WIP.
I was going to add whiskers and call it a day, but now that I’m taking another look, I’m seeing negative spaces and shapes that feel a little off.
This is the first commission I’ve done thats working off an actual photograph, as opposed to photos I make up. I thought it would be straight forward, but I think the thinking is different. I could either paint an exact copy of what the camera sees, (I.e. the photo), or I could paint what I think is interesting in the photo and try to make that look interesting. Clearly, I chose the latter. What do you think?
March 2024.
Tux In A Tutu
9x12” oil on canvas paper
This elegant lady is already dressed in a tuxedo. And a tutu. Talk about fancy cats.
I tried doing that trendy thing where everyone is doing a red underpainting. I think Jennifer McChristianson is the first person I noticed who started sound this many years ago and the technique gives her paintings a beautiful vibrancy. Next thing I know, I turn around and every other artist is painting a red underpainting and there are YouTube artists titles like “HOW A RED UNDERPAINTING CHANGED HOW I PAINT FOREVER AND WHY YOU SHOULD TOO” yes, so I tried. I think it’s nice to have little bits of red sticking out under the main color, but I think I have to paint much looser to get the desired effect. Plus everyone’s stuff is starting to feel samey with all this red underpainting. I think I’m just used to underpainting with puce or umber. How boring. I gotta up my game. I gotta do some paw and fur studies too, I think.
#tuxedocat #cats #art #painting #ballet #tutu
February 2024.
Ragdoll Elation
9x12” oil on paper
I’d started doing more very fast gouache sketches before I launched into a full painting because I found that each painting was taking longer than the last one. I was getting caught up in micro-decision after micro-decision during the painting process and I’m ultimately trying to get faster not slower. So I thought working out the contrast levels might save me some time. It didn’t because then I went a little cuckoo painting in all the fur in motion and did not save time.
There’s a large, beautiful, very sweet Ragdoll cat that lives across the alley. She’s a big girl and I often hear her yowling in a turf standoff with the big black kitty that lives in our courtyard. The other day I saw the Ragdoll chase off a coyote that happened to come wandering down. She seemed pretty pleased with herself after that.
#cats #ballet #oilpainting #art #balletcat
Here is a collection of screenshots from Watch Duty.
Bright opaque Red- actual fire
Red overlay - evacuate orders
Orange overlay - evacuate warning
Pink overlay - red flag warning
Green/no overlay - clear
The first slide is an overview of LA and the 5 main fires going on. From west to east, they’re Palisades, Hurst, Sunset, Lidia and Eaton. The second is where Jon and I are in Santa Monica, in relation to the Palisades Fire. We’re 4-5 miles from fire. The next slide is wind direction today. Yesterday the wind was more southwest and the map where we were pink and more of the north neighborhoods were orange but today the wind is due south and we’re in the clear and those orange neighborhoods have gone pink. We’re upwind from it from it somehow. We’ve been very lucky. Tens of thousands of others haven’t been and it’s horrible. Some people are evacuating and think that they’ll be gone for a few days, so they just take what they need, and then in the next day everything they own goes up in flames. House, car - everything.
I’ve been told that if I need to evacuate, take cherished things with the idea that I may never come back.
January 2024.
Patches Grand Jetè
9x12. Oil on canvas paper.
This is the first time I’ve posted this lovely kitty on social media!
I submitted this one and 2 other paintings into a show recently. They’ll let people know Jan 20 if they’ve been accepted. It’s for a show called Carnival of Animals and some selected works will be shown at a gallery in the San Diego Ballet. I’ve never had much interest in (or chance of) getting into art shows , but I think I might be on theme with this one, so why not?
#cats #balletcats #toebeansandtutus #oilpainting #art #painting #tutus #light
December 2023. Oliver’s First Dance Belt.
9x12. Oil on canvas paper. AVAILABLE
Did you know that the male ballet dancer undergarment is called a dance belt? I did not until I painted this kitty. If you didn’t know, then that is a new thing you have learned today, courtesy of moi. Vital information, I know. You’re welcome.
This very masculine boy cat dancer who is definitely not wearing pointe shoes looks a lot like my Boba, but his tummy marks are different, so I named him Oliver. I think I used stand oil with linseed oil as a medium which meant it took LITERALLY 10 months to dry. He’s dry now and varnished and I’ve made prints and other random stuff of him on my store site. I mean why not, I didn’t know if he would dry enough for me to sell or if he would just remain a little bit wet for forever and ever.
