Daily Sketch: Three Cats From Above

Three Cats From Above, colored pencil © B.E. Kazmarski

Mimi calmly sat in the sun, Mr. Sunshine had a nice bath, and Giuseppe sat looking at them, at me, out the window, into my bedroom. I loved the arrangement of the three, each doing their own thing but being together as good friends and loving relatives can be. They were fairly content, and I had my materials in hand as I was standing there so I didn’t distract them with my own movements.

I thought I was done with the sketch when I’d done the quick studies of each of the three, then I though that what had visually tied them together for me was also the rug they were on, which is that ubiquitous pink-flowered rug we’ve seen frequently lately in sketches and photos, but I didn’t want the pattern, just the connection.

I like to get an interesting perspective on them, like looking at them from above. It’s challenging after seeing them from nearly eye level a good bit of the time when I can finish a drawing just from memory if they completely move away. Just being able to store away all these other details has caused me to study them even more closely from angles like this.

And I’ve also come to enjoy colored pencil a lot more than I ever thought I would. I actually love just drawing, making a nice expressive line on paper to try to capture the essence of a scene in the least amount of marks on paper, and will most naturally gravitate to my old ebony drawing pencils as my most familiar medium. The colored pencils are coming in a close second, even ahead of my former second favorite, the charcoal pencils. The colored pencil set in my little art bag is just a student-grade—really elementary school grade—dozen box of thick-lead pencils, just 12 colors to choose from. I have a 60-pencil set in my studio that a friend gave me when she was cleaning out her stuff. I’ll have to indulge some time.

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Click here to see other daily sketches, and for a gallery of the ones available for sale, visit my Etsy shop in the “Daily Sketches” section.

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