Sophie Ashdown

Continuing my attempt to create new artwork every day for 30 days.

I have grouped days 12 and 13 together because they are both outside of what I would normally make, but one of them I really like!

On day 12 the prompt was “Force a change in your practice” which could mean anything really. I thought about what I could do, and whether I could make a change to my practice be figurative for once, and also a bit fun.

Given my love for cats (and seemingly the love for cats by many of my coursemantes!) I decided what better subject matter than cats. So here is the result:

I actually loved making this piece and I love the result, apart from one cat that I messed up who now looks like he has a mustache! It is such a happy piece and makes me smile to look at it.

I sent a photo of it to my cat-loving family and now they all want me to make a much larger version. It would be super fun to make a larger version but would likely take a while. I’ll add it to the ever-lengthening list of projects!

Funnily enough, even though I made an artwork that is figurative in a sense and features cats, it is still a pattern of sorts. So it seems that this leopard can’t change her spots very easily!

For day 13 the prompt was “Make a work in the in-between time. Make a work while you’re doing or waiting for something else.” I happened to be in a long boring zoom call that day for work so I decided to just let my pen do what it wanted to do while I was on the call. Hence this simple piece was created:

It is just a series of many many dots. It is not an artistic masterpiece but in a strange way I like it. However it is not something I would make a larger version of, and not likely to be one that I would display anywhere.

It is ultimately too simple and random for me to display. It doesn’t really go with the rest of my body of work apart from being an ink pattern of sorts.

It was quite nice though to be creative while I was on the zoom call and I might try that again to make something while the meeting only requires my ears and voice. Hopefully the result will be better than this one though!

PS if you look carefully at the cat picture, can you find the one cat who is not happy?