.”

 

 

From my previous work in progress, you can go ahead and admit it – you were frightened. It is hard for some people to envision my finished portrait when they view the underpaintings, and that’s okay. I mean, as long as no one is scared off by it! After sharing the final digital pic of the finished portrait with my client last night, I realized that you really do have to know my work, and in a lot of cases you have to own one of my paintings, in order to overlook the craziness that is one of my underpaintings.

So for Kona’s portrait, I decided to stop every so often and snap a photo, and share my entire work in progress. If you’re an artist, and you want to take this as a “how to paint a cat portrait”, then I do hope this helps you. I’ll try to detail out my thought process through the painting so you can get an idea of how I work.

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Just finished Kona’s underpainting! So good to be out in the studio again.

I’ve kept my palette to a minimum, using just 8 colors. Indigo, sap green, burnt umber for my darkest darks, magenta, ochre, winsor yellow and cadmium orange for Kona’s coat, and white. Oh, yes, and I pulled in just a smidge of french ultramarine for her multi-striped collar.

I’ll apply several coats of fur once the underpainting is dry and also glossy up her eyes and nose. She’ll be just beautiful when she’s all done!

The 2008 Pumpkin Carving Contest has been canceled. My sister will be graduating from Army Basic Training and I will be attending her graduation ceremonies, so I will not be able to hold the contest this year.

My most sincere apologies to everyone who looks forward to viewing such awesome carvings year after year! The contest will resume in 2009!

I’ve begun a new cat portrait! This is Kona, an orange tabby. My client chose the background color, which I think is really going to set off her beautiful coat color, and also go well with the other portraits I’ve already completed once they’re hung together in an arrangement! (Elsie, Badger, Jambalaya and now Kona. Taysia Blue, another husky in the family, will have her portrait done eventually, as well.)

I’ve used a mixture of both Sap and Olive green for this background color, lightening it up a bit using Naples Yellow Light, which is a very beautiful creamy color that warms the greens around her face.

I’ll be working on her underpainting today, so look for that over the next day or two.

For the past several weeks, I have poured nearly every moment of every day into a complete overhaul of intricateart.com. This is, after all, my bread n’ butter. I’d like to go over some of the changes for you and give you a quick run-down on the restructure of my site.

First, the geek speak. I’ve been running my site using 3 different installations of WordPress. This has been completely counter-productive, as each one had it’s own design and separate administrative areas. Not to mention separate databases, separate feeds, and separate plugins. What you’re seeing now is everything merged into one database (one GInormous database) and one design. I’ve used custom queries and code to create different looks for each section (category) of my site.

On to the design changes. I’ve made modifications to specific areas so that you’ll definitely know where you are as you move through my site and portfolio. Obviously the main page (screenshot above) stands alone. Three featured paintings, nice and big, direct you to my portfolio to browse through my work. Once you’re in my portfolio, here are the views:

You might find it interesting to know that the art desk you’re looking at is, indeed, mine. I photographed it a few years ago and have finally had the opportunity to implement it into my design! I’m very excited about that!!

The portfolio, viewed 9 thumbnails at a time, can be easily navigated using the wonderful PageNavi plugin by Lester Chan. You can further narrow down which area in the portfolio you’d like to view using the New! Improved! drop down menu, just mouseover the Portfolio, drop down to “Paintings” and you’ll see all of the category options. Once you’ve arrived at a portrait you’d like to see details on, just click the thumbnail and you’ll get the full sized image with details, and can view or leave comments on my projects as well.

Each single post has even more options. You can send the project to a friend or post it on any of your favorite social networking sites, you can view related projects or entries that relate to that particular project, you can leave a comment and continue browsing or, better yet, go straight to ordering your own custom portrait!

My Photography section is just a little different from my paintings, as I wanted to make a better distinction between my paintings and my photographs. Here, you’ll see my camera sitting atop the section instead of my workspace.

Another interesting note – for this part of my design, I photographed my camera with my camera. Want to know how I did that? I used a white background, set it on a white cabinet, and held a full length mirror in front of it after setting the timer. I simply mirrored the image to create this graphic. Neat, huh?

