See You There!

St. Lawrence County Arts Council, 51 Market St., Potsdam, will open a new exhibit "Fancy Footwork" Saturday, Feb. 25, featuring creative shoes and paintings by Catherine LaPointe. There will be an opening reception from 4 to 6 p.m. and the exhibit will run through April 14. LaPointe’s new book “Urban Legends Across America – The A-Z Anthology” will be available for sale. For more information, visit www.slcartscouncil.org or call 265-6860

http://northcountrynow.com/hometown-photos/potsdam/shoe-potsdam

Nice Large New Pictures!

Updated my website in the last week. Only a couple of new images, but some big changes to the layout and sizing. Check out the fancy new pages, now SuperSized!

http://catherinelapointe.com

I have gotten comments that my images are too small. While I absolutely detest those pop-up galleries that darken your screen and take forever to load, I realized I had to do something to give a better view of my art. I know better than anyone, working in tech support, how many people hang on to old slow computers and tiny outdated monitors with low resolutions. I had kept my website at a super small size for years, in case one of these dinosaurs decided to browse my art. I decided, however, that the types of people who never update their computers and are fine with squinting at a small fuzzy monitor are not really the type of people who are going to really browse my website anyway. I decided to upgrade and work with a larger resolution size, giving my images a little more room to grow. It's still well within the range of most laptop monitors, but now hopefully you can see all the itty-bitty brushstrokes a little bit better. Hope you enjoy, and I always welcome comments.

Say What?

Say Yes!

Here's one version of my last painting. Man, this one gave me hell. I redid it about 6 times.

Another Say Yes Painting Finished!

Since this one was fairly simple, I worked smaller and quicker, and got it done in no time. Another one where I started with India Ink, and then watercolor, which is opposite of how I've always done things. I rather like it, and I was surprised with how smooth the ink went on. I could even do comic-style work like this. I always wanted to try traditional painting techniques with comic art, but couldn't wrap my head around the mechanics- I thought ink on such rough paper would be awful, but it really wasn't.

The re-do of "Has Anyone Seen Harry?"

SKYBOAT!

Another Say Yes project finished! This is "All About Us" and it's a skyboat. Nuff said.

Say Yes- All About Us

And here's the start of All About Us! It's a skyboat! Yay for imagination.
I have never worked on a watercolor where I started with the ink first, as I am paranoid it will run. But I liked the drawing so much I just had to lock it in before it got painted over. Here's hoping waterproof really means waterproof!

Say Yes- Gator Game Done!

I am just flying through these paintings. They are coming out faster, and better, by far, than I was expecting. Here's the latest painting, the Gator Game:

I think I am finally overcoming my fear of painting animals. Part of it was a bias, I didn't want to "get stuck drawing cute puppies all day" so I avoided them completely. The other part is that, never having had a pet, I am pretty unfamiliar with the physical makeup of most animals, and have to find a lot of reference photos even to draw a cat. And I don't see what the big fuss is about, wouldn't humans rather look at other humans? I know I would. And then the final part of it was that fur baffled me; for quite a while, I would only draw reptiles.
Finally I am starting to come around to the idea that animals can make a really cute story, and just because you draw one doesn't mean you are stuck drawing them forever. You also don't have to make them cute and cartoony, they could be realistic, they could be scary, they could be distorted- you can do anything with them that you can do with a human.
And I think I'm finally getting the hang of drawing fur.