Acrobatic Cats Illustration

Switching gears again from painting back to illustrating, I dug right back in to working on my Small Book of Marvelous Cats. If I keep on writing and illustrating these short poems, then I may have to take the “Small” out of the title and not market it as a humorous chapbook.


This week I just finished the second larger format illustration for the poem “Acrobatic Cats.” My friend described the smaller cat balancing on a ball on a tight rope as “whimsical” for the expression on his face while he hold a mouse by its tail. It occurred to me later that the other cat’s dramatic twists and turns could be an allusion to the infamous cat death dance in celebration of the captured mouse.

I tried something a little different on this illustration with dramatic spot lighting. Note the interspecies audience.