The Real Celebrities - Illustration for Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

When Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine contacted me to do an illustration for one of their stories, I jumped at the opportunity. Fellow Illustration Academy graduates Edward Kinsella, Andrew Wright, and Jorge Mascarenhas had all done really cool work for the magazine so it made me feel like I was joining the ranks of these uber-talented illustrators.

The story was an entertaining suspense called “The Real Celebrities” about a murder amongst some costumed would-be actors in Hollywood (excerpted here). It’s always fun to draw some famous people...especially Hugh Jackman.

I’m happy to have another example of my “Sketchbook Style” illustration. This style is taking over my illustration portfolio because it is my favorite way to work. The tediousness of the cross-hatching step appeals to the nerdy analytical side of me, and the looseness and impressionism of the paint application step helps keep it fun and spontaneous.

Stay tuned for another illustration I did for them in the August/September issue, and a website update!

Thanks for reading!

-Cat

Cat Scott
Louisville Illustrator and Graphic Designer
www.CatScott.com

Paint Lab

Where have I been?

I blame taxes. At the beginning of this year, I realized how much I'm going to get reamed and I thought, "Why do I waste my free time on this?"

So in rebellion I took a break from drawing - I stopped sketching, I stopped working on side projects, I never mailed out the pile of promotional mailers I printed. I even stopped reading art related blogs. I finished building my new illustration website just because it was a web development project - not necessarily because of the art. I was frustrated with art and wanted to give up.

Well last Thursday I was reminded why I do this. For Valentine's Day, my boyfriend and his two friends surprised their special lady friends with a night at Paint Lab in Santa Monica. For a flat fee you get an evening at darling paint studio on Main Street in Santa Monica. You pay for the canvas you choose from their stock (there's an $8 "corkage" if you bring your own), and they provide paints, supplies, clean-up, and if you're there on the right night like we were, FREE wine and cheese all night.

Since it was a surprise, I wasn't prepared to paint anything specific. So I opened my mini sketchbook that I keep in my purse and flipped through for inspiration. I landed on my Mucha Girl sketch and decided to go with it. We were provided with some acrylic paints and cheap old scraggly paint brushes, but it was enough to get me excited. For about an hour, my five buddies and I sipped Chardonnay, munched on delicious bread and brie, listened to music, chatted, and PAINTED.

Here's what I miss about art: The social interaction. I miss taking a break, stepping back, asking for thoughts, looking at friends' progress and offering suggestions. I have been struggling with making art in my free time because it usually means skipping dinners or workouts, missing spontaneous happy hours, sitting at home by myself and working while friends are all out having fun. It usually means reserving at least one day of the weekend for time at my dining room table/"studio" while friends hike, explore, relax, or travel.

I've been putting too much stress on myself. Therefore, this blog is going to be less active than before.

I'm going to do my job as a graphic designer, and I'm going to be good at it, because I've always loved typography and organizing information for optimal user experience.

I'm going to continue to learn web design because I'm a giant nerd and sort of love coding.

I'm going to draw when I want to draw, or when there's an assignment, or if it's right for a piece I'm designing, and I'm going to enjoy it more that way.

Thanks for reading my thoughts. I'll be here off and on, and I encourage you to stick around.

By the way, my illustration portfolio has been redesigned - hand coded in XHTML and CSS. Look ma, no Dreamweaver! Let me know what you think. More photos from Paint Lab are below. Definitely check it out if you are in the area.

Cheers,

Cat

Here's me enjoying the free spread of wine, cheese, crackers, bread, garlic/oil spread... mmmmmm

Natalie channeled her inner Pollock.

Dave's started as Marilyn Monroe, but slowly became Marilyn Manson.

Jon painted his one true love... his puppy Shelby.  From memory!

Jon's fiance Melissa painted a heart in honor of Valentine's day.  I dig the grey background.

Here I am, working on Ms. Mucha

And Jason is oh-so-proud of his "Interpretive piece."  If you ask him, "who is Jacob?" His response is, "Who do you think he is?"  He truly belongs in the MOMA.

