Night of the Watercolors!

Today seemed like it was going to be a loss. I woke up feeling terrible, and I didn't stop feeling terrible until around 7pm. By then, I had given up and decided to watch some Homeland via On Demand... but I have lots to do before Intervention next weekend, so I must use all my wellness!

I had mentioned I was going to do a dapper owl last night for the convention - Intervention's mascot is an owl - and that seemed the proper project. (I had the reference pic open from the night before anyway.) The goal here was cartoony fun, and I had cartoony fun. I win. (You can click on all the paintings for a larger version.)

Weeeeell, in order to make that owl painting, I had to rip my watercolor paper into four parts. Since I already had my painting setup out, why not keep going? I wasn't sure what I was going to paint, but I figured a fox would fit well in my con portfolio, no matter the con. Who doesn't like foxes?

When finished, I posted the pic to twitter... and got 15 favs/follows/compliments/retweets in five minutes from it. Maybe this is something good! Let's keep painting! (Note for readers/followers: Artists crave all those feedback things. Silence = perceived failure.)

I began looking for reference pics, taking some twitter advice, and found a cute calico that I wanted to paint. (I should note here that I change around the composition for all pics, so it's not a direct copy. The original calico photo was actually a shot from the behind the cat.) I had started laying down paint when I decided I was finally feeling good enough to be social, so I did an impromptu stream!  (Poor people that showed up were subjected to the usual bad camera angle, but this time also had to suffer through me watching the Nationals/Braves game.)

One page left to paint, I went with a request and did a cutesy squirrel. This one was finished pretty quickly, so I decided to pull out my smaller watercolor pad and take another request.

I'd had a request for a genet earlier in the night, and I taunted the poor person. Well, I'm a softy, and the request was repeated, so I did a quick image search and found an adorable baby pic I could use.

By the time this one was gone, I was all painted out - and all my watchers had abandoned me. The night of watercolor had ended! (I don't blame 'em for leaving. Listening to local baseball commentary, with heavy political commercials every break, since VA is a battleground state, must have been awful.)

These pieces will be put into my Intervention portfolio, and I think I can add critter paintings to my commission catalog. Bonus:  Commission a watercolor, and you can watch me paint it over a stream!

Edit: For the record, the large pieces were all 11x7.5" while the genet was 8.5x5.5"