Summer Repose (Hannah & Alva)

This is one of my favorite paintings I created last year. It's smaller than I usually start, and I used the smaller size as a justification for stuffing a bit more high-chroma color into it than I would ordinarily. I love painting bright colors, but usually I go a bit more mute than this... But the concept I settled on when starting this is that I wanted almost gem-like color. The one problem that painting small creates for me is that small errors really stand out - Hannah's face here is about 2"x2", and the whole cat is about the same. I got Hannah's likeness, but really struggled with Alva's. I'm still not sure it's quite right, but at this point I've repainted him a good four times, and just don't have it in me to go for a fifth. I guess it's not so bad that I have a single dislike in the painting, if the rest turned out like I wanted it to. Perfection, as I say, Is boring...

-ZR