Portraits of Animals

This glass votive is etched, embellished and painted by hand and patterned after one of my daily cat sketches, “The Daily Chase”. It’s made from a repurposed stuffed olive jar 2” round and 6″ tall and comes with an LED tea light. Price includes shipping.

The Daily Chase Feline Votive

On this jar I etched the entire outside of the jar to better diffuse the light from the candle, brushed the inside of the jar for the striped background, then painted the cat figures on the outside.

I used alcohol ink on the inside and I’ve found it can be easily wiped but not scrubbed, and I’m not sure how it would react to an actual flame. For this reason I am selling these with an LED tea light so you won’t need to worry about scrubbing off wax or blackening from the candle.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

“The Daily Chase”, pastel on textured paper, 5″ x 6″ © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

This is Basil and Bella in their daily chase around the house when they were still kittens. Working in my studio I heard the thundering of little black paws coming up the steps, saw two blurs run across the landing into the bathroom and thump around in the tub, then run across the landing to the bedroom and bounce on the bed, Bella in the lead at one point, Basil at the next. Not sure where the colors came from but that they are happy and I like them.

You can read more about the art and my daily sketches on The Creative Cat.

ABOUT MY HANDMADE REPURPOSED CONDIMENT, PICKLE AND PRESERVE JAR VOTIVES

I see things others might recycle or throw away as creative possibilities. I save jars and use a fair number around the house for storage and for projects in my studio and recycle the rest. For years I’ve considered ways to make votives with my artwork just like the ones I’ve received as gifts and began saving the more interesting small jars I had for a someday project, including jars from relish and mustard, jelly and preserves, olives, jalapeños and other pickled items, salsa and other sauces, and more. Each one has its own unique quality and inspiration for me.

When summer came along and I set up my deck with all my varied votives I knew I’d found the project for those jars. I knew I wanted to both etch the glass and paint a design on it somehow, and found alcohol inks, which adhere to glass. On some jars I etched the entire outside of the jar to better diffuse the light from the candle, painted the inside of the jar with the color patterned background, then painted a figure or design on the outside. On others I etched the inside and painted my design on the outside, and on some I’ve done a combination of both.

OTHER VOTIVES

Find other votives featuring cats, butterflies, flowers, nature and wildlife in my Handmade Gifts Gallery or search “votives”.

Other items with the same art or design

To find all items on this site with the same art or design, use the search box for the name of the artwork and you'll find all that's available.

Don’t miss any new items or opportunities!

“Follow” the Portraits of Animals blog with the link in the upper left. Sign up to receive posts in email, or in your favorite reader using the links in the right-hand column.

Sign up for e-newsletters

You can also sign up for my monthly e-newsletters to receive special discounts and find out where I’ll be with my artwork.

Click here for the Creative Cat Preview E-newsletter, for feline and animal-specific products and information.

Click here for the Art & Merchandise E-newsletter, for landscapes, nature, urban scenes and more.

For art, photos and writing as I develop it, visit my blogs.

See feline art and photos as they happen on The Creative Cat, along with feline news, health, welfare, rescue stories and more.

See daily photos as I post them on Today.

Read poetry, short stories, essays and more on Paths I Have Walked.

. . . . . . .

© 2018 | www.PortraitsOfAnimals.net | Published by Bernadette E. Kazmarski

All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.

This glass votive is etched by hand and finished with a clear label I printed from my artwork “Star of Wonder”. It’s made from a purchased cube-shaped glass vase 3.25″ in each dimensionand comes with an LED tea light. Price includes shipping.

Star of Wonder feline votive.

I etched the inside of the vase to better diffuse the light from the candle, then printed the design on a purchased clear vinyl label and burnished it onto the vase.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Star of Wonder holiday card.

This design is adapted from a holiday card, and of course inspired by and features my fine felines.

We don’t really celebrate any one tradition for the winter holidays, but we enjoy sharing traditions of all our friends. I had created the six-pointed star as part of an invitation I designed for a non-denominational holiday musical celebration a few years ago. It could have been that, while I worked on that design on my computer, one or more young black cats found it intensely interesting against the black background of the design and an idea was born, a universal message for the season, with cats. It wasn’t the one above at first, but another one, below, adapted from remembering the Four when they were kittens looking out the big window at the birds and the snow, then it was night and there was a star…

Star of Kittens holiday card.

I really like this design, and it was just what I’d envisioned. But there was another, more serious design developing in there. Soon I was looking for the purr-fect silhouette. You’ve seen me use daily sketches for new designs for merchandise, but I’ve also used daily photos. I remembered a feline silhouette from a photo of Mr. Sunshine looking up at a moth in the pendant lamp that I used for my annual Independence Day post Oooh! Aaah! I wanted to be certain to capture every single hair and whisker of that silhouette—it was very fun and worth every minute to isolate all those furs and whiskers to that his silhouette would look authentic.

