Kat Johnston

Category: Canvas

  • Painting and Sanu in SL: A bit more progress, and a popsicle treat.

    Kat Johnston: The giraffe is a little further along... but not finished yet!

    She’s a little further along, but she’s not quite finished yet. I intend to do a bit of painting tomorrow – today I was busy on other things.

    And for my Second Life friends – I’ve released a little something for the 4th of July! Ok, so I might be Australian, but who am I to ignore all of my American customers? I can’t do that. Besides, any excuse for a tasty digital treat is quite alright with me.

    I’ve done something special with this one too. This special holiday popsicle comes in both regular and petite sizes, to satisfy my customers of every size!

    Sanu in SL: Candy corn popsicle for the 4th of July!

    Teleport to Sanu to to grab yours for just 1l. It’s in the blue and red gift box by the giant bunnies. Happy 4th of July, everybody!

  • Painting: The first for 2010 – Toni’s Dragon!

    Kat Johnston Painting: This is the dragon painting I did for Toni for her birthday. It is pretty, and green, and has wings and stuff. Cute!

    Phew… my first little painting for 2010! A friend of mine has a 30th birthday coming up on Tuesday, however the party was held yesterday. Although I posted that I was going to draw the card (because she reads this blog – I couldn’t give the surprise away!) I also painted her gift.

    So… why a green dragon, on a green background, looking very green? Not really too much to say – she likes green, and she likes dragons. I’m really deep, aren’t I? I was going to add a splash of another colour, but then I liked it so much the way it was that I just decided not to. The completed work actually contains a grand total of 4 colours – I’ve decided that I love working with a limited palette when painting. While the colours used are limited, I still think it pops rather nicely. I realize that the composition isn’t exactly grand, but I like it that way!

    I would have liked to have taken some better shots of the final product – the problem with using a satin varnish is that it gives the painting a very nice sheen, but for taking photos, it isn’t the greatest. Well… at least not at night with just the room light to illuminate the room. The light in my studio (in photos, at least) makes everything appear very warm, which unfortunately just doesn’t show off green in the greatest light without a flash.

    But anyhow… happy birthday, Toni! I hope that you enjoy the dragon, and that you have a wonderful day when the day actually rolls around.

    On an unrelated note, I’m getting the distinct feeling I should really add a dragon category.

  • Painting: Some more of my bunny in progress.

    [image title=”Kat Johnston Painting in Progress: Bunny bunny, cute as can be…” size=”large” id=”1387″ align=”center” alt=”Kat Johnston Painting in Progress: Bunny bunny, cute as can be…” linkto=”viewer” ]

    A little further along, I’m continuing with the progress shots of the other day. I’ve been doing a bit more work on my bunny here and there, and thought I’d better put up a couple more pictures! In this particular one, the bunny has become a bit more refined and I’ve done some rough sketching of the viney curly things for the background. When I do this, I do it in water-colour pencils, so that I can easily remove and rearrange the marks as I need to. I find this, for me, to be a better way of doing it than lead pencil, or pastel, which seem to be a bit harder to remove completely, especially from darker surfaces. Water-colour pencils in a light shade provide enough of a mark without any view to permanency that might occur with other mediums. A simple smudge of the finger or a tiny bit of water and a smudge, and the marks disappear. Perfect for sketching straight onto a canvas… and we all know how I like to sketch!

    Kat Johnston Painting in Progress: cute cute bunnies, just as cute as can be.

    And now a little further along again – I’ve used a fine brush to describe the curling vine-like growths behind the bunny here with a darkish shade. The painting is not yet done – the curling viney thingies are far too precise around the edges – very sharp. I’m thinking that I need some purple, some orange, some vibrancy… I still need to lift out pieces here and there, and, well, I dunno! I’m still working it out. In other words, stay tuned! There is more to come.

  • Photo/Painting: Symbolism, anyone? Oh, and a few bunnies too!

    Kat Johnston Photo: artistic suicide clean-up… I’m not sure whether it’s symbolic, or just a desire for something different.

    So today I got up and popped straight down to the studio… well… not straight down, but pretty close to it in any case. It was time for a clean-up, a clean-out, and a rearrange. I haven’t gotten to most of it, but I will… I’ve started. It counts.

    One of the things I have resolved to do is pull up the outline. It’s been there for over a year now – it’s rather stubborn… but it will be moved. I think that now is about the time where I go ‘oh lord… note to self, don’t do this again. It looks cool, but it seems that masking tape gets ground further and further into the ground and the adhesive becomes more stubborn the longer it is there and the more it is walked over.’ Ah well… I’ll get there! The cards are already off of the wall (I had playing cards splashed across my wall) and at least the most obvious of artistic debri has been disposed of. Yay!

    So now that you’ve seen that, time to post something a bit more ‘artistic’. I’ve started a little painting – this is the progress of yesterday and today (done in two little bouts). Now I will state this: this is still in progress… not done, nor really all that close to it… we’ll just have to see where this little gentleman leads.

    Kat Johnston painting: bunny is progress… this is the first incarnation of it.

    The first incarnation… I’m loving starting on a black base, and working from there. Building up a base of white to define the figure, you have no idea how much I want to stick with the black and white. I love it. It’s so vivid and raw. I could fix up a few bits from there and quite happily go ‘that’s it!’ But nope… I’ve decreed that this picture will be colour. So the first layers go down.

    Kat Johnston painting: incarnation two… it still has a way to go, methinks, but the first layers are down, at least!

    The first real layer of colour… so far, so good. I feel almost weird showing in-progress shots here – I know that the in-between stages are hardly the best indication of how it’s going to go… but hey, that’s what this blog is for: for showing the good beside the bad, the well polished beside the rough cut.

    Phew! Ok, I think that is about it for now. I have a studio to get back to tidying, and more painting to do a little later. In the meantime, I think I may feast on some seedless green grapes. Wish me luck!

  • Painting: Lookie lookie! A turlelephant!

    Kat Johnston Painting: Its a turlelephant: an elephant and a turtle spliced into one incredible creature.

    I finally got a picture of it! A little while ago, some good friends of mine moved into a new house – with that, it was entirely necessary to give them a moving-in gift… especially since they were putting on a fantastic bbq to celebrate. Dimity had asked me on a couple of occasions that she wanted me to draw a turlelephant for her – I took it a step further and painted it.

    So, to address the question ‘What is a turlelephant?’ – its a turtle spliced with an elephant. A divine combination of the two, probably created by a delightfully mad scientist with the kind of laboratory which wouldn’t look out of place with a sheet-covered bench in the approximate shape of Frankenstein tucked away in one dusty corner. Needless to say, an Igor wouldn’t hurt in there either.

    Perhaps the intended result was something fearsome, a horrorific monstrosity straight out of something in a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Instead… lets face it… this creature was destined for cuteness. Perhaps he won over the heart of the formerly evil and/or mad scientist and turned him into a big ole bundle of love, sunshine, rainbows and happiness. Oh, and they all lived happily ever after. The end!