I’ve been including cats in my paintings, largely because they’re in most of my photos, and making a supreme effort to have them as cat shapes in the same way the foliage hints at what it might be rather than describes it. It hasn’t been wholly successful but where I’ve ‘wireframed’ the shape, things are better.

We discussed yesterday cat inclusion in art, given I am keen on avoiding both cute and any cat being out of sync in terms of treatment with the rest of the painting, but I seem to have been offered a subtle shove in the direction of making more.

I took this to mean improving my grasp on making shapes that suggest ‘cat’ and this means detaching myself from the tendency to see my cat models as my cats rather than hints at structure.

So today I took a large sketch book, coincidentally not deliberately, black, and whipped through a few photos of my cats (plus the odd visitor) using white chalk and trying not to use more lines than necessary.

There are some decent candidates here, all of them significantly unfussy. Cat #2 in the centre of image #1, both cats in image #5, cat #1 in image #6, and the cat at the top of image #7. The ones that haven’t worked, to my eye anyway, are too busy with too many ‘corrective’ lines.

Wireframe works when I have perspectives to account for, single lines for less complex shapes. I’m guessing expert advice would include the word ‘practice’ and a lot of it!

And for wepxertise, I was pointed in the direction of Michael Ajerman whose paintings of cats, often with humans, are both comedic and immensely skilled. Some though are quite sinister and maybe suggestive of cats’ independence and unbiddable nature.

Disclaimer: the flag is very definitely not mine; it was on my neighbour’s shed and I like to think my cat was on his way to shred it.

These sketches are quite revealing in that I’m better at minimalistic drawings of animals I’ve actually handled, which includes rats. The others – birds and foxes – take more effort and ultimately more practice, especially pigeons. Basically, the more chalk there is, the less competent I am! I’ve no idea what the bird in the row below the rat is; it looks like one of those utterly bonkers American Woodcocks but as these drawings are all made from images of animals caught on camera in my garden, it certainly isn’t!

And that’s the sketchbook used up. Publish, be damned, get going on another one.

(c) SCH 2025