Rock, cat, cat rock

Sometimes I get some unusual requests. This time it was to turn a 320 million-ish year old carboniferous sandstone boulder into a cat. Derren Brown, eat your heart out! Although, in reality, no illusions or mindgames were harmed in this transformation.

It isn’t something I’d tried before. I had seen similar paintings and admired the handywork of the artists who created them, so I knew it could be done.

Dawn, who requested the cat, asked if it could look like her late ginger, ‘Marmy’, so that set the colour scheme. First I washed the stone and gave it a day or so to completely dry. Next a coat of gesso, and a base coat of Burnt Orange.

It took a while to get the features marked out in pencil, then I tried to apply colour. Ordinary painting with acrylic and brush wasn’t working for me, and I eventually completed the design with coloured pencils (mainly Karismacolor and Polychromos).
The hard and abrasive surface, even after base coating, was not kind to my pencils and I spent a lot of time keeping the points sharp.

I finished with a spray fixative to hold the colour, then sealed with DecoArt ‘Soft Touch’ varnish.

So, another learning experience, turning rocks into cats, using only pencils. Could this be the oldest cat ever discovered? What name would you give him … Sylvester (Rocky Stallone)? Dwayne (‘The Rock’ Johnson)?

‘The Rock’ with a thin coat of gesso.

The Garden House

This view is from the old tennis court, looking up towards the house surrounded by shrubs and trees. Drawn with fine liners and coloured with Polychromos pencils.

The Garden House is near Yelverton, Devon, and its 10 acres of garden is open to the public.