QUIRKY HOUSES AND A GREEDY CAT UPDATE

Quirky houses

Rhodia designs and patterns book

I have an A4-sized Rhodia notebook with squared paper, 80 gsm. Although it is thin, the quality is better than your average printer paper; it has quite a smooth surface and it is very good for drawing. I use this book to collect design ideas and patterns, to use as a reference.

Quirky houses

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been looking for ideas for drawing quirky houses. I love this subject, and thought I might do a negative watercolour paper using these fun houses.

When I did a general image search online I came across a few that were useful for inspiration. This first set is pen and black watercolour wash, done in a fairly sketchy style which can be refined later if I use any of them in projects.

I love Dutch houses! Again, these drawings were inspired by images which came up on a random search.

Someone on the art forum did a drawing from a YouTube tutorial by an artist called Gary Frederick. I had not come across him before, and was so taken by the forum member’s drawing that I looked him up. He seems to major on quirky houses! They are quite detailed. Here is my take on his style, somewhat simplified, and without the trees and other extra trimmings.

Finally, a selection of drawings inspired by the work of Martin Lachmair, who I have been following for a while now on YouTube. I love his work! Again, these are just a few houses without the extras. Martin also does a lot of towers and industrial style buildings, and great cityscapes, but for this project I just wanted smaller houses.

There seems to be a fairly common theme, throughout the quirky houses images online, and that is to make them very tall, narrow and elongated. I do like this, and for many purposes it is fine, but if I am going to do a negative watercolour with them, I am going to need more compact, shorter houses. I am sure I shall be able to adapt some of the ideas above.

Whatever I decide, and I may decide not to do a negative painting of quirky houses at all, this has been a useful and fun exercise and I have enjoyed drawing all these very different and fun houses. Any of these designs could be adapted for use in all sorts of projects, and I shall probably scan them into the computer so that I have the digital version of them.

Cat feeding update

I am extremely disappointed. After a successful evening meal and this morning’s breakfast, this evening after they were fed, Ruby was sick again. I told her off and said it wasn’t on, after I’d spent all that money on a special feeding bowl to prevent this from happening! From the various reviews of these puzzle bowls, people are saying that it has reduced the incidence of regurgitation immediately after eating, and not necessarily that it has prevented it altogether, so we must continue with it, and see if she is sick less often. I wish we’d kept a note of how frequently it was happening in the past! It is disappointing, though.

Lily eats much more slowly. This evening after feeding them, my hubby sat in the room with them. He moved Lily’s bowl to the other side of the room. He said that it took almost exactly the same time for them to finish eating, which definitely proves that the puzzle bowl is working to slow Ruby down. We’ve just got to make sure she keeps it down now, and I suggested to my hubby that perhaps she should have her meals in two smaller portions, separated by perhaps half an hour, to allow the first lot to go down!

It would be nice to have uncomplicated kitty feeding times. When we still had Beatrice and Phoebe, they had to be fed separately because they had different food. Beatrice had a delicate stomach and was always sick after eating supermarket food, so she had a special prescription food for delicate stomachs, particularly for elderly cats. Phoebe had epilepsy in the last couple of years of her life and had her medication in drop form on her food, so obviously we had to be careful that she got it all, and that Beatrice didn’t eat any of her food. We used to shut Beatrice in the downstairs loo with her food, and quite frequently my hubby would forget to let her out, and the poor little thing was shut in there for hours!!

Life with cats is never simple.