A bowlful of cat party

It was my 30th birthday last November (I know, try to retain your collective gasp) and some of my longest standing friends took me for a little surprise crafty treat - painting at The Pottery Cafe in Brighton. I've been to the cafe a few years ago for sewing classes but had never done any painting there. 

You choose an item and go for it with whatever style or design you like. I've never felt very sure about my drawing skills, so painting isn't something I do very often. I decided to choose a large cereal bowl because that seemed like an item I could get a lot of use out of. My friends picked a large mug, a plate and a piggy bank.

The ladies running the cafe are lovely. Really helpful with advice on what the different techniques are and they let us bring our own wine in to drink whilst we painted. Pink bubbles definitely made me feel more artistic.

I found a very cute bit of wrapping paper in one of their inspiration trays with a design by Gemma Correll of some cats celebrating a birthday. They looked like this. I like Gemma Correll, I like cats and I definitely like cat parties. Birthday cats were in.

You can see the pink bubbles in that blue plastic wine glass - classy

I drew four cats onto the bowl in pencil, copying her style. You couldn't see below the waist on her cats so I had to invent what the legs looked like. I then painted the cats and used a black paint pen to outline them. This was quite tricky because the nib kept jamming with paint so I had to poke it with a pin every 30 seconds. Then - because I had very little time left for detail outside of the cats - I did some swirls around the bowl and painted the outside in green. If I had more time I probably would have done something on the outside, but I spent a long time on the cats themselves.

Here are two of my friends with their creations

It was one of those things where I would think I was finished... leave it... stare at it... think of something else I could add... and start fiddling with it again, including little details...

CAT PARTAAAAY

(mais óu sont les ballons?)

...like the sudden appearance - with 5 minutes to spare - of a green balloon...

CAT PARTAAAAY

(aka the world's easiest game of spot the difference)

And here I am, looking rather pleased with myself.

 

I was very happy with the finished result - especially once I had added the balloon. I'm a better painter/drawer than I thought evidently - even if I was copying someone else's design. It was so much fun too! I would quite like to make a series of these bowls with different animals having parties on them - hamsters and dogs and so forth.

 

Here are the gang post-kiln, looking pretty cheeky

HUZZAH!

I haven't dared use it for cereal in case it gets damaged! It's currently sitting on the windowsill of the kitchen with the rubber gloves in it. Rubber gloves seemed pretty harmless.

As a result of this fun session I ended up booking myself onto some pottery classes at the cafe, but I'll save that for another post. And if you're local to Brighton I would highly recommend you check out the Pottery Cafe - it's pretty great.

See you in September kiddos

xxx