A day dedicated to working toward your goals.
Consider marching forth and doing something. Make it something that needs to be done or, for more fun, something you’ve always wanted to do.
That is all. Do it!
Parade Day – March 4th – March Forth
My Favorite Cat Artist in the Whole World
Dora Hathazi Mendes has a pure talent for depicting cats in watercolor.
Dora is an artist colleague who lives with her husband and family in Portugal. We have collaborated on various art activities over the last two years. We are colleagues in that we both use Fine Art America as our Print On Demand (POD) art production facility. (FAA is the largest fine art POD in the world. )
If you like cats, as most people do, and find them fun to be around, you might just find that Dora’s art a real joy to see. That’s why I decided to share some of my favorites here on my personal website. I hope you like her paintings as much as I do.
Here is an assortment of snapshots of the above work-in-progress. There are many steps involved in creating such a lifelike likeness of the black kitten – especially in the medium of watercolor on fine art paper.
Of course some cats take a more laid back approach to life. Here is Dora’s watercolor of a ginger Maine Coon cat. The Maine Coon is the largest of domesticated cats and, even though they have active hunting skills, are laid back, fluffy and friendly. Below you can see this artwork on a notebook cover, one of the popular items also produced by Fine Art America from original art. BE sure to click the picture to see the actual piece.
Here are links (click below) to Dora Hathazi Mendes and her art at Fine Art America:
Note, please, that this is not a “sales pitch” – but should you decide to purchase something from Fine Art America, Dora will earn her artist fee and FAA will pay me a (very) small ad fee.
Dora has contributed to the success of my new Artistic Face Masks website where her designer face masks have proven to be popular sellers.
You can see my work at Bill Swartwout Photography.
A Sinister Butterfly?
Well, it could be, if you are so predisposed – or if you don’t like bugs of any sort. When I shared my latest butterfly image on Facebook, a good friend, Cheryl, complimented the photograph but mentioned that this butterfly looked sinister. I titled the piece “Butterfly Victory” because of the v-shape made by the wings. But the little beast does have a sinister-looking face.
Actually, it is the life cycle of a butterfly, such as this Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly, that may be sinister. These insects are born as tiny worms – caterpillars, really (there is a difference). They spend most of their life eating everything in sight – your flowers, your vegetables, trees, you name it. If it looks like insect salad, it’s gone. When they’ve eaten their fill for a few weeks they take a siesta for a week or so and wrap themselves up in a blanket called a cocoon. Inside, during the siesta all of that food gorging makes the caterpillar begin changing into a chrysalis, of butterfly pupa. Even though Dr. Frankenstein has no part in this, it’s body is changing! When the nap is over and the metamorphism has completed, it’s time for “sleeping beauty” to awaken and crawl out from under the covers. The beautiful butterfly that emerges from the long sleep is a promiscuous sort – it will mate (have butterfly sex), lay eggs and die. All that happens, depending on the particular species in a few days or a few weeks. Most adult butterflies, sadly, live two weeks or less.
Then the cycle repeats. But we, as humans, do get to see the beauty in the adult and in some of the caterpillars…as long as they don’t eat our gardens, that is.
Note: the Eastern Swallowtail Butterfly in the first photograph was found “dining” at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore.
See more of my photography at Bill Swartwout Photography.