Kat Johnston

Tag: boy

  • Sketch: Fluffy fluffy joy!

    Kat Johnston sketch: Yes, I know it’s rough… but he’s so cute and happy! And he has claws! Rawr!

    Ok, so I know that this sketch is particularly rough – not that many of my other quickie sketches are particularly refined. I love him to bits though! Ok, so why did I draw him? Because he well and truly asked to be drawn.

    You see, I have that funny thing where, when I am looking at something, it might turn out to be something entirely different from what I see. In this case, a little preview thumbnail for something was screaming out that it was this little boy (give or take… very roughly, mind you), when in fact, the full image was far more staid and boring and entirely not… well… this little boy!

    Thus, I really had no choice. With his little head peeking out from that furry, fluffy suit, he cried out, “Draw me!” to which I promptly responded, “Nay, little Sir, for you are meant to be some silly, boring artifact, are you not?”

    He shook his head with all the childish certainty that seemingly comes from being dressed (and joyfully so) in a dinosaur suit at the very grown-up age of around about five. “But you must draw me! I’m no silly clay figurine, with boring spiky hair and a dreary, dull pose. I’m me!”

    I mused for a moment longer. I still wasn’t quite sure. “But, little one, don’t you wish to be what you are meant to be? In reality, you are not a little boy in a fluffy suit at all, but a blurry snatch of something else.”

    He shrugged and laughed. “I am what I am,” said he, spreading his arms wide. “Does it matter if I am also something else? When you look at me, that something else is not what you see. All you see is me. Is this smaller truth any less relevant than the greater?” I was up against a very informed little imaginary boy indeed… and one with a wider vocabulary than I would have expected. And, I had to admit, he had a point.

    “I’ll draw you,” said I. And so I did!

  • Sketch: Note to self, don’t buy canvasses from Lincraft, even when desperate.

    Kat Johnston Sketch: a boy, with quite a haircut… or lack of it. That is all, move along, Sir.

    I’ve come to a few conclusions today. They are as follows:

    1. I just cannot paint with the tv going. Or with a dvd playing. Or anything else that requires more concentration than good ole fashioned music of a variety that makes me smile. There are many things I can do with the background noise of a good cop tv drama. Painting is just not one of them.

    2. I find it devilishly hard to work on a painting while my husband is home. It just doesn’t work. He wants to ‘watch’ or ‘be in the room’ or… well… something. Something loving and kind and adorable, but nonetheless frustrating (even if he’s doing absolutely nothing at all). Love you sweetie, but somehow, it just doesn’t work.

    3. Even when desperate, despite the fact that they’re on special for half off and they are just the size I need, I should not purchase canvasses from Lincraft. What in the hell was I thinking anyway?

    Lets continue the rant about the third item there, shall we? Yes, I admit it – I often buy my canvasses because due to a combination of laziness and lack of an electric saw capable of perfect mitre cuts, I don’t make my own. That said, I don’t generally make the mistake of buying them from Lincraft of all places – and for good reason. A couple of weeks ago, I was walking through the city, headed to Lincraft to pick up paint. I was out of a couple of colours, and lets face it, paintings are generally pretty hard to do without black and white. Mine are, anyway.

    I decided to have a look throughout the whole store – lo and behold, the canvasses were on special. Funnily enough, I needed some, so thought ‘what they hey? They’re half off, surely that is a deal I can’t pass up!’ How stupid am I? And more importantly, how stupid are they? Who in their right mind uses a stupidly gummy adhesive (for its purpose) to affix a piece of glossy paper to the actual front of the canvas? Uh huh folks, you heard me right. You can’t pull away the stupid piece of paper without leaving a sticky, gummy, obstinate bit of residue behind on the canvas itself.

    Now I realize that the people who generally buy their canvasses from Lincraft are more than likely not in the game of producing fine art (no offence to those who do, mind you), but come on! From the very second that someone tries to tear away at your piece of useless self-promotion, they’re having to rub away at the canvas to get rid of adhesive that shouldn’t have been on that part of the canvas in the first place. Even the people producing dollar store canvasses have worked out that you can affix a piece of paper with the relevant details by folding a few corners, and if necessary, affixing to the edges which aren’t generally used as a display portion of the paintable surface.

    So I post this now – as a warning (and as a general rant. I like to rant now and then). For god’s sake, go to a cheapie store and buy your canvasses there over getting them at Lincraft. At least you might start off with a fully paintable surface when you do.

