Extra! Extra! Read all about it! The website is live!!

And we're off and running!

The Sunday Market went great - minimal sales (everyone had a slow day for sales, the wine vendor near me only sold two bottles all day) but I achieved the goals I had set out to do.

With this venue and timing my goals were to practice setting up and running a booth (check) and to get some exposure. I worked on my 16 x 20 scratchboard and plenty of people stopped to watch and comment, I got to talk about scratchboard and hear plenty of pet stories. Basalt is such a dog-friendly neighborhood, my hubby put out a big bottle of water for all the dogs that were coming by which often resulted in the attached owners stopping in for a peek. We handed out business cards and brochures to anyone who would take them - if even one person orders a commission then the Market was a great success!

Our booth (not the best picture - it looks pretty crowded here but it really was pretty streamlined)

Band dogs taking five:

Another shot of the Market:

And... as an added extra surprise a photographer with the Aspen Times decided to take my picture!


Plus I got a couple of hours' work done on my big board - I luckily have no problem working with people looking over my shoulder, my biggest worry was working on an easel as I usually use a slightly inclined drafting table. The easel worked quite well, I was surprised! I won't use it in my studio where I have the drafting table available, but if I do ever wish to work outside (and the next few weeks at the market I will most certainly be doing so) I know I can quite comfortably!

I also mentioned a newsletter - as soon as I work out a couple of kinks I hope to send out the first issue - it will essentially mirror the blog, so you blog followers have a head start - but if you wish to receive the newsletter and you aren't sure if I have your email address just send me a quick note at Pam(at)Catinaboxstudio.com. Once I learn a bit more I'll have a sign-up on my website (or here on the blog), but until then I'll be working from my email list.

And last, but by no means least, this weekend was also the launching of CatinaBoxStudio.com! Check it out! There's a bit of content to add and some tweaking left to do - but the website is live and Cat-in-a-Box is officially launched!!

So all in all a successful weekend - but very little sleep. Framing and matting and last minute things (those little things like title/price labels for the pieces) kept me up until 3am the morning before the market, then we got up at 7am to go to the market. But coffee and adrenaline kept us fueled through the day and it was, all told, a thoroughly enjoyable experience! We're looking forward to next week's market!

If you're in the Basalt are come and visit us at the Sunday Market!

~ Pam

A long delay - but with an explanation!

To my blog readers - apologies for the inordinately long delay since my last post! It has not been without good reason, I've been very busy getting ready for the 'official' launch of Cat-in-a-Box Studio!

We're coming up on a year since this blog was started! In some ways that's shocking ('It's been a whole year??') and yet at the same time I can't believe it's only been a year! Though Cat-in-a-Box was conceived in September 2009, it's really been gestating all this time. I've made some sales and read lots about marketing, I've worked on finding my artistic style and enjoyed exploring different media to see what suits me best. But despite fits and starts there has been no defining moment that's felt like the shift from 'work in progress' to a real business. With my artwork that moment is when I sign it - and I've been feeling that I need such a moment for Cat-in-a-Box.

And that moment will come on September 13th!

When I realized that I need some kind of defining event for the business launching I decided that it will be my debut at the Basalt Sunday Market. I signed up for the market this spring - it's your standard small-town market with booths and a variety of merchants. The town of Basalt is charming and I go to town as often as I can. The market itself has been lively and crowded each weekend that I've visited (it runs every Sunday from July through October) and my block will be the final quarter - from September 13 - October 4th.


But a launching takes more than a market booth! The other arms of the launch will be the opening of my website and the Cat-in-a-Box Newsletter which will serve as a companion to this blog! Links to everything will be posted next weekend when they are launched!!

So if any of you blog-readers are in the region of Basalt, Colorado - please stop by the Sunday Market!

And everyone else, thanks for bearing with me this past month - now that the preparatory work is over I can get back to regular blogging - for your patience I'll leave you with a glimpse of the scratchboard that's on my drafting table right now. This is only a small portion of what will be my largest board yet (16 x 20").


Can you guess what it is?