Thanks again for the surprise!

Will Rogers

Will Rogers, originally uploaded by Gato81.

I brought my watercolor pad to the beach on Saturday afternoon to attempt some late afternoon "plein air" sketching and painting. I started with a pen sketch (the usual Hi-Tec C, in Blue) and then added washes of watercolor. I had some issues with the paper repelling the paint over on the left hand side. I guess it's from sunscreen rubbing off of my arm while I did the sketch (I'm left-handed).

When I returned home, I wanted to drop back the value of the mountains. The color I originally used was pretty dark, and if you have ever been to the beach in LA, you know the mountains are hazy and washed out! So I got out the trusty GAC 100 and some Titanium White and painted over the sky & mountains. I felt pretty good about it.

A little while later, I found mysterious water/GAC splotches on the painting. Not detrimental, but still frustrating. Ugh. I guess that's why this is "sketchbook" work :)

View from Lindsay's

View from Lindsay's, originally uploaded by Gato81.

I spent a recent Saturday afternoon soaking up the sun on my friend's rooftop patio in Westwood. I probably should have used my new set of pens which vary in weight, but instead did this whole thing with a .3mm Hi-Tec C instead. My meticulous nature strikes again!

It also would have been cool to do some washes over it, but I never bring my paints around with me. It seems cumbersome to lug that stuff around all the time, and busting out a travel paint set, brushes, and a water jar while my friends flip through magazines and nap seems strange to me. I guess it just takes getting used to. Any suggestions out there as to how I could ease into sketching with color/paint?

Till next time...

-cat

Hold me closer, tiny palm trees

Feeling unmotivated this week. Last night I tackled something small... 3"x3" to be exact.

Tools: gessoed canvas glued to illustration board. Prismacolors. Turpentine. Photo taken at LACMA.

I cut this board back in 2006 while at the Illustration Academy. It was originally intended for tiny oil painting portraits, like the one below of Jennifer Coolidge.

The texture doesn't work well here; my usual gessoed illustration board would be better for this experimental style. I'll leave the canvas for thicker applications of paint.

And here's Ms. Coolidge. It's been a while since I have done a caricature/portrait. Who should I do next?

Map for Maribeth's Wedding

Ah, the end of a very long, busy, and exhausting week, and the beginning of another! I finished another assignment for Louisville Magazine last night. It will be out in the August issue so I'll be sure to share it when it's published.

In the meantime, here's a project I did for a friend at work. She needed a map to go with her wedding stationery. I drew the map with pencil and laid out the text for a predetermined size & template (the star & the dots are a theme on her stuff, and I used the same fonts she had chosen for her invitation).

I think it turned out really cute. It's such a cool, personalized way to include a map with the wedding invitation. If anyone out there needs one done, contact me for a quote!

Santa Monica Pier

Another lunch break drawing adventure in my Moleskin.

This little gem was created during two 30 minute lunch breaks (for the on-site pen drawing) and a little bit of time with the acrylic paint and GAC 100 at home. I was watching "Intervention," a show on A&E, while I worked on this, and will now forever associate my drawing with a crack addict named Chad. Don't worry, he ultimately sought treatment and is now sober.

Similarly, I have a drawing of apples that I worked on while watching the 9/11 coverage; I can't look at the apples without being reminded of the details of that day. I'm sure it's normal to associate what you're drawing to whatever you're listening too; it's like I heard; "if you doodle, you remember more."

For fun, I thought I would share a nice aerial view of this drawing vantage point and scene:

Views from the 16th Floor

My office is located on prime real estate in Santa Monica: Pacific Coast Highway and some sand separate us from the ocean. It's pretty ridiculous when you enter the main reception area: Floor to ceiling windows line the entire west (ocean) facing walls, and you see blue sea for miles (or just a mile, depending on the smog that day). The other sides of the building look out over the city - north to Malibu and Pacific Palisades, East towards Brentwood and Santa Monica (and on a clear day, towards Big Bear), and South towards Venice - and I find these views to be much more interesting. While waiting for a job to print in our production room, I grabbed a few scraps of paper and doodled some of those views and thought I would share them with you. This is another one that would be cool if I had paint on hand because the colors make a big difference. Maybe I should start bringing my gouache set to work :)

"Sunset in Malibu"; or "View From Parking Garage"

Leaving work last week, I was taken with the view northwest towards Malibu from the 9th floor of the parking garage in Santa Monica. So I sketched it. This has potential to be a pretty cool painting; but maybe just a small gouache one.

