Alice meets a mysterious cat several times , who vanishes leaving his grin behind him. I started drawing the cat , and had several attempts at different versions before giving up. I had a really good basic cat grin but i was having a lot of trouble with getting its disappearing act to look right.
However it made me think about kalaeidescopes and mirrors and for some reason i wondered about quilting designs and pondered over the idea of a cat quilt.
That lead me to a simple cat sketch , mirrorred and coloured a range of sugary colours. I decided i quite liked this - though my cat loving daughter wasn't keen on the colours.
I thought about doing some more to the cheshire cat after this but got side tracked and started painting some cat's eyes , the wildflower , Germander speedwell.I used to love these when i was a child - their tiny blue flowers always seemed cheerful and twinkly , very like blue cat eyes.
One of our neighbours always had lots of speedwell in his garden. He used to ask us if we wanted to pull out the plants - a sneaky way of getting his rockery weeded for free. We were happy to oblige though the flowers woudl fade and the petals would drop quickly.
Germander speedwell, Veronica chamaedrys, has some other common names; bird's eyes , angel's eyes, farewell flower and used to be thought of as a cure for small pox, measles, coughs, asthma, and a variety of other illnesses. The farewell or speedwell name is due to its panacea like nature and to how quickly the herb would bring about a cure.
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14 comments:
Love the pastels...so peaceful!
Smooch,
The Tart
very cool... kind of an andy warhol vibe to it.
Lovely, simply lovely!
great image, lovely colors.
Whoa... get a little dizzy alternating between the negative and positive spaces in the cat patterns. Hope it's not some psychology test. Nice colors, though...
Very nice cat illustration, imaginative and love the flower! Lily.
colorful and they can pass as a stamp.
i love the flower
I like it and it does look like pop art! I was fascinated with Andy Warhol. Great job.
Alison, I think the quilt designis super cool, andeven though the colours arer sugary as you put it, they work for this piece. Lovely!
Excelente armonia de colores.Thanks for your comments
Fabulous! I love your colors!
This is really cool! I could see a great stained-glass window from this design.
It does look like a psychology test or optical illusion. weird how these thinsg turn out.
i've been working on sme other animals in a similar vein- i'll probably post them to the blog later.
There's something so hypnotic about the cat illo, contrasting with the light and soothing flower illo. You do such wonderful work in so many styles!
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