Happy Father's Day

Busy Gato

I have been quite busy and will remain busy the rest of the week. Here's a small sketch to whet your appetite.

Fleur de Lis

Fleur de Lis, Hi-Tec C and Acrylic in my Moleskin

When I was in Louisville, I saw this symbol popping up everywhere. It has long been a part of Louisville's history, but it recently became a main stream icon to represent the 'Ville. My dad, who seems to have become a Louisville historian in his spare time, explained to me where this symbol originated from.

Louisville was named in honor of King Louis the XIV. He was French. The French dig the Fleur de Lis.

Of course, he put it much more elegantly than that.

This lesson came in handy at the Smithsonian a few days later. We saw a 17th century violin called The Louis XIV embellished with fleur de lis. The more you know!

Coffee Mug and Musings on Style

10" x 8" Acrylic on Canvas, $65, available for sale here

After I put the finishing touches on Lake George at Dusk, I had mounds of paint remaining on my palette. Not being one for wasting things (especially titanium white at $13 a tube), I grabbed a canvas and just started abitrarily painting. After doing a semi-realistic painting, it felt really good to get loose and impulsive.  I ended up with a painting that couldn't be more different.

So my question is this: WHY do I have so many different styles? If you cruise through through my portfolio (conveniently browsable through my brand new website) you might presume I'm an illustration rep promoting many artists' books. No, not the case.

A snippet of my random stylings.

I have been trying to learn and push my boundaries as much as possible. The illustration style I developed in college is an interesting way to work and gives me a unique look, but it's cumbersome and requires quite a bit of planning. Ever since the Illustration Academy, I have experimented in various ways, hoping my style will just slowly emerge. Is this possible?

And is it sooooo wrong not to paint exactly the same way every time?  I think it would get boring.  Doing something different or choosing a style that suits your specific task keeps things interesting and challenging.

These are the thoughts that keep me up at night. Speaking of which, off to sleep.  Have a great weekend!

p.s. Did I mention I have a newly designed website?  I was able to snag the domain name I was meant to have from the beginning:  www.CatScott.com

p.s. I choose D, brushing their teeth!

Lake Leisure

Finally, the bounty of my Surface Design project.

Goal: Create a cohesive line of products using completely original art elements.

Inspiration: Silver Bay on Lake George, always my muse. I pictured a line of products that could be for sale at the Silver Bay Gift Shop. Products that could appeal to any part of a generation. Silver Bay is conventional, preppy, rustic, and funky all at once. Lots of tradition, lots of family. It's a place people keep in their hearts for their whole life. These things (combined with my lack of fashion know-how) geared my line of products into a strange hybrid; think country club meets outdoor enthusiast.

Title: This was the last thing I did, but it seems appropriate to list it first here.



Icons: First we created a series of graphic elements that could stand alone or be combined with other Icons to create compositions. I had no idea where I was going with my project at this point. I only knew I wanted to incorporate hand-written type, because that's so hot right now. I got out the watercolors and started painting.







Badges: Badges are mini compositions which could be used on a hat or chest print of a t-shirt (or mug, etc). My favorites involve the Sunfish; I love how their bright colors pop against the deep blue greens of the mountains (in real life and in my badges!




Patterns: The Patterns portion of the class was challenging for me. We used our icons, badges, and borders (mine were too lame to show here) to make repeating or organic patterns. I think this would have been easier had I started with more abstract shapes, but the realism of my icons begged for a composition. Who wants a sheet set with a billion repeating sailboats all over it? Therefore, my most successful ones involved a simple brush stroke stripe.


I was able to use my watercolor birch leaves with a found image of a birch tree trunk. That turned out pretty cool.



Product Line: Finally, we created a product line. This involved finding/creating silhouettes on which to place your masterpieces. I found products and hand drew them to give it that "Silver Bay Look," then took the scans into Photoshop and applied my patterns/icons/badges. Here are a few of my favorites.









Outcome: I had a fantastic teacher, got a glimpse inside an industry I knew nothing about, picked up some Photoshop tricks, met some nice classmates, got some great sketchbook time in, and challenged my brain to not think composition first. Good times.

Thanks for your patience. If you made it all the way down to the bottom, you get a special treat - a joke!

What's brown and sticky?

A stick!

gma tote

After a lot of time traveling for the Holidays (including a lengthy cruise in the Caribbean with my boyfriend's family), I am back and ready to post some stuff! I'll try to space it out though... I like to keep you in suspense.

For Christmas, I decided to create a unique tote bag for my grandmother. I call her "g-ma" - I don't really know why, probably just because the family likes to abbreviate and be cutesy like that. I used Zazzle to create this tote and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

Obampkin

In the spirit of election season, my company's suite entered an Obampkin in our pumpkin carving contest. I painted it with the Obama logo and then we carved out the continents on top. We'll see if we win! But more importantly: I hope we win on Tuesday.

Hectic and Eclectic

I recently participated in my first art show! It was called Hectic and Eclectic and was a collection of some LA artists. It was a lot of fun... and it was nice to finally take some of my pieces out of the closet and get them into frames! Lots of my friends came out for it. It was a great time.

Long time, no blog.

I took a bit of a hiatus. no excuses. I just got back into drawing. here are a few things. I hope to keep this up.

Easles

I am taking an oil painting class at UCLA this fall. My college instructor was an excellent painter and taught me what a good painting is supposed to look like, but he failed to teach me the mechanics of oil painting. One summer he handed me some old brushes and oil paints and said "go." I would slap thick paint down on the canvas and never work on them after one session because I didn't really know what to do. After one quick "sylabus day" I learned about 8 things I have been doing wrong with oil paints so far.

I sketched this view of some easels with an HB pencil in my trusty moleskin.

White Castle mug

My faithful White Castle mug. This mug does several things for me in the morning. First and foremost, it provides me with caffeine that perks me up and makes the morning tolerable (I am a night owl - mornings are rough for me). Second, it allows me a chance to not waste a paper cup when I have said caffeine, thus making my day a bit greener. And finally, it reminds me of my old stomping grounds, Louisville, Ky, where the White Castle on the corner of Chenoweth Lane and Shelbyville Road held so many fond memories of tiny hamburgers and Big Red sodas. That White Castle is no longer with us.... *tear

This is done with a regular old "Pen-I-use-at-work" with the "Lick-Your-FInger-and-Smear-the-ink-around" technique. Patent pending.

lotion

I have been a slacker lately. The project I referred to below came to fruition in full force resulting in some very focused art-making and very little sleep. Once I was finished recovering from that, i went on a fabulous vacation to Silver Bay. While on vacation, I found myself moving about a lot and did not have much time for drawing. I took lots of photos that I plan to work from in the future, but I sadly did no drawing from life. Since my return, I have been playing catch-up on sleep, e-mails, laundry, and all the other joys of life. This is a quick sketch I did one afternoon of my favorite lotion from the Body Shop.

Speaking of the super secret project, I have been asked not to show the artwork until the end of September, so all of my faithful readers will have to be patient. It turned out pretty cool (despite the fact that I spilled neon green ink ALL OVER IT at midnight the night before it was due). I can't wait to share it with you all.

New postcards featuring the Fertility piece are going in the mail tomorrow. If you aren't already on my mailing list and would like to be, e-mail me with your snail mail address and I'll add you.

red saucony's

A little sketch of my favorite shoes, my red Saucony's. Pen with Acrylic in my moleskin.