I almost called this painting “It’s Called A Dance Belt” but I decided to give him more of a story.
jeanchoi.art
#cats #balletcats #painting #art #oilpainting #leap #ballet #balletart #dancebelt
Edit: SOLD October 2023. Millie Steps Into The Light
9x12. Oil on canvas paper. AVAILABLE $400 With the last one and this one, I initially posted the timelapse of me painting it because I didn’t want people to think I was posting an AI image. I actually have nothing against AI imagery as long as it’s good and original. Honestly, I do kind of love the super weird hallucinations that AI can do, but I have a real problem with IG and other companies announcing they have a right to take your art for their own data without consent or even knowledge. I think if these companies were like, “hey, we’ll give you .00001% ¢ for every time your art is scraped” at least it would be something. There would be less of an uproar from artists. But thinking they have a right to take it to feed into their machine that they profit from is fucking garbage. It’s also really unfortunate that we live in a time where no one knows what to believe anymore, you can’t even trust that the images you see are truth. Of course, my own hypocrisy is on display as I post this on IG because, bitch, I ain’t famous yet. I’m not the Ansel Adams estate battling Adobe. No one is stealing my shit. I’m not sure how to make money as an artist and get my art seen without using every tool available to me. Of course, I know that as soon as I do post any of my art, if it starts getting popular, I’m definitely going to see illegal prints of it on Temu. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Anyway, I posted the video as evidence, “yes I am a human that did paint this with my hands and paint.” How mundane is that?
This one is still for sale. Another friend was going to buy it, but they bought a different one instead. Then someone else was thinking about it, and then that fell through. So this lovely kitty is still here and hanging in the living room and for sale. DM me or comment if you are interested. #oilpainting #painting #kitty #balletkitty #tutu #art
October 2023.
I had so much fun painting the first kitty, that I painted another. This time I posted it and the reception was positive. A beautiful friend reached out and bought it for her daughter.
I’m hesitant to title it after it was sold because I don’t know if they’ve already come up with their own name for it. I should just ask them if they’ve titled it themselves and go with that. I thought about naming it “Frankie Jean’s Audition Ends Strong” using the child’s name, but I didn’t know if they would think it was weird. For my own records, I’ve been personally calling it “The Audition”. Or maybe “Her Audition Ends Strong” or something to that effect, but I’m not married to any one title. #balletkitty #tutu #oilpaintjng #cats #ballet #painting #art @elizabeth.mackick Thank you for loving me and my art enough to buy it and share it with your children. ♥️♥️♥️ it means so much to me.
I made this drawing when I was about 7 maybe and given it to my sister. I had completely forgotten that I’d even drawn it, but she had saved it all these years.
Fast forward 40 years to August 2023, the thick of both the writer’s and actors strikes. Every part of the industry was feeling the effects of it. Visual Effects has pretty thin margins that run on fumes in best of times, but during the strikes, those fumes ran out. We had just come back from a family vacation, and my sister’s birthday was coming up, but I wasn’t feeling very spendy, so I came up with an idea to do an updated version of the original drawing, like those “How it started/How it’s going” posts.
The second slide is the finished painting she ended up with. I really like this one because it’s so loose and I was still kind of using a limited palette. It’s called “Julie’s Arabesque” Its the first of this ongoing series that I’ve been calling Toebeans and Tutus (or maybe it’s Tutus and Toebeans)
9x12 oil on canvas paper
#cats #balletcat #tutu #painting #oilpainting #art #kiddrawing
May-Dec 2022-ish. BURNOUT. MAJOR BURNOUT. I had just finished a big project. A project that I started without taking a break from the last project which consisted of several months of a tv crunch. (I think my spine problems actually started before then, but I thought it was Carpal Tunnel.)
Everything hurt in multiple ways and multiple levels and I couldn’t bare to do anything but rollerskate and paint my nails. It was the closest I could get myself to doing anything remotely visually creative.
I could feel that I wanted to paint, but making art felt overwhelming. Nail art, however, I could do. The only people who really give a rat’s ass about nail art are other nail art enthusiasts. There was something really wonderful about painting something only for myself, that was guaranteed to be destroyed in less than a month. That nail art is cosmetic and is thus inherently written off as fluff made me love it more.
Anyway, I got decent enough at painting my nails that I started getting free nail polish. I started a separate IG just for my nails and I was getting some followers, but then it got hacked, so I deleted everything and I started over, but by then had already started painting on canvas again, so I stopped doing as much nail art in favor of canvas art and fell off of posting to the nail account.
Besides, I was never so dedicated or skilled at nail art that I could get paid to do it. The market is pretty packed with some insanely talented nail artists. I now have A LOT of nail polish, though. #nails #manicure #nailart
Ah! I almost forgot about this little guy! He’s not even varnished!
October 2024. 4”x6” oil on canvas. One month post surgery. I really shouldn’t have been painting or do anything according to my doctor, but I had an itchy paintbrush and I was eager to see if my hands were working again. Also pictured is my homemade gray glass palette and current colors. #oilpaint #oils #tinysunset #art #sunset #painting thanks to @amyleblancdotcom for the canvases!!
March 2024. 9x12 canvas paper. I was inspired by @juliaspowellart to paint a sunset. Go check her stuff out, she’s freaking amazing. So I dug up a photo on Pinterest and used that as a reference. I hadn’t painted a sunset in ages and I’d forgotten how challenging yet satisfying they are to paint. The colors make me salivate, I love them so much! #art #painting #oilpainting #sunset #clouds
