Gibbs: All About the Food

Gibbs is all about the food!

It wasn’t always this way, but Gibbs had a incident with Midazolam, a drug often used for sedation which led to personality changes.  (See the article on various drugs for cats and humans — important for humans and pets!)

Two of our guys have had teeth pulled, so they are now all on wet food, which is why we can’t just leave a bowl of kibble for them all the time.  Gibbs alerts us to feeding time, always a little ahead, of course.  During work he hangs around Mitchell because he usually feeds them.  When Mitchell calls “Lunchtime Munchtime!” Gibbs hits the hallway, and his butt bounces up and down and his tummy swings from side to side.  It cracks us up watching him barrel down the hall toward the feeding area.

And he’s become a beggar!  Especially at night.  They get a can to split as a treat around 9pm, and Gibbs begins staring at Mitchell with a piercing intensity about an hour beforehand.   We’ve tried to reason with him, and even shame him, “Gibbs you are not a dog… Begging is beneath the behavior of a good cat!”  Our only relief is to keep a squirt bottle near the bed, and shake it with our warnings.

I really wanted to remember to take photos of the stages of this portrait, but I got involved and forgot!  Unlike Yaman’s portrait, I used diluted waterproof inks over his pencil drawing, above, to begin to place shadows and color the light off-white fur colors. I also darkened some of these ink washes which doesn’t show well in the image.

I didn’t show the buildup of watercolors over this ink,
but layered them in much the same way I layered Yaman’s.

I am happy with his portrait! 

Harmony cold-press paper was new to me:
I used a sample sheet from Hahnemühle.
It is great paper, and I now
own a 9×15 waterblock.
Waterblocks are nice because you
don’t have to tape the paper down.

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