  • Little boy blue.

    Awww… little boy blue, come blow your horn?

    Aww, there’s nothing cuter than something cute. And this little fellow is mighty cute now, isn’t he? I must admit, I wasn’t in the mood to do anything huge, or life-changing as my sketch today… then again, my recent sketches I’ve been putting up here haven’t been either. As a change, I did, however, decide to do my little sketch on blue paper instead of in the little sketchbook today – yay for shaking things up a bit!

    Tis a funny thing, sketching. Some days, I can sit down with something perfectly planned and either execute it just as I imagined, or scowl at the paper in front of me while plotting its doom because it isn’t going right. Other days, there is none of that. There’s a piece of paper going ‘I need something drawn on me’, and so I do. I must admit, doing things that particular way is far more interesting to me when I am actually paying attention to something entirely different from the pen loosely grasped between my fingertips.

    There is something almost zen-like about drawing without thinking – of course I think, but it is just such an instinctual process when my attention is elsewhere that it certainly feels as if I am not paying my drawing any attention. It is one of the reasons, I think, that I’ve always enjoyed drawing during class – it gives my hands something to do while my mind is focused elsewhere. Listening to music as I work is the same – it allows me to drift and focus simultaneously.

    Other things follow a similar process at times – the more you think about something, the more it isn’t going to come right. Like thinking about typing – I can type perfectly fluidly, but the second I start thinking about it too much, I start to slip up, make mistakes, having to go for that silly backspace just a few too many times… interesting, huh?

  • Just a youth… on the precipice.

    I dredged up this picture of a youth I had hidden in one of my books… cute, isn’t he?

    I was doing a little flick through one of my notebooks and came across this youth, sitting there and looking all cute… so he got scanned in for today! For y’all who haven’t been reading for a while, I find it hard to do profile portraits – they’re just not my thing so much. This one, however, I loved at the time and I still love now. He’s just so adorable and… well… I don’t know. Him, I guess! He doesn’t even have a name. Just a random, gangly youth just sitting on that precipice of adolescence, perhaps being faced with a few tough choices he’s never had to face before… but he’ll come out on top. He’s got a kind heart and a good head on his shoulders. I can almost see him as an adventurer, handed an over-sized sword and a quest to go save a princess of some sort… and lord knows it, but he has no idea where to start. He’d probably just start walking in one direction hoping to stumble onto a dragon to slay, while he tries to think of what the heck he’s going to do.

    Anyhow… he’s a cutie and he will get the princess in the end. However, I know for a fact that the princess he is going to find is not going to be the common ‘wailing and whining and waiting to be rescued’ kind. I think he’s going to have his work cut out for him when he finds her! I can envisage her jumping out at him and catching him by surprise soon after she’s conked out the dragon in its nest (or lair?). She’ll have him on his back at knife-point, stammering in the dust in a second flat. And that’s just when the adventure begins…

  • A random little snippet of still-half-dreaming.

    Just a boy upon a page – only time will tell if he has a story worth telling.

    In a world turned upside down, where bananas ate monkeys and monkeys ate cheese, there existed a man named Poe. He wasn’t an especially exciting man, so far as men go, but he did live in an interesting world. That was enough.

    That is a little line or two of nothingness and nonsense just for you, dear readers. The picture doesn’t actually accompany them: they just exist side by side as two little snippets of ‘something’ born from the half-awake state of post-sleeping wakefulness. It is a comfy, fuzzy existence in that place – not quite fully awake, clinging to the bliss of total relaxation, not wanting to pry yourself loose from that dreaming moment – eventually letting it trickle away, bit by bit, until you’re finally claimed again by the staid and stale existence of ‘reality’. The made-up world is just so much better some days, isn’t it?

    Do you dream?

    Not just those little, boring flashbacks and reworked memories, but actually dream? I do. In vivid brilliance with tales and story-weavings full of wonder and intrigue… adventures and mayham, heroines and villians just as heroic and villianous as a hero and villian can be. They are not always epic, but they do tend to have incredible depth and detail. So much so that I can turn to my poor, long-suffering husband and assult his ears for over an hour just recounting the things that occurred once I’ve dredged myself up into a state of full consciousness. Logic is not necessary, though it doesn’t entirely hurt to fill out the gaps and connect the dots between here and there. That is one of the wonders of dreams: they never have to make sense. They just have to be.