The single photos enlarge nicely and include navigation to browse directly within the category (my other portfolio categories work this way, as well). You have most of the same options here, to send the photo to a friend, share it on one of many social networking sites, the difference is here, instead of viewing similar photos, you can click right through to the photography prints in my shop to browse those prints available. Also, of course you can leave comments here as well. This is actually my old photoblog, merged into my old photography category – so there are both old and new photos here.

Okay. Moving on! Some neat things I’ve included in my design include a Site Map and Archive that allows you to get specific with the feeds you’d like to subscribe to. Have a look:

On this page, you’ll see all of my categories with their RSS button and feed URL. Now, my blog feed hasn’t changed if you’re subscribed to it directly, but now if you’re subscribed through Feedburner, the feed has been redirected to the main feed. If you want to be more specific about the areas you’re subscribed to, the Site Map is the place to do that. If you want to stay updated on everything I do, then my FeedBurner feed is the feed to grab.

More stuff. Yes, there’s more stuff.

The navigation menu is now super intuitive. Things that were not so easy to find before are SUPER easy to find now. Pricing, prints, contact, quote, and everything you could possibly want to know about me and my artwork. It’s all there.

The blog, well, I kept some things from my old setup because I really liked that design. I just spiffied it up a little bit and added some really neat quotes up top to keep you on your toes. I cleaned up my “Bits n’ Blurbs” so they have their own look now, even when you view them all at once.

I’ve also been quite a bit of dirty work to the e-commerce default stylesheet for my Shop.

Using PayPal as my payment gateway, e-Commerce makes it really easy to set up shop. I’ve included Custom Portrait Packages, Original Paintings, Prints from Paintings, Photography Prints and also, new to my shop, I’ve added Gift Certificates. I’ll also be adding downloadable wallpapers and even prints to my Freebies page, so those will be up there shortly!

Overall, there are things you may notice now that you never knew were here before. This was truly a labor of love and long overdue! I hope that you enjoy the changes and, as always, I’m totally open to suggestions and feedback to make things even better for you.

Thank you ALL for being so patient with me during this transition!

I had to share this – Hubby captured a Praying Mantis for Catybug’s collection, so I had a photo session with him this morning. What an incredible little creature!

I have to tell you a secret, though. I wore my gardening gloves when I was handling him – and when he started heading toward my bare arm, I squealed and got the heebie jeebies. You would have too, man. Those things eat meat. :shudders:

It’s been several days since I’ve updated – I’m still working on the new site and it’s coming along so nicely. I do have a portrait I’ve started too and I’m trying to hold off on posting until I’ve got everything complete and switched over. I hope to launch by Wednesday (or sooner), so keep your eyes peeled this week for a major change!!

I’m behind on my blog visiting, too! Hope you’re doing well, do leave a note and let me know what you’re up to!

This spider was sitting in the center of its web, at the intersection of the badminton netting in the backyard. He was not even as big as the tip of my pinky – Catybug noticed him and pointed him out to me.

He had woven this cute miniature web to catch cute miniature bugs, and live a teeny tiny life in this teeny tiny space he called his own. In a world full of bigger bugs, he seemed just fine with his size and location. Funny, how that works, how his place is just as valid as everyone else’s.

I have been busily preparing my own new little web. It is coming along quite nicely and I hope to have it ready by next week. It involves a total overhaul of my site, reorganization of categories, templates and my shop.

Among many of the other things I have been busy with, one thing that has changed quite drastically is that I’ve resigned my position as a freelance (blog/site) designer for EWebscapes. I am still tossing around the level at which I will make myself available for blog design – I will still offer it on my own, but I will not be taking on such a broad range of clientele. My goal, ultimately, is to retain creative license in the things that I do.

To those of you who have so patiently waited beside me through this time, thank you. I am really grateful and glad to have the opportunity to work on paintings in my studio full time again! Particularly during today’s stresses and worries, because there is such a sense of calm, peace and beauty that comes from nature.

So, though things may be quiet on my blog for a few more days while I get things set up, know that I’m busy behind the scenes weaving my cute little web in the center of my net. I can’t wait to share it with you!

Upon relaunch, I will be working on a custom cat portrait and a few other beautiful paintings. I’m very excited about that!