rigorous play; or, an otherwise unremarkable house cat

Among other things, I’ve been re-acquainting myself with previously orphaned illustrations, extracting unpublished and unfinished personal work from the archives and exploring how I might resolve it with fresh eyes and revived attention. In this piece, an otherwise unremarkable house cat embarks on a deep sea diving escapade in pursuit of a dream. His dream: to find big, delicious fish.

This particular picture, having been pulled out of a drawer or digital folder and tinkered with every few years since 2015, indexes a number of techniques that I’ve been exploring for over a decade, with layers of analogue collage, mixed media drawing, and digital colorization. An otherwise unremarkable house cat is also an example of how story develops for me vis-à-vis flexible layers.

When I first introduced collage to my work, I found a sense of playfulness in the material process that I was desperately craving. I began surreptitiously building paper characters, costume, and scenery before I knew what to do with it all. Culled from xeroxed bits of various old picture collections, meticulously integrated with my own lines and textures, drawn in ink, correction fluid, masking tape. I could then use all of the pieces to try out different ideas, directing them around the page like actors and props on a stage until we all found a shape, a moment.

In that way, the formal process of composing a collage opened me back up to imaginary play and new pathways to narrative discovery. I might find myself pushing a flat paper cat about on a dry paper ocean, but somewhere on a more fantastical plane, this brave little feline is—

…diving down, down, down, kind of floating but mostly falling, noticing for the first time pressure in his soft triangle ears and the sound of his own kitty heartbeat, while shadows of other creatures, capable swimmers, scattered his field of vision. Searching for the elusive sea floor, his tail brushes against seaweed. He shudders—

I shudder, happy to discover a satisfying peek-a-boo of tail swishing behind a plant, and that’s the moment I was looking for… While an early idea for a scene dictated the imagery, the art process informed and deepened the story.

Though analogue art-making is my first love, I’ve found playful advantages to digital methods as well. By scanning my black and white illustration, I can then use graphics editing software to introduce color. Transparent layers offer new information about the setting with an impact on the scene’s emotional tone.

Example 1)

In an initial pass, the color is bright, cheerful, evoking a tropical excursion and the danger level of a snorkeling trip.

Example 2)

By tripling the blue gradient layer, the color richer, deeper, it feels cold, there’s a sense of smallness in the ocean.

Example 3)

By removing light values from the fish and main character, the result suggests ocean so deep that light can hardly penetrate, the darkness points directly to the kitty’s (now fearful) eye lights.

With each iteration, I discover more moments, backstory, a feeling. I’m left with options for my final, or a premise for a picture book to explore in the depths.

In addition to publishing a digital version of this artwork on my website, I’m releasing a limited edition of archival prints, available here: