Get Your Paws Dirty

A Good Old Fashioned Roll in the Dirt, 2021

Willow charcoal on newsprint

18” x 24”

Tucker and Dale are funny cats. Since the day we brought our two baby barn kitties home, they have blessed our family with smiles and joy. Tucker and Dale crack me up on a regular basis and sometimes I just can’t help but share their silly antics on this blog. If you flip through a random selection of my posts, chances are pretty good that you will encounter my furry friends making a cameo appearance… they are kind of a big deal on the internet hahah.

Our fur babies enjoy a lot of the “normal” cat activities that one might expect; 

napping in the sunshine,

chasing birds and mice,

finding creative uses for paper products.

And lets not forget, tormenting the dogs - a feline classic. You know, just your basic cat stuff.

However, a few of Tucker and Dale’s hobbies are a little unorthodox. Some of their strange pastimes include; 

hunting wild turkeys,

gardening,

learning foreign languages on DuoLingo,

MMA fighting,

and inspecting fountains.

They also seem to really enjoy Bible study workbooks (and the accompanying video segments).

It has been almost a year since we adopted our little marmalade barn babies so I think it’s safe to say I am rarely shocked by their bizarre inclinations at this point. Rather, I have come to expect them. 

A few weeks back, we had a literal truckload of dirt delivered to the property. The idea was that this dirt could be used to fill gopher holes and just generally tidy up a few landscaping projects. Enter Tucker and Dale. Now, normally cats prefer to stay clean and are renowned for their obsessive grooming… not our kitties! Tucker and Dale made a bee-line straight for the dirt mountain and proceeded to enjoy this new treasure to the fullest!

Scaling and tunneling in the dirt mound has become one of their favorite games. A good old fashioned roll in the dirt is their first stop in the morning.  They seem to find it quite satisfying and apparently this is an awesome way to start your day. 

As soon as I observed their new morning ritual, I knew that this was one of those moments, Ladies and Gentlemen - one that was just too funny to keep to myself!  

I decided to render a series of quick charcoal gestures to depict Tucker and Dale’s latest quirk. The rapid nature of gesture drawing makes it ideal for capturing subjects in motion and there was something that just felt right about using a messy medium like charcoal. 

For anyone who is unfamiliar with the term, “gesture drawing” is a quick-and-dirty sketching exercise used by artists as a warm-up. The idea of this type of drawing is to record the movement of your subject and get down as much critical visual information as possible in a brief amount of time. This practice helps to stretch out those stiff art muscles and achieve more fluid confident lines later on in your session. Think of it like warming up with a little cardio to get your blood pumping before hitting the weights at the gym.

As I furiously sketched my furry friends, I couldn’t help but remember my human friends from my Drawing Fundamentals class. All of our drawing sessions began with a charcoal gesture warm-up. Practice is critical when trying to hone any skill and I always tried to encourage my students with the reminder that “even 30 second gestures count! It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece, it’s more important that you get those art muscles moving!” Pretty good advice if I do say so myself. :)

This week I would like to invite you to take a page from Tucker and Dale’s play book;  go out and find some dirt (or some charcoal), have some fun and get your paws dirty! Even if it’s only for a minute, it still counts!