Revisioning the Cat Book

With a commission completed and no more scheduled and an exhibition nearing a close, I am about to draw and paint for myself for a while. Yet as I was about to slosh around in acrylics I remembered that there was one more work in progress that could use some attention: The Small Book of Marvelous Cats. What was needed was two more illustrations for the last two unpictured rhymes and the updated version of the first draft of the book. The first draft became a first draft after I started illustrating a new batch of rhymes for the cat with pictures that were twice as large as the former ones and much more detailed. After much hesitation because I knew that it would entail a lot of work, I decided to bring the first group of illustrations up to the level of the second.

Above is the first attempt at a redo. The illustration at right is the original one for the poem “Little Cat up a Tree.” The first one was adequate but the second version is definitely more refined and detailed. Something else changed in the remake. The first drawing is from the perspective of a person observing a small cat up in a tree. The second rendering seems to be more from the perspective of the cat looking downwards.