A little girl

Hooray! We have found the perfect little kitten for us. We visited her last friday and we were both in love with her. She has everything I hoped for; my favourite colors and pattern (black tortie tabby + white), extra toes on each foot (she's a polydactyl Maine Coon, more on that later) and a relaxed personality with clownish features.
Black tortie tabby means she's black and brown striped with red blotches spread throughout her fur. She has white feet and a white breast, which I love. Polydactyl means she has more toes than the standard: 6 on her front paws and 5 on her back paws. She can use those extra toes as sort of thumbs, so she can hold on to stuff other cats can't. Some breeders say that with those toes comes a little extra personality, so I'm exited to see what our little girl will be like. You can find out more about polydactyl Maine Coons here: http://www.mcpi.org/
We're still thinking of a good name to give her, but it's so hard! Suggestions are welcome :)
Just one photo now, more will definitely come when she's here!

Giveaways

So far no new kittens in our home. We decided that if we couldn't agree on either kitten we best look for one we both like. So we called of both kittens from my previous post and are now browsing again through advertisements.

On other news, Cindy from over at Thimbleprims Studio is helping out Santa this year. She is so sweet, always busy with swaps and creating gorgeous dolls or ornaments and yet she still finds the time to fill a basket full of goodies. Just because she feels like it. Cindy, you're awesome in my book! Click the banner below to be taken to her post about the basket.

Cindy's generosity inspired me and I'm thinking of having a Christmas giveaway too. So stay tuned in :)

Kittens are a dilemma

Remember this post?

That was such an amazingly sweet and incredibly gorgeous little girl. She has a pretty mommy, a very handsome daddy and I'm smitten for her (and for her sister, but we can only have one).

Last friday we went visiting another litter somewhere else. And those kittens were pretty and sweet too. More importantly, we really had a click with their breeders. A lovely couple who were willing to teach us (or me really, I'm the kitty addict here) all about taking our future sweetheart to a show. And they seemed willing to keep in touch after the Big Move to our house. Mr. Boyfriend fell in love with a little black oriental boy there. I liked that boy too and was almost ready to give in. But the little siamese girl was stuck in my head and so we went to see her again today.

And now there's a conflict in the house! He wants the black boy and I want the black/white pointed girl!

Here's the boy...

And here's the girl...

Now I know some of you are gonna go YUCK! with these photos, but I love oriental cats and all their goofy, clingy characters and slender, elegant bodies.

Sigh.... how to convince my man HE wants the little girl too? I'll let you know as soon as I know ;)

My first weeks in art school

I promised you some pictures of how things roll at my school, so here it comes :)

These are my classmates standing around a table with all of our color studies. We had to mix gouache paint and make an interior or exterior scene that fades into grey as it deepens. The scene had to be built up out of little sections which could be either squares, circles or other shapes. Using black paint wasn't allowed, warm saturated colors had to be close while cool diluted colors fill the 'far away' part of the scene.

See all the easels? Those are for sketching models. All of us had to play model a couple of times and we had a nude pregnant model one time. I'd love to show some of those big sketches to you t0o, but I can't photograph them properly. Mental note: must ask someone with more photography knowledge once.

Here are the color studies. How cool are they together huh?

This is one of mine. It works quite well, but I have a better one which has way more sections and appears a lot deeper. Still, I like the color scheme of this one.

Here is another one I started. I experimented with shapes, but it didn't work out like I wanted it too, so I didn't finish this one.

Here is an example of two girls in my class posing for the rest of us. They had drapes wrapped around them and stood on chairs. The effect was great, but the pleads were hard to sketch. Consider the fact that we had only 10 minutes to sketch both girls!

Here are two pages with little sketches I made of Saphira lying on the couch. She kept twisting and turning to get in the comfiest/cutest position to sleep. Perfect model :)

This is one of my classmates working (with me) on a group project. Most students are new to this city, so our teacher thought it would be a nice idea to make models of it. So we decided to show the green areas in every neighbourhood. It took a lot of drawing, cutting and pasting to get the neighbourhoods in the right place. And then it took even more work to get all the green on it properly.

Eventually though it turned out pretty cool. The grey are industrial zones and the green paper dots are all the parks, woods and other public natural places. My neigbourhood is the one below the big green square. That's the big park, which is lovely in all seasons because of it's victorian, classy character.

There was also a group who did 'old streets in Groningen'. They drew lines with yarn and needles that indicated all the original and still existing streets in the old center of our city. Some date back to the middle ages!

And this is my setup for last monday when we had to present everything to our teachers. On the left is my friend setting up her stuff and to her right is all my work. On the wall are the big sketches I mentioned earlier plus a self potrait and poster with things we learned on the computer (Vector Works, Photoshop and InDesign). On the table is my sketchbook, a collage I made of doors, my laptop and some other collected things.

I'm happy to say I got good grades and passed all classes :)

One grade still has to come though, but I'm pretty sure that'll be a high grade, because I already spoke to the teacher and he said he was enthousiastic about my assignment. He gave us themes to find pictures of (5 of design you like/dislike, 10 of things you find interesting that week, 5 magical items in art history and 5 magical items of your own life). At the end we had to bundle the pictures, but not make a straightforward book. We also had to incorporate one of Ittens' color contrasts (click for info).

I made a little clip to show my visual essay since it works best if you're able to see it fold.The text is in Dutch, but I think you'll do fine without it ;)

Well that's it, until next time!