~ Pam

Another Whiteboard - Nessie

In this post I'd like to share with you my second full whiteboard. The Rosie board went so well that I think I'm addicted now! But they are a time-consuming art form - so in the process of doing Nessie I also worked on a couple of black and white scratchboards.

Nessie is one of our cats - a little tiny lilac point siamese with a very big mouth. She is all demure and dainty until she gets her panties in a knot at 2am and decides to announce her opinions to the household. Sleeping is her favorite pastime (though that could be said of most cats, I guess), and I am convinced that this feline would be very happy if her little paws never tread upon anything that wasn't a human body (seriously, you can't sit more than 5 minutes in one place without this cat clambering onto your person).

I chose this reference photo because of the peaceful expression (she really is rather lovely when she's not talking) and the dramatic light. I have a thing for the effect of a backlit cat ear - you get to see just how thin that skin is, and the delicate outline of light reflecting off the tiny, fine hairs of the ear margin.

This image is a bit washed out -I purposely decreased the contrast and increased the light so I could see the direction of hairs and small details in the darker areas (my reference shots always undergo some photoshopping before they are appropriate to use for scratchboard).

This piece will be done on a 6x6" Whiteboard with Ampersand inks. The preliminary sketch is transferred onto the whiteboard with graphite (basically I use a graphite stick to cover the entire backside of the sketch in my sketchbook, then retrace the lines with the page laying over the whiteboard). The first inking I do is the background - you can see my graphite guidelines from the preliminary sketch. It takes several layers of ink to get a nice, deep background color - this one is using alternating layers of black and sepia ink:


And continuing with the base painting (The scanner made this image warmer than it truly appears, but it gives you an idea). I've exaggerated the light in her left ear, it will get toned down as this continues and I want to preserve that look of translucency and backlighting:

And now the scratching! The repeated layers of scratching and re-inking is what gives us more depth. In the next series of images you can see how I start by scratching in the darkest areas, re-inking them (though hard to see on a small scan this leaves beautiful, subtle texture in the shadowed parts), and then scratching the medium-value areas, and so on.




Some detail shots (larger than life):



And here is the final portrait:

"Nessie" 6x6" Ampersand whiteboard, scratchart and ink (c) Pam Boutilier, 2009

Thanks for checking in!

This is what you get for listening to Kenny Rogers

It's coming up on my mother's birthday soon, she would have been 72 in a couple of weeks. I'm using that as an excuse for the fact that I spent a couple of hours last weekend hunting down old Kenny Rogers, Merle Haggard and Charley Pride songs on YouTube. I guess it's no wonder that the next morning I woke up with an image in my head - an image I couldn't shake. I kept hearing the lyrics to 'The Gambler' and seeing this cowgirl studying her cards. So I decided to not let it slip by.

While the image was fresh in my mind I dug out my old cowboy hat (a souvenir from the Calgary Stampede) and found some playing cards. It was in my head that poker involved 5 cards - and sadly neither my husband or I were sure, but aesthetically 5 cards worked so that's what I went with. After a half hour of my incredibly patient hubby helping me shoot reference shots from different angles, and another hour of cutting, pasting and manipulating the images in Photoshop, I finally finished a good reference shot to work from.


Now my intent was not to copy this exactly - it's not going to be a portrait, and I don't look like a cowgirl. So I reshaped it a bit in photoshop and I reshaped it more when working on the scratchboard. She started having a hardened sort of look, which I really liked so I developed that further - at this stage it was a bit more of a grimace than I wanted...


The next steps were to soften her mouth a bit, and lay out more of the scratching (hat, hair, hand) and continued reworking of her face. I have not done much human skin before - it is a very different creature on scratchboard than fur!!


After this I relaid shadows with ink - in this way I get fading textures into the darkness instead of a sharp demarcation between light and shadow.



Lastly... numerous little touch ups and of course my favorite bit - the cards! And here is the finished picture....

"Know when to hold 'em" 9x12" Ampersand scratchboard

Some detail shots:





















I hope you've enjoyed this board, I sure enjoyed doing it! I plan to offer prints of this one, as soon as I get my business side up and running fully. Watch for posts!

Oh, and does anyone know if 5 cards in your hand makes sense for poker?? (I really need to learn to play poker some day!)

~ Pam