Two Christmas Presents

A White Wolf
7" x 9 1/2"
Cretacolor pastel pencils
Anthracite color ClaireFontaine PastelMat

My present for Karl, my anthropologist and wolf lover son in law. I did both of these on the 25th so they weren't late -- they were just riding deadline. I love that PastelMat surface. It's as fine-grained as Bristol vellum but as grabby as sanded pastel papers. Anthracite isn't just black, it's a glittery black with a crystalline look to it that's gorgeous.


Miss Gemini in the Window
6 1/2" x 8 3/4"
Cretacolor pastel pencils
ClaireFontaine PastelMat in Brown.

Painted on the 25th, I got this portrait of Kitten's cat Miss Gemini done during the morning while sunlight streamed in the living room windows. I had a printout of my reference photo but that came out very dark, so it was great to have the living cat walking around in the sun giving me truer color and more accurate markings.

Miss Gemini's markings were designed by a collage artist from about four different tortie cat patterns. She has a perfect seam down the middle of her face and body, but her head and shoulders have one type of distinct-patches tortie marking (mismatched) while her body has a subtler pattern of alternating hairs in brown and black with black patches and softer transitions. This made her hard to paint but I got her accurate! She appreciated my effocts since I stopped and scritched whenever she came near, which was often.

Miss Gemini is sweet and loving, she has an enormous purr that she shares with anyone who so much as looks at her. She was abandoned back in Kansas and came to the door asking if we needed a cat. Kitten fell in love with those big green eyes and her motorboat purr. Two weeks of searching turned up no trace of her previous people, so Kitten got her microchipped, got her shots, settled her in and now she is the little queen of the house. Ari loves having a cat friend again.

So we've had a very happy holidays here in Arkansas. I hope to be posting more often here now, having found Blogger again and realized how many of my friends are also on Blogger.