In other news, I started a Facebook Page for my biz. So now I have yet another site to keep updated! Woo hoo! Check it out here and become a fan! Cat Scott Illustration + Design

Lares & My Biggest Fan

First Date at Lares  |  24" x 30"  |  Acrylic on canvas  |  NFS

My first date with My Biggest Fan, Jason, was at a cute Mexican restaurant in Santa Monica called Lares.  Jason commissioned me to do a painting to commemorate the evening, and this is what I finally ended up with.  This painting went through many "starts" before I finally got into the groove.  Once again, the inspirational speech from Peter Gooch helped me power through the awkward adolescence of the painting.

More cool stuff coming soon: I'm almost finished with another painting for the beer series!  I know, it's about time.

Here are some details from the painting.  Those of you who know Jason will appreciate that I painted his Swoop with such accuracy. 

Downtown LA

SOLD

This was painted from a photo I snapped while at the Griffith Observatory. I think it's safe to say this is pretty impressionistic.

This is another 5x7 and is a combination of watercolor, pen, and gouache.

Prints are available through ImageKind for as little as 8.49!

Sailboats

Sometimes when I go to the beach, there are clusters of white sailboats off on the horizon. Possibly a sailing class going originating from Marina del Rey. I love the contrast of all of the white sails against the blue sky and ocean - so cool and calming.

I tried something different with this piece - I did an ink drawing, scanned it, converted it to vector, and then colorized in Illustrator. I like this way of working because it combines by fondness of ink drawings with the flexibility of computers (not to mention there's no clean-up!)

View from Santa Monica Beach

To kick off our 4th of July weekend o' fun, Rachel and I hit the beach after our half day of work last Thursday. I sketched our office building, 100 Wilshire (the tall one), and the condos and other building along Ocean Ave, while soaking up the sun.

I got very sunburned while drawing this.

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.

Holiday Season on the Promenade

A lovely night scene of the famous Santa Monica 3rd Street Promenade. It's quite festive. This is mostly gouache (I started with a base of watercolor) on some random illustration board I had laying around the house.

Buy prints of this piece here!

Birds of Marina del Rey

Birds of Marina del Rey, 5" x 7", pen + watercolor

When you take a sailboat out of Marina del Rey, you happen upon a "breaker" of sorts (forgive me for not knowing proper jargon, I'm not a sea-person). This breaker is a mound of rocks COVERED in birds. It's quite a spectacle. So I drew it.

Buy prints of this piece here!

Venice Beach

I thought it would be a good idea to bring along my little travel watercolor set and my little watercolor moleskin sketchbook to do some plein air painting at Venice Beach. I did a fun ink drawing with a sepia Hi-tec C, and started laying down watercolor. Then everything fell apart. I knew the pen would bleed a bit, but I did not know it would turn purple. I had about a teaspoon of water to mix with so all my colors became muddy. Sand was in my paints, my water, and in my paintbrushes. So I sort of gave up, but there's still something I like about it - I captured my day in this little watercolor. I look at it and am flooded by the experiences of the day, even if it included a failed attempt at plein air watercoloring.

birdies of the 405

Every morning, these birds are posted up on the same section of the wall along the 405. It's like they are there to watch the spectacle that is the Morning Commute in LA. I was going slow enough to take a snapshot as I drove by, then drew from that. This is sort of an old drawing, but I haven't had time to do anything fresh and new and fun because I leave for a cruise TODAY and had a lot to take care of before I left.

That being said, I will not have any posts for a week or so - but hopefully I get lots of good sketches in on my trip!