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. 

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 George at Dusk

10" x 8" Acrylic on Gessoed Hardboard, $80, available for sale here

Silver Bay, NY is hands down my favorite place on this planet. (I haven't made it to Italy yet, so I guess this could change). This painting was done from a photograph I took looking south from Slim Point.

A little bit about this place I keep talking about: Technically, it's a YMCA conference center, but to me, it's a family vacation spot much like Dirty Dancing (or The Shining if you are there in the winter). Families return summer after summer to relax and enjoy the simple things in life. There is no cable, internet is hard to come by, and if you really need to use your cell phone, you either canoe out to the middle of the lake, drive 15 miles south, or huddle near the flagpole in the center of campus and hope for the best.* Evenings are spent catching a show at the auditorium and socializing over ice cream at The Store, and if you're feeling really wild, you'll head down to the beach or to the dock to watch the waves in the moonlight.

My grandmother, Barbara, started the Scott family tradition when she worked at Silver Bay as a teen. Eventually she and my grandfather, George, purchased a small cottage just off the main campus. Later, my father and his siblings spent their summers there, and now it's my generation's turn. There have only been a few summers I couldn't visit (damn you Kinko's for not giving me time off in the summer of '99!), but I made up for lost time by being an "Emp" (employee) three summers during college. As an Emp, you get paid well below minimum wage, are fed semi-tolerable food (we loved sandwich bar day!), and you live in condemnable dorms that smell like mold more often than not, but the work you do, the people you meet, and the place you are living more than makes up for it. Some people I worked with for only 7 weeks nine years ago are still my good friends; I'm going to one fellow Emp's wedding in just a few weeks.

You get the idea, I heart Silver Bay. I have my tickets to go back in July to introduce the place to My Biggest Fan, Jason. I sure hope he likes it as much as I do.

*it's possible that cell phone coverage has improved since my last visit in 2007, and I secretly hope it hasn't.

Happy Mother's Day

Now that I'm on this "Make your own cards" kick, that's exactly what I wanted to do for my mother's day card this year. I intended on challenging myself by using paint for my type, but I didn't want the hassle of constructing a big composition, mixing paint colors, yada yada yada.

I grabbed some cheap black paint, a cheap thin paint brush, and my generic sketch book from Michael's and started painting. The end result was pretty close to what I wanted, but I scanned it and used my mad Photoshop skills to clean it up and make it even BETTER. I made each piece ("happy", "Mother's", the tulip, etc) into its own grayscale TIF file and place it in InDesign. By selecting the placed image and applying a swatch to it, I was able to colorize it digitally.

Then I printed, folded, wrote a sappy note, and sent it off to my mama with her mother's day gift: drawings of me and my bro.







Happy Mother's Day!

thankyouverymuch

When I sold my very first piece on Etsy (my little painting of downtown LA), I wanted to include a Thank You card with my shipment. I only got as far as opening a new tab in Safari when I said to myself, "Self, you are an artist. Can't you make a thank you card?" I have made holiday cards in the past, so I responded, "Self, you bet your ass I can."

I sat down that night with my watercolor pad and gouache set and dove in. Obviously I wanted to do hand lettering, because that's how I roll. I painted, got lost in the work, grabbed a photo and added a sketch, stepped back and... it was crap. CRAP! Jason, My Biggest Fan (M.B.F.), told me it was lovely (such an obedient, well-trained man) but I wanted to do something better. Fortunately, I salvaged the sketch part so it wasn't a total loss. (Notice how I deliberately cropped out the CRAP part of the painting. No, you will never see it. Maybe M.B.F. will use that part as a bookmark or something).

I set back at it. The gouache flowed through me like the fade-aways flow through Kobe. Usually I do hand lettering with whatever pen is conveniently near my hand, so the addition of bristles, water, and pigment gave me a slew of new issues.  Nevertheless it was fun, and I was happy with the outcome.  Next came the easy party: scan, layout, print. Then I thought to myself, "Self, maybe others out there would want to use this design, too. It's just so darn pretty!" So up it went to my new Etsy site, so you too can enjoy the simple, yet whimsical, design. And such a steal, too!

See the listing for the cards here.

Thanks for stopping by. See you again soon!

Katy jumping

My new studio/dining room/game room/library -->
I'm finally settling into my new apartment (last time I counted, I have moved 21 times in my short life*). My art supplies all have a nice home in the Ikea cabinet in my living room (don't want to clutter the living space). Of course, now that everything is in its right place (queue Radiohead), it's time to make a mess with it!



I grabbed some pens, my little gouche set and an awesome photo of my friend Katy jumping up in the air. The pen I used was apparently water soluble, so when I went in with washes of gouache, it started getting a bit crazy. I didn't really think this through, nor had I planned any sort of outcome, just messing around with the ol' art supplies. I do like the spontaneous energy of this little sketch, probably more for Katy's Lebron like moves than the drawing itself.

More coming soon, including a new item (or two?) for my etsy shop and my surprise mother's day projects.

* 21 times includes the moves to and from college, to and from my summer job at Silver Bay, and to and from the Illustration Academy. I know you were wondering.

Etsy

See that bandwagon? I'm getting on. Visit my brand new etsy site for a growing collection of my original artworks and other crafty items (when I eventually post them)

Parrot

5x7 watercolor pencil drawing in 11x14 mat, $40

I bought myself some watercolor pencils recently. It seemed like the perfect way to unite my love of Prismacolors and my new interest in watercolors. I dabbled a bit tonight on this painting of a parrot (that I photographed at the San Diego Wild Animal Park). I think there's some potential here if they are mixed with other media. Anyone out there have any tips for working with these?

Lately I have been into these quick small paintings. I don't usually have a lot of time to work so it's much more satisfying to be able to complete a project in one sitting. These little 5x7 paintings and drawings are the ticket.

I Carried a Watermelon

These here little ditty was used for a fake ticket for a Dirty Dancing show here in LA. The recipient, a die hard fan (what 20-30 something girl isn't a fan?), will surely recognize the quote. I think the wobbly hand-written text captures the awkwardness that Baby felt after she uttered those words. And also I love doing type by hand whenever I get the chance.

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!