I played here with paint and image transfer. I’m not so keen with the green dots, because they have more blue in them than I’d like, while the painting has more yellow. By the time I realized this, though (I made it in my dimly lit office at night), it was too late to remove them without ruining the piece. I really enjoy image transfers, but they are a challenge to get the paper off (even after a long soak in warm water) while keeping the image intact.

I decided to play with paint for a change. I have a postcard of Joseph Mallord William Turner’s painting, The ‘Fighting Téméraire’; I love the colors. What’s interesting is that there are many images of this painting on the web that render the color in vastly different ways: some are paler, some darker and more foreboding. This one most closely resembles my postcard. My rendition certainly doesn’t hold a candle to the original classic, but it was fun to do, and I’m mostly pleased with the result.

As winter approaches, this is what’s left of autumn.

My very first cat ever was a butterscotch (or marmalade) cat named Kiki. She loved to watch outdoors. We lived on a busy street, so for many years we let her go outside in the back yard during the day on a light chain under a huge pine tree, stocked with food and water, an experience she loved and hated. We also took her camping with us. In her later years, we trusted her to have good sense and stay close, so we began to let her out back unfettered. She loved to sit under the garden ferns, watching and sometimes catching birds. She was a good cat, and she put me on the path to being a cat lover since.