Project Kittyface

OK, I confess.  I am a gratefully recovering artist-procrastinator.  I start a new project, expect perfection, and get overwhelmed.  Then I do something I've always done perfectly: abandon it.

Julia Cameron says, in her [writer's-] block-busting book The Artist's Way, "Never ask whether you can do something.  Say, instead, that you are doing it.  Then fasten your seat belt."

I have decided to make a painting of one of my Keetains.  

Now, I have had some success with coloured pencil (meaning I haven't torn the result into a teeny tiny pile of confetti).  Here is a piece I almost finished:

An unfinished portrait

But, hey, some unfinished portraits are famous!

A famous unfinished portrait

I finished this drawing and am proud to say it sold for $400 at an auction to benefit a sanctuary for raptors that cannot be rehabilitated.

A finished Great Horned Owl

The super model I have chosen for my current endeavor is that big ol' lay-about Keaton, whose face (and body - when will he stop growing??) is already large.  So why not make it larger still by buying the biggest freakin' piece of Arches paper available at Michael's and attempt to render his likeness in watercolor, the most unforgiving and uncorrectable of all painting media?  Oh -- and, I should mention, a medium with which I'm completely unfamiliar?  Sure, no prob.

I am hoping that this:

Project Kittyface

will somehow end up looking like this:

Super-size me!

Therefore, to my dear readers (both of you), I make the following pledge.  I hereby promise that I will complete this painting. . . without ripping my hair out in a frenzy of judgmental self-loathing.  To keep myself honest, will track its progress regularly on this blog.  If I don't finish it, I will have publicly humiliated myself before you with my own sloth and shall be taken out and shot.  Or hoisted with my own petard, whatever that means.  Or something.  As you can see, thanks to Julia C., I am learning to be very gentle with my inner child artist.

So kids, here goes nothin'.  If it doesn't come out well, I can always line Birdy's cage with my failure, where it will receive the "critique" it deserves.  Wish me luck.

Oh, boy!  I can't wait to stop procrastinating sometime soon!

Update 1/28/13:  Well keeds, I am not procrastinating any more, but am taking a break to do some more manageable, realistic art on a smaller scale.  The Sword of Damocles that was this ha-yooge painting waiting to be finished kept me from creating anything.  So it has been shelved for a time when I am in the retirement home, eating applesauce and reminiscing about the days when I could eat steak and sit through an entire movie without going to the bathroom - er, ladies room.  But I'll have plenty of time on my hands.

I did, however add a nose, finding gouache to be my saving grace.  Here it is:

A nose by any other name . . . schnoz, beak, proboscis . . .
is still a nose