Monday, January 19, 2009

Bert (the cat) art

This is a papier mache bowl I made that is covered with little portraits of Bert. The faces were based on an ink drawing I had done, which was then transferred to a linoleum block, carved out and then printed. 

Before I pasted each portrait of Bert onto the bowl, I ran a needle with some black thread through the paper so that when it was pasted, the thread would look like whiskers. Really messy, uncontrollable whiskers. I suppose I could have groomed them a little better but the craziness didn't bug me that much so I left them as is.

This is a side view of the bowl. The black glass buttons were attached to the bowl and then I coiled yellow paper around them to further secure them.

A similar ink drawing was used to make this larger linoleum block print of Bert. No thread whiskers this time. 

And this is the very first mosaic thing I ever made. So much fun. The woman holding the cat is a playing card from the turn of the century (the previous one, not this one!).

These three pieces are hanging together in an area I see nearly every day so I can remember a really good friend who happened to be a cat. :-)

8 comments:

shara said...

i LOVE the bowl. you are so talented.

45+ and Aspiring said...

That bowl is really neat! So interesting to hear how you made it and love the wildness of whiskers--they are the best charm of a very charming bowl. What a cute little face!

The mosaic frames are beautiful!

Country Girl said...

I loved the bowl. But I am gasping at the other two items. I'm showing this to our art teacher at school. She will love it.

Laura J. Wellner (author pseudonym Laura J. W. Ryan) said...

What a cute bowl (love the whiskers) and other nifty goodies!

Maria said...

Aw, thanks guys. They were all fun to make.

Kate, I wish I lived closer so I could come to your school and do a demo. Mosaic is so much fun. There are probably ways to do it that are safer than cutting glass (since a group of kids will be doing this)-you could buy those little squares of tile and do it that way or you could use a premixed grout/adhesive and just stick things into it....like seashells and buttons and flattened round glass blobs you can get at a craft store...anyway, it can be done. I discovered that metal washers add that one extra texture that breaks up the sameness in mosaics. And since it's smooth, the extra grout comes off pretty easily.

Oh, I have a label "mosaic" somewhere on this site so have a look at that too. I have one more to put up tonight but have to do some Photoshopping since some parts have um, decomposed. Celluloid is so darn weird the way it doesn't want to be anywhere near metal.

Mental P Mama said...

That is amazing. Please open an etsy shop;)

abb said...

I am so envious! Your artistic talent is just wonderful. Love that bowl.

snakey said...

bert was such a sweetheart.