fish in dish

Easing myself back into the blogosphere with a quick illo of a cat, with a fish, in a dish.

fat cat

Fat cat sketched out, grumpy, and beginning to be painted...

nine lives

Another meeting with Gracie, the author of Morse, on Saturday and a couple of lattes later I think we finally nailed it! I have my list of illustrations, a (very) rough idea of where we're going with it and, most importantly, a starting point to begin. Morse sounds like he will be quite the character and already there's talk of a second book, so I hope I can do him justice. Now the real work starts!

The rest of the weekend was given over to J's birthday - I can't believe he's nine already. A sleepover with a few of his friends (from which I'm still recovering!). When I finally get over it, I have my new website and blog to get up and running.... More to follow!

are you looking at me?

I have another meeting with Gracie this weekend, to go over the Morse character and to work out the layout of the book. Gracie has given me photographs to work with (Morse was an actual, real cat!) and this is one of my first, very rough, sketches. Just trying to work out how he will look. I'm quite taken with the 'surly child' expression!

quick brown fox

The fox
Last night I doodled a fox. He will most likely go through many permutations to become more stylised in readiness for my linocutting debut (oh, oh! With trees!!!). But ordering the materials has put me in a mild creative panic working through some permutations of my own. I'm swerving between excitement (yay! new ways of working, tactile, textures, strong, bold, linear!) and self-doubt (I won't know what I'm doing, have terrible ideas and make a hideous mess of them anyway!) then back to excitement (I get to try printmaking again!). Ah, the joy.

The cat
Shortly after, a rare midnight moment when crazy, fierce, independent Wilson allowed himself, in a momentary lapse of his psychotic personality, to be picked up and snuggled on my lap. Normally content only to sit near me or follow me around, dog-like (but don't touch!) he went into a sort of reverie, staring off into space with his big, green eyes and staying perfectly still while I stroked the soft fur under his chin. 

This blissful state lasted for oooh, at least five minutes, before he snapped out of it, looked up and tried to bite me quite viciously on the nose.

More art, more cats, and a lot less whinging at my latest fabulous blog discovery here.

year of the rabbit (or dog, cat... or iguana!)

Having taken some time out (gosh, a whole year! Time flies, I had no idea it had been that long!) to concentrate on my illustration projects for a while, I am tentatively updating the pet portrait site. The last time it got kinda too successful for it's own good, which meant I ended up having no time at all for my personal work. I have learned my lesson though and this time round I plan to only take on a few at a time. What I'd really like is some weird pets to draw though! Maybe some ducks, or a rabbit, or a goat... or an iguana would be cool!

(ooh, I'm now on twitter! And facebook! How much technology can I handle? Only time will tell... Link on the right hand side of this blog...)

a serious cat

Wilson the Maine Coon. He's now just over six months old and about half the size he's going to be (he's currently the same size as fat cat Rufus). He rules the house, and has been the boss of Kenzie the husky since he was a tiny kitten. It's as if he knows that he will one day be enormous...

new addition

This little guy, or one of his siblings, will be joining us very soon... In two weeks we will have the unenviable task of choosing only one from a litter of Maine Coon kittens. I wonder what our marmalade fat cat Rufus will make of it all?




I have a week off from my music job next week but two dog portraits and two Juno illustrations to complete for Friday. In between I have to find some time to spend with my sister and my three small nephews, two of whom I have just met for the first time since they were born three and two years ago! They arrived this week from New Zealand, the last time she came over was when Jackson (now 4) was just 5 weeks old.