Rainy day cat for Felicity

When Felicity mentioned this cat in the comments, it was a perfect excuse to enlarge it too. Or a half-baked excuse. Any excuse at all will do! Here you go.

Out of the attic: 17 cats

I made this design last year to go on a mug as a gift for my aunt. I'd like to have more mugs made some day. Of course that would mean I'd have to find a printing place. And, you know, go in, and talk to them...

In the meantime, I've enlarged a couple of them just for you. There's slinky cat:

Then there's smug cat:

And then my own little Katala.

Note the tail. It was like that when we got her, promise! Actually, the end is there - it just never grew. I suspect it was bitten when she was very small by one of her littermates or, more probably, her mother.

Two little weeds

While digitally cleaning up and labelling a lot of the drawings from my last project, I realised how much I like these two. They aren't particularly spectacular, just a couple of weeds that I dug up from the garden to show the difference between monocots and dicots. But there's just something about them. They look... poised. I like them.

Out of the attic: Himalayan blue poppies

This is not just a really old pastel drawing of Meconopsis betonicifolia, known as the Himalayan blue poppy - it is also a testament to my enduring and painful love affair with plants I can't grow. I'll set my heart either on something that should grow in much cooler climates, and obsessively stack ice cubes around it to try and make it flower (take, for example, the Great Peony Disaster of 2009), or else something that may not, under any circumstances, encounter frost, and spend all my time protecting it. I have to say the latter approach works better - my impala lilies, for instance, not only are still alive but flower most years. I think it goes without saying that I won't be trying to grow Meconopsis betonicifolia any time soon, as those in the know say that if you live in a climate where you can grow tomatoes, you can't grow Meconopsis. But that doesn't mean I'll stop yearning for them.

Botanical art exhibition

What I'm doing this week: frantically finishing the second of two paintings for this exhibition. If you're planning to be anywhere around Jo'burg this weekend, I really think it's going to be good!

Malachite kingfisher

Things about this painting:

* I sold it a few weekends ago (yay!)

* It was painted on top of another picture I'd done earlier. I have a great fear of pristine surfaces. Go and look at this comic by Gingerhaze. And then go and read her entire tumblr, which to me is basically one great dramatic pileup of this:

* The style of this painting was inspired in part by the first Black Orchid graphic novel - the early scenes in the greenhouse are some of the most gorgeous images I have ever seen.

* Malachite kingfishers are among my favourite things. The second thing I drew when I began taking art classes, aged 9 or so, was a malachite kingfisher. (The first was a green pepper, halved.)

* They are much smaller than they look in pictures (malachite kingfishers, not green peppers). I've never seen a live one, sadly, but I saw a skin in the museum at the University of the Witwatersrand, and it was no bigger than a sparrow.

* Oh yeah, I've been working on and off in the museum at Wits, and if you're a fan of snakes, spiders, bugs, axolotls, or giant green iguanas that like hanging out on logs and watching people do aerobics (seriously) and if you'll be in Jo'burg any time between tomorrow and Sunday, you should attend this event.

* I know the last point has exactly nothing to do with my picture. But, the iguana! It really happened. I was coming in from lunch, and what appeared to be most of the museum staff were doing some sort of dance routine, and the iguana was on a log, sommer there on the floor, watching them. It was one of those great moments in life, the ones you know you'll treasure forever. And there was an enormous hi-fi, and an instructor, and I think some people had belly-dancing belts, the ones with the coins. And... and... the iguana. It was beautiful.

P.S. In case you're one of the 17 people in the world who haven't seen this clip yet, may I present another of those beautiful moments. I don't feel bad saying that, because the kid wasn't hurt. Just don't read the comments on YouTube. They are exactly as you would expect.

Busy busy busy

For the last while, when people ask me how I am, I've been replying "Busy". Then I hurriedly add, so as not to seem ungrateful, "Which is good. Lots of work, it's a good thing, when you're trying to make it, you know..." I generally tail off around there, uncomfortable with the entire concept.

On the one hand, I can't stand competitive busyness, the one-upmanship of how close you are to burnout and how very, very hard you work. Can you imagine what the reaction would be if you blithely said, by the water cooler perhaps, "Oh, I'm not particularly busy at the moment. Just taking it easy for a while." The fact is, in a work context especially, it's pretty much mandatory to be "busy" all the time, even when you aren't. And that offends my rebellious little soul.

On the other hand, though, "busy" is a one-word, catchall excuse that's invaluable in explaining yourself to neglected spouses, friends who've forgotten what you look like, clients who've been waiting months for their pictures, blog readers who haven't had a new post in weeks... you know. And when you are genuinely busy, everyone you know falls into one of those categories.

So I'm not entirely ready to give up going on about how busy I am. But the next time I'm being dreadfully, deliciously lazy, I'm planning to make a point of telling everyone about that too.

And this is what I've been busy with: a few of my favourites from that textbook/class notes project I've been working on for months. Over 200 ink drawings, most of them not nearly as detailed as these ones, though!

50 seconds of fame

If you are here in South Africa and you take a look at 50/50 this coming Monday night at 7:30 on SABC 2, you might just see me and my friend/doppelganger Daleen Roodt being interviewed at a book launch!

A lot of people haven't quite figured out that Daleen and I are actually two separate people, since we look kind of the same, wear the same sort of clothes (what this really means is that I am madly envious of her sense of style) and both did language degrees before going slightly insane and deciding to become freelance botanical artists.

For anyone who doesn't know me, here's how to tell us apart. It's quite easy actually: she'll be the one with long, wavy blonde hair wearing a really great dress with flowery patterns on it looking like a normal human being and I'll be the socially awkward one with a deer-in-the-headlights kind of expression who doesn't look anyone in the eye and talks nonsense in really bad Afrikaans.

Why am I encouraging people to watch this?

Bloom!

Sea Horse

A genuine seahorse on my blog! ...well, kind of. I sold this picture (I sold this picture!) to a little girl (her father paid for it), which I found extremely flattering, because if a small child likes something, she really likes it.

It's a small picture - maybe twice the size it's posted here - and it started as a simple watercolour doodle, playing with colours. I kept it for a year or so, not knowing what to do with it. I looked at it from every angle and eventually decided that it looked like a sea monster.

The surface was very rough, so my next step was to paint over it with a solution of gum arabic to prevent ink from bleeding. This made things difficult later, though. In retrospect I think gelatine would have been a better option. Then I drew in the "sea horse" with ink. The picture looked too empty.

Next I went all mixed-media and punched holes down the left side, stuck on those reinforcement-sticker things, and threaded them with shiny embroidery thread and beads. It still looked too empty. So then I decided to fill in the background with huge numbers of real sea creatures, past and present. Some of my favourites: the pansy shell, the Glaucus sea slug, the flying fish, and little Hallucigenia (the earlier interpretation, because it's more awesome) near the horse's eye.

All the background creatures were done in pencil, but the gum arabic made the surface so inimical to graphite that the process was more like engraving! It took ages, but the heavily textured end result made it worth it.