The painting was completely from imagination – except for the cat! I couldn’t sufficiently visualize cat anatomy in the curled sleeping position. I found a photo and loosely sketched it’s form and then painted it. The flowers didn’t start out as tulips. My sketch had bulbous shapes at the end of a stem. That would have been fine also, but I began to see tulips, so tulips they became. 

This still life painting was as much fun to paint as it appears. I made a sketch from imagination and then painted it. My surface is a very textured panel I created, then painted with a thin rich yellow underpainting.   I mixed my other paint colors with a medium I made to thicken and strengthen the paint layer I would apply. This product would also isolate the paint layers to keep addition paint application from readily mixing thereby keeping the paint colors very rich.  I could brush various colors over the  underpainting  and the new paint would attach only to the peaks of the panel texture – depending on brush pressure.  

Another thing different about this painting is the brushes I used to create addition texture variability. Notice the kitty and the fringed rug the kitty is lying on.  Normal brushes don’t easily make marks like those. I took otherwise perfectly good bristle brushes and cut/chopped the bristles to create irregular configurations.  This made a big difference in brush marks throughout.  I have created a whole set of these strange brushes in varying sizes and shapes.
I don’t normally spend so much time talking about my paintings on my blog but I’ve done so because I find this to be such a fun joyful painting with a different kind of look. Hope you enjoy!

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