Last Alive After Five of the summer

Tonight brings the summer to a sad close….yes, we still have a little over a week to Labor Day, but tonight was the final AA5 of the summer☹️.

This is also the week of Paint the Great South Bay. So far it has rained, I was swarmed by flies and bit by a yellow jacket. (Little bastard died for that one.)

I was out painting this evening and did this painting

And took a photo and turned it into a postcard for my mom (see if you can find kitty)

I had a rough week which led to a lot of this

Here is my set up and you can see how the painting came together….

More to come!

Kitty in coach class

My daughter was home for a week. On her travel day today, she received an email that her connecting flight was canceled.

Now her seat assignment was in question and she envisioned that she would be in this very situation flying home.

Fortunately, she was able to get an aisle seat and the flight home was smooth.

Kitty and the horseshoe crab

Recently I have been reminded of a creature that isn’t the prettiest but it is ancient and it’s mating season is a major contributor to the food chain, primarily, the red knot and other migratory birds.

We used to have a house near the Delaware Bay and our morning walks consisted of turning over exhausted crabs so they could return to the water.

They can’t hurt you and that spiny tail is for flipping them back over when the waves flip them upside down.

They are living dinosaurs. If you see one, please treat them as the treasure that they are, leave them be and please do not allow children to mistreat them.

Today’s kitty

The technique I used for this kitty is a mixture of ink and pencil. It was demo’d in Carla Sonheim’s 365 workshop of prompts. We used the technique with chicken sketches but I used it for this kitty and a 5 minute Sktchy portrait.

I’ve included all of the sketches here. I really liked doing the chicken sketches, they are a lot of fun.

Enjoy!

Aura kitty

This kitty is totally by chance. I used a thick brush of gesso to paint a kitty on white paper. The interior of that white gesso’d kitty is the final orangey kitty that you see here.

Update on my mom:

She looks forward to these cards that I send her. When I am on the phone with her, she talks about them. She makes up stories about them. She compares them to her cats. Mailing her these cards is helping her in a way because she has a connection with them. She says when she’s feeling sad, she looks through her book of cats. Dementia can be hard on the patient and it’s little things like these cats that make all the difference.