For Bridget 4: Eric Angelillo's Art Step by Step

For Bridget 4: Eric Angelillo's Art Step by Step

Pencils

This is another piece of art that I commissioned for my girlfriend Bridget, part of the series on cats.This one I got Eric Angelillo to do. Eric had a great animated music video in last year's YoungCuts Film Festival called Thunderstrike.

Inks with a bit of Colour

This piece of art was for Bridget's recent birthday.

This is what I asked for:
"The gray kitten pulling itself wet out of a bathtub, while a dry white and cream Siamese and a dry Brown and beige Tonkinese look on with amusement."

Final Colors

Eric thought that the picture worked better with a bucket instead of a bath-tub and I have to agree with him.

Bridget is equal parts delighted and horrified by the picture. (She thinks that the cats are being mean to her Maggie, the grey kitten. Her first reaction was "On, No! Poor Maggie!")

For Bridget 3: Rusty Shackle's Art Step by Step

For Bridget 3
Rusty Shackle's Art Step by Step

Pencils

As I explained on Wednesday, I asked Rusty Shackles to do a drawing for my girlfriend Bridget for Valentine's Day, eventually featuring Maggie, the Village des Valeurs kitten.

Inks

What you may ask, am I sending to Rusty Shackles to thank him for this really great piece of art? (Even if it makes Rusty's fans and friends call him a big softie?) Well, Rusty shared his Amazon Wish List with me, showing excellent taste by having Raging Phoenix on his list. I was originally going to send Rusty some copies of Empowered, but it turned out that Archambault had some copies of 8 Diagram Pole Fighter and Thirst cheap, so I got those instead. I also threw in a copy of Wham! Bam! Thank You Ma'am! from Inter-Species Wrestling, the rather insane wrestling federation that I am powerless Commissioner of and occasional ring announcer for.  (Cheap Pug Department: our next show is Boner Jam in Montreal at Foufounes Electriques on Sunday, March 27th.)

Final Colored Version

So big ups to Rusty Shackles. Go visit his web-site, follow him on the Twitter and hire him to do art-work for you!

Next week, I will probably throw out my thoughts on 8 Diagram Pole Fighter and Thirst, both of which played at Fantasia in year's past.

For Bridget 2: Maggie the Village des Valeurs Kitten

For Bridget  2
The Story of Maggie the Village des Valeurs Kitten

As I mentioned yesterday, my girlfriend Bridget used to have a male Siamese Tonkinese cat called Sasha. After a long illness, she had to have him put down.

She recently saw a Siamese kitten in a pet store and was thinking of buying him. Like an idiot, I was guilty of being an unsupportive boyfriend. Granted, I probably had logic on my side, but I wasn't really considering the emotional side of it, how much Bridget missed Sasha. Long story short, by the time that Bridget had done her due diligence and was ready to buy the kitten and take her home, the kitten had already been sold.

Immediately, I felt terrible. Valentine's Day was coming up, so I asked Rusty Shackles to do a piece for me similar to what I had asked Mike Holmes to do. After some haggling, Rusty agreed although I sensed he was less than enthusiastic about drawing a blue rose.

At the same time, I was scouring the internet for Siamese or Tonkinese kittens or young cats that needed to be rescued near Montreal. (Logic be damned!) Bridget and I were talking about visiting some pet shelters.

Then Maggie came into our lives.

This is Maggie.

Bridget is a Production Supervisor in a Village des Valeurs, the thrift store chain better known as Value Village or Savers. A couple walked into her store with a cage, walked into the furniture section, looked around furtively and abandoned the cage with a long-haired gray female kitten inside. The cage was dirty and stunk of cigarette smoke and the kitten was thin but friendly.

Bridget took the kitten to her vet and had her checked out. The vet pronounced her a healthy but under-nourished five month old kitten, so Bridget took her home and named her Maggie. She was kept isolated from the other animals for a few weeks until she could be neutered and some final medical procedures and tests could be performed. That was done on Valentine's Day and Maggie is now roaming around Bridget's house getting on the nerves of the other cats and delighting Luka.

As soon as Bridget told me about Maggie, I asked Rusty to include her in the drawing which he was delighted to do. In part I suspect, because it allowed him to jettison the blue rose from the picture.

Maggie pouncing on an unsuspecting Tyson

Again, not a bad likeness of Tyson, given that Rusty has never seen him, but it is startling how close Rusty got to drawing Maggie (including her yellow eyes) when my only description of her was a long-haired gray kitten.

Maggie!!

Mucho thanks to Rusty Shackles for the drawing (visit his site!) and maybe Friday, I will show you the pencil stage of the drawing and the ink stage (and next week maybe I will write about what I sent to Rusty to thank him for the drawing.)

For Bridget

My girlfriend Bridget likes blue roses.

I, on the other hand, dislike flowers as gifts because I am an unromantic schmuck, because flowers die, because they frequently stink and because I have a tendency to be allergic to them.

So, the last time I went to a comic-book convention, I went to an artist doing sketches bu the name of Mike Holmes and asked him to draw me a vase with a blue rose in it with a beige and brown short-haired non-evil Siamese cat rubbing up against the vase. The Siamese cat because Bridget has one (Bianca) had another (the late and dearly missed Sasha) and her mother has two more (Bailey and Tyson).

Here is what Mike drew:

Tyson and Vase With Blue Rose

As it turns out, the cat he drew is the spitting image of Tyson who belongs to Bridget's Mom.

Non-evil is admittedly subjective.

I actually gave the original drawing to Bridget some months ago, but to properly explain my Valentine's Day gift to her, I had to show this image first. (I will show her Valentine's Day gift tomorrow.)

Also, a bit freaky, I was looking up Mike's tumbler page and twitter feed and I came across this picture that he put up yesterday for Valentine's Day. The freaky bit being that I just wrote about Krazy Kat last week when I was thinking about comic-book romance.