a cozy life with cats

Art journal and ramblings

[carlachuaart]

Hello Friend 👋🏻🐈

[carlachuaart]

Cat Sanctuary in autumn 🍁🍁🍁

[carlachuaart]

[carlachuaart]

In the park.

Wish we have more parks here in the Philippines. If there are parks I would take long walks, have a picnic, do plein air painting, read a book, drink coffee, or just sit in the park and take in the trees, the breeze and the beautiful atmosphere of being in the middle of nature. I think we are really missing out by staying in the mall or indoors.

[carlachuaart]

New profile pic + joining a drawing prompt

Have I found the color scheme for me? I quite like the softness of the colors and also how I drew the face. Posting this to keep as reference for my future drawings. 

I am joining the depflore_jollyjuly (@depflore) drawing prompt, just to challenge myself. The first one is flower crown, which I did in advance already hahaha! If you wish to join, feel free to check out @depflore’s IG page for the rest of the prompts!

[carlachuaart]

Café des Chats / Cat Cafe

[carlachuaart]

What a cute family. Love Anya!!

[carlachuaart]

Wow it’s been 2 weeks since I held my pen to draw!!! I was in a morning training since last week (one of the best trainings I’ve taken) and then lots of work in the afternoon.

Fuji has also a viral infection so I was feeding her her meds in between breaks. Caring for a sick pet is tiring and my wallet is crying.

Now that all those happenings are done (and hopefully Fuji has recovered) I really want to take it easy for the month of June. I want to go back to my drawings, paintings and just creating whatever I wish.

[carlachuaart]

Kitchen, watercolor and acryl gouache on hot pressed paper.

Filmed the process here: https://youtu.be/UvsMjye6UqU

[carlachuaart]

I didn’t like this at first but now I do!

[carlachuaart]

I thought I was done with cold pressed paper but here I am back at it again! I decided to redo the Breakfast with Cat painting since I didn’t like the colors I used. I felt like it wasn’t cozy enough and me enough to just let go since I like the sketch.

For some reason I decided to remake in cold pressed paper and made it smaller which in hindsight is difficult because of all the details. I also changed the face of the girl to be more cute and added florals elements since I felt that the old painting lacked something.

Started with a raw sienna wash and some payne’s grey to tone down the yellowness. The ash blue was super perfect for the table color and it jived so well with the little pops of orange. Instead of using a black ink for lineart and texture, I went for pencil which was more subtle. Sometimes the simplest option is the best one.

[carlachuaart]

Unwinding after voting!! Praying for the future of our country!! 🙏🏻

Used cold pressed watercolor, acryl gouache + watercolors here. Ash yellow and coral red dominated the palette. I think I also added a wash of light mustard yellow. Digitally added the flowers on paper hehe.

[carlachuaart]

May 9 is election day in the Philippines. For the first time we have a competent and honest to good candidate as president. It’s high time we have changes in the government that can really serve the people who are paying taxes and suffering due to corruption. I’m casting my vote for #LeniKiko to help lead the country to a better place.

[carlachuaart]

Breakfast with cats, watercolor.

Experimenting how it looks with outline. Hmm…

[carlachuaart]

Summer Reading, acryl gouache on hot pressed paper.

Treated myself to a Holbein acryl gouache set. I’m just so in love with the colors. This has been in my wishlist since last Christmas and finally I purchased it!! I hope that this will inspire me to create cozy illustrations and also hopefully settle on a go-to color palette. I’m still a newbie with acryl gouache even though I did florals with them before. I need to relearn how to choose colors to achieve the cozy peaceful vibe I want to convey in my current paintings.

First impressions on the Holbein acryl gouache set (collab with artist Rebecca Green) :

- very quick to dry. I have to rethink how to diy my stay-wet palette so I can keep the paints moist. Right now, I only squeeze very little of the paint because I’m afraid to have them dry out when I need to do something else.

- super pigmented, a little goes a long way so the 20ml tubes are a good invested for the price. I got it for around 2000 pesos (incl shipping) whereas when you buy each tube it’s around 250 pesos. Also the colors here are hard to find and almost out of stock everywhere. It doesn’t have the basic white or black but I still have those (Turner Paint) so that will work for me.

- I love the ash yellow and ash blue colors. I feel like they will be essential in creating that cozy desaturated look I’m trying to achieve. I think it’s also a big difficult to mix these shades so glad they are part of the set.

- The coral red and mustard are the brighter colors in the palette. To offset the other colors. I love them.

Things to improve on: planning the base color application, desaturating colors, shadows. Probably will do a smaller piece too.

[carlachuaart]

Decided to draw a french bakery when my brother mentioned it’s his dream to put up his own bakery in the future. I think living upstairs of the bakery, smelling freshly baked goodies when you wake up, would be divine. I would be of no use but as a taste tester lol.

Charlie’s Kitchen, watercolor on hot pressed paper.

[carlachuaart]

Art Studio, watercolor on hot pressed paper.

I like the warmness in this painting and the overall color scheme. Took so long to finish but it was worth it. Last minute added Fuji under the table which is her spot in my room. I’m glad I left the canvas blank to leave the viewers to imagine what to paint.