The saddest cats

Where’d everyone go?

Can’t remember what I was waiting for…

There’s nobody to talk to today…

Oh. Not food.

So… dinner for one then?

Sat here all day yesterday too.

I’m considering this cat a bit of a failure. I played around with brushes, colours, more paint, faster splotching (if that’s a real painter term) and ended up with something resembling paint soup on a piece of paper. This is what I was able to salvage.

But given that my ‘disaster’ is not so different in terms of technical competence from something that I’m actually willing to call a success, I thought ‘oh, screw it - just stick it on the blog anyway.’

You can judge me for my remedial 4 year-old painting skills if you wish. 

For the first time - a hand-painted, non-digital cat!

In the past, I’ve had some people ask if they could have prints of the Saddest Cats, and my answer has always been - yes of course, just press ‘print’ on your computer.

The digital file you see on this blog is the only copy that exists (since drawing the cats is something that has always happened in the digital realm), so you can print it just as easily as I can. What you’re looking at is, in previous posts, actually the original.

But I started thinking more about it and wondered what it would be like if there was a ‘real’ original. And so I bought some watercolours, pencils, brushes and art paper - and had a go at making a non-digital, handmade, physical piece of (air-quotes) “art”.

That’s the first of them you see above.

I say ‘first’ - because I really enjoyed doing it that way. It took a lot longer, and was much fiddlier (no undo!) but I will definitely be doing more. 

I’m not going to sell prints just at the moment - if ever. What I am going to do is scan the painting as above, upload the scan to the blog, but then - if anyone wants it - I’ll sell or gift the original, signed and numbered.

This one is number 1 in the series, and as an original, it is of course 1 of 1. I don’t yet know what I’ll charge (if anything). I’ll give it some thought.

I may decide to sell prints at some point in the future. Or mugs, t-shirts, books or something. But for now - there’ll be one original painting and a scan of each picture. And the digital image is under a Creative Commons license - so if it’s for non-commercial use, you can just do whatever you like with it. 

Make your own t-shirt, print a poster for your office, email it to friends or whatever. 

This song makes me so sad.

Don’t move! I hear something…

Not even sure I can walk anymore.