Cat box

I painted the leather seat if this stool/box about thirty years ago. It used to hold all my old oil paints but they dried out years ago. I unearthed it recently. One of the problems with being an artist I have found, is collecting art materials. I have stuff that goes back years. I tend to think one day things will come in handy. Is anyone else here an artist? Are you the same? Materials cost so much its almost a sin to throw things away.

This is a cat on a mat on a parquet floor. As you can see even then I loved patterns. It’s varnished, but you can see where I must have left a thinners can on the surface that left paint rings…

Parquet

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This is some old flooring which may be tiled. I don’t think it’s actual parquet flooring which is a type of wood block flooring. Usually laid in a herringbone pattern. The floor is then buffed to a shiny finish. I saw this floor somewhere in the recent past, and it reminded me.

We had a floor like this at the gym at school, and then in the life drawing room at college. I remember painting and drawing many models there and trying to draw the floor pattern from lots of different directions. It made the pictures more interesting and once you got the hang of it quite easy to draw.

Anyway I was doing quite a bit of life drawing early last year but things got busy. But I’m going to try and go back. I also want to learn some new drawing techniques. I think they have parquet on the floor in the hall where they do life drawing. Things do come round full circle.

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