King Cat
- Kaaren Poole
- Jul 7
- 4 min read
Inspiration
The inspiration for this, my latest art journal spread, comes from a mish-mash of sources. The primary inspiration was from a fancy soap my sister gave me quite a while ago. A beautiful image of a cat as king decorated the wrapper. What a treasure! The soap was soon used up, but I'd kept the wrapper and had cone a drawing from it.
Meanwhile, I was enjoying a series of programs on History Hit about medieval English kings. In those programs, the images of those kings must have been created by a modern artist because they were all the same style even though the kings portrayed had lived hundreds of years apart. The illustrations were beautiful, reminiscent of stained glass. But what I liked best about them was their backgrounds—the surface covered with repeat patterns appropriate to the age.
Inspired by those backgrounds, I created a repeat pattern of swirling medieval-ish patterns—at least, that’s how I saw them. I printed a few copies and pasted them over a blank spread in my art journal.
Finalizing The Concept
I thought the pattern and the drawing of the cat went together and I even had a title—"When Cat Is King.” I also had started a poem that might fit also. But that’s where it all stopped for several months…
Starting With the Background
Until this past weekend! Finally, I was ready to proceed with “When Cat Is King.”
Looking for an easy, non-comital way to start, I soon found one: adding color to my background of repeat, swirling motifs. I decided on colored pencil but soon after I started, I soon realized I didn’t like it.
The lower left part of the image shows color in the swirls as well as in the background. I decided I didn’t like the color in the swirls, so I attempted to erase it. That’s what you see in the swirls on the right. Since I was unable to get all the color out, I figured I’d have to add color to all of them then erase it so that everything would be consistent. What a pain!
King Cat Takes His Place
Before I got too far with the background color, though, I made a copy of my cat drawing, tore it out of its page, and glued it in place on my spread. I didn’t want to bother coloring the part of the background that would end up under the cat.
More Color in the Background
After the first layer on the background, I realized it needed to be more vibrant, so I added more color in a pretty wide margin around the edges of the spread. The pattern shows up a lot better in those areas, but I postponed the decision about adding more color in the middle until later. Once I’ve done more on the spread, that answer might become clearer.
Bring Color to King Cat
I liked the look of the drawing of the cat. Originally, I thought I might paint it with transparent acrylic. But, on a whim, I added a bit of colored pencil in his eyes, nose, and ears. Liking what I saw, I proceeded to add color to the rest of him, but very gently so as to preserve the look of the drawing.
How to Present the Poem?
Now for the poem. I had a start but needed to finish it. Since it turned out quite amateurish and I wasn’t willing to fuss with it. Hmm. What to do? I didn't want to have the poem a focal point as it wasn't very good. But I still wanted to use it. Maybe I could make it not particularly readable! And uncial font would go with the piece and maybe I could find one that was kind of hard to read. (Did you know you can find a variety of free fonts on the internet and when you download them, you can access them from Word? Very helpful!)
After applying the font to the poem in Word, adjusting the margins so I had the shape of test block that I wanted, I printed it and sprayed it with fixative. I tore the edges and adding alcohol ink to “age” it. When it was dry, I glued it in place. Perhaps I should have rubbed a wet tea bag over it to age it more, but the white went well with the rest of the spread.
A Good Start
The question now is what to do next? I’ll put it aside until next weekend. When I come back to it, perhaps I’ll have good ideas. I’d like to add some gold and also put some sparkle in the king’s jewels and crown.
The composition is very simple, but, keeping in mind that the fold in the center of the spread always presents a challenge, I like it. Still, I think it needs more—if not more conspicuous elements, then more detail and lushness.
By the way, one thing I like about colored pencil is the richness of color you can get by layering different colors.
After taking so much time to get started on this piece, I’m happy with the progress I’ve made so far and am looking forward to finishing it!
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