Painting Whimsical Cats (and probably other stuff) Again After Almost a Decade Away From Traditional Art

Blue Sky, Butterfly, and JAC by TET
Acrylic on Canvas.

WIP of a New Whimsical Cat Painting by TET.

Over the Christmas and New Year holidays I spent a lot of my time reflecting on where I'm at as an artist and content creator, torn between the need to at least make some kind of regular income, and the need to just create art.

Possibly controversially, while I am an early adopter of generative image and video AI creations, and would say they are an art form, they're not a very fulfilling art form for myself. A useful tool, yes, but even when used with my own art, they're more interesting than anything I would stand by and say 'that was a satisfying creative journey' I just made.

Creating with generative AI is more like being a director of a film, where all the actual art is being done by everyone else, but you get a say in the direction and output. It's still a creative endeavor but it's a very hands off, upper management form of creativity (making a somewhat clumsy analogy). Not that I plan to stop exploring the potential of AI. I just don't want everything I do to be sitting in front of a screen.

Thanks to the rise of 'AI Slop', an over used and over reaching term by those who use it (in my opinion), I think there will, almost certainly, be a new appreciation for traditionally made art. Which is something I can do and find very creatively satisfying.

Almost two decades ago I had a relatively good side income selling my original acrylic paintings of whimsical cartoon cats (and sometimes dogs). So good that a few people even commissioned me to paint their pets in my cartoon style. You can see prints of my original art, at the links, in my Redbubble store.

While Redbubble prints of my art have never really sold - except for a brief period where I really went all in, full time, on promoting prints - I was, almost without fail, painting and selling an original cat artwork every week through ebay.

It's certainly possible I could do that again. Maybe even turn it into a more successful, full time endeavor now I have two decades more experience of learning and selling my creations online.

This may seem like me just looking for another way to make money - and it absolutely is - however I've been moving back to traditional, hand drawn art for quite a while now. 

Resident Dragon Cartoon by TET.

I wanted to get back into drawing so I started journal drawing (using biro pens) a year and a half ago. That morphed into me developing and drawing a five day a week gag cartoon, Resident Dragon. To date I'm five sketches short of my target total of 366 cartoons - should I ever decide to sell a full year, daily cartoon desk calendar.

As yet, I haven't made any serious money from Resident Dragon but I have tested the cartoons with dragon fans, and the humor does land. I'm just now putting together a Resident Dragon Store, and plan to sell books featuring the cartoons. It's a long game but I really enjoy building my Resident Dragon world.

Which brings me around to painting whimsical cats. To be honest, I actually got burned out on painting an artwork a week. It became a bit of a grind. Particularly because the cat paintings were the ones that sold the best.

Which was fine, but I don't see myself as a cat person - or even a dog person. I'm very much both, if there is a dog or cat within my family. I'll spend an abnormal amount of time interacting with and talking to cats or dogs that live in my home. I just don't have the urge to go up to other people's dogs and cats and pet them (though I will if they come up to me).

This time around I may find myself painting whimsical cats, or maybe Resident Dragon scenes, since the cartoons themselves are colored digitally on a screen. Still not my favorite thing to do. Digitally paint. Though it's at least close to traditional painting in some respects. It still feels like my art.

To cut a long story short. I tidied and reorganised my very small studio to give me room to create acrylic paintings again. After more than ten years, the obvious place to start was to paint a new whimsical cartoon cat.

Before tidy up and after tidy up photos of my Office/Studio space.

Not to create a great, or even a good painting, but just to see if my decade plus, old tubes of acrylic paints were still any good, and to blow the dust of some of me brushes and paint palettes that have been sitting there, dormant for just as long.

I guess we'll see where this goes. Maybe keep an eye on my TET-Life YouTube Channel too, as I may get back into filming me creating my paintings, as I used to back in the day.

Purchase the Original Artwork or Prints

The original artwork is for sale. Contact me to see if it is still available and to make an offer. Alternatively you can buy prints of the artwork through RedBubble.