Featured Artwork: Bath, Interrupted

Yes, it's my little formerly feral butterfly Mariposa giving me that "I've so got you wrapped around my fluffy tail" expression as she pauses in her toilette.

I'd been planning to paint her as she is, not as I imagine or would like to pose her. I'd been just waiting to get to know her a little better by constantly studying her—oh, please, twist my arm, make me stalk one of my cats and take endless photos. They enjoy all the attention and praise for permitting me to get a good photo. The continued study is to find the habits, postures and expressions that really belong to Mariposa. And also to see her in the places she likes best, and she loves the bed.

I took these photos in spring 2020, knowing I'd love to paint this, but she was still maturing into her favorite places and habits around the house. I love cats taking baths, and cats on quilts, especially this colorful vintage postage stamp quilt, and the lifted paw with the toe beans really got me. But it was also the golden evening sunlight as the sun approached the horizon flowing fully in the window at just the right angle to illuminate Mariposa's most notable qualities: her white mittens, her tipped ear with deluxe earhair, her exceptional eyes and her magnificent whiskers. Almost a year has gone by and several gigabytes of Mariposa pictures, but this one still has all the features I wanted.

As much as I loved the quilt, though, after I had painted in all those little patterned and color squares I kind of lost Mariposa! The painting was just as pretty as I had imagined, but Mariposa is the main point, and she needed to stand out. So I softened and blurred out all the little patterns and kept her in sharp focus, and I darkened some of the areas behind her a little more than they had been. It was exactly the best way to feature Mariposa.

It's for paintings like this one, and the one of Sienna, with all those patterns and shapes and details that I love to do the watercolor underpainting. I enlarge the photo to the size I want to paint it, print it out, and put it on my light table with a piece of my watercolor paper that also works for pastels. I sometimes make outlines in pencil, but for this one I actually laid down colors with no shading so I had an indication of where things were when I started with my pastels. I work with my big soft pastels to start with, then work down to my harder pastel pencils. Whiskers, however, are always done with a well-sharpened white charcoal pencil reserved for that honor.

What did Mariposa think of it all? Here was her reaction.

Is that another cat?

She looks familiar. But she doesn't smell like anything.

1. Who is that?! 2. She doesn’t smell like anything.

She looks a lot like me...

It IS me!!!

Mariposa is so fun. I still can't believe she was about a year old living in a feral colony I had to trap and move in 2018 because the abandoned house was going to be demolished. But she so easily adapted to living indoors with a human, almost as if she wanted it, and she loves all the other cats. She is silly and manipulative and playful and affectionate and has always trusted me, but if someone so much as looks at our house from the street she vaporizes.

I'm so glad we "test" as many ferals as we can, and since her colony had to be moved, all needed to be fostered until I could take them out there in two or three shifts. There was something about her the next morning when I saw her in the trap that told me she didn’t want that life.

Written in 2021: One of my goals for this year was more new artwork, and I'm happy to have two cat paintings done. And here is another cats on a decorative pattern, one of those themes I've been wanting to pursue for years but never really had the time for all the detail. Now I have a nature painting to do as well, no cats, but another that's been waiting for a while. And now that I've started this I kind of feel like I might do a sketch now and then.

I have sold the original, but you can purchase a print or greeting card.

Visit the post for "Bath, Interrupted" on Portraits of Animals. I offer prints as:

• digital prints on matte-finish digital paper

• giclees on cold press art paper

• canvas in standard sizes

• framed prints, and custom framing is available

I have also added this image to several gift items. Right now in stock, a keepsake box and a tile:

I hope you enjoy my featured artwork posts where I review one of my (usually favorite) paintings including a discussion of inspiration and place if appropriate, medium, style, preparations and creation, for those who are curious and for those who are learning. I alternate feline art and nature/wildlife/florals each week.