Star of Wonder holiday card.

OTHER VOTIVES

Find other votives featuring cats, butterflies, flowers, nature and wildlife in my Handmade Gifts Gallery or search “votives”.

Other items with the same art or design

To find all items on this site with the same art or design, use the search box for the name of the artwork and you'll find all that's available.

Don’t miss any new items or opportunities!

“Follow” the Portraits of Animals blog with the link in the upper left. Sign up to receive posts in email, or in your favorite reader using the links in the right-hand column.

Sign up for e-newsletters

You can also sign up for my monthly e-newsletters to receive special discounts and find out where I’ll be with my artwork.

Click here for the Creative Cat Preview E-newsletter, for feline and animal-specific products and information.

Click here for the Art & Merchandise E-newsletter, for landscapes, nature, urban scenes and more.

For art, photos and writing as I develop it, visit my blogs.

See feline art and photos as they happen on The Creative Cat, along with feline news, health, welfare, rescue stories and more.

See daily photos as I post them on Today.

Read poetry, short stories, essays and more on Paths I Have Walked.

. . . . . . .

© 2018 | www.PortraitsOfAnimals.net | Published by Bernadette E. Kazmarski

All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.

This glass votive is etched by hand and finished with a clear label I printed from my artwork “Dusk in the Woods”. It’s made from a purchased cube-shaped glass vase 3.25″ in each dimension and comes with an LED tea light. Price includes shipping.

Dusk in the Woods votive, angled.

I etched the inside of the vase to better diffuse the light from the candle, then printed the design on a purchased clear vinyl label and burnished it onto the vase.

Above is the angle from one of the sides, below is the front of the votive.

Dusk in the Woods votive, front.

And below is the other side of the votive. In this portion of the painting the sun is actually setting over the stream and the candle lines up perfectly with that spot.

Dusk in the Woods votive, side.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Dusk in the Woods, pastel, 31″ x 23″, 2007 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

That “blue time of day”…a quick walk in the woods after a heavy snowfall as clouds parted and the sun set on the distant horizon, bare trees like sentinels. This time of day always carries a certain melancholy for me, as if a deep instinctive part of me realizes the sun is about to leave and may not come back. The moment stands in all its silent beauty along Robinson Run in Collier Township, on a trail in the woods running parallel to the Panhandle Trail.

I didn’t have my art materials with me when I saw this, but planned to return to do at least a portion of it under similar conditions. That time of day the light changes so quickly, but I could set up and be prepared for the moment I wanted. Alas, we had no appreciable snow for two years and this image was really begging to be painted—I was visualizing it daily and even dreaming about it, which is how I know a painting really needs to be done. I began with my photos, then put them away and spent the hours remembering that moment, the sound, the smell, the cold…

Most important was the color of the snow at that time of day, difficult to achieve in a painting because so much of that color depends on the reflected light from the sky, difficult to reproduce in a two-dimensional painting. I also wanted to capture the stillness of the woods in the large expanse of unbroken snow at the bottom, as all the winter wildlife had taken cover before the snow and still stayed protected, leaving only the constant, comforting gurgling of the water as it flowed past, shallow water rippling over a rocky stream bed.

OTHER VOTIVES

Find other votives featuring cats, butterflies, flowers, nature and wildlife in my Handmade Gifts Gallery or search “votives”.

Other items with the same art or design

To find all items on this site with the same art or design, use the search box for the name of the artwork and you'll find all that's available.

Don’t miss any new items or opportunities!

“Follow” the Portraits of Animals blog with the link in the upper left. Sign up to receive posts in email, or in your favorite reader using the links in the right-hand column.

Sign up for e-newsletters

You can also sign up for my monthly e-newsletters to receive special discounts and find out where I’ll be with my artwork.

Click here for the Creative Cat Preview E-newsletter, for feline and animal-specific products and information.

Click here for the Art & Merchandise E-newsletter, for landscapes, nature, urban scenes and more.

For art, photos and writing as I develop it, visit my blogs.

See feline art and photos as they happen on The Creative Cat, along with feline news, health, welfare, rescue stories and more.

See daily photos as I post them on Today.

Read poetry, short stories, essays and more on Paths I Have Walked.

. . . . . . .

© 2018 | www.PortraitsOfAnimals.net | Published by Bernadette E. Kazmarski

All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.

This glass votive is etched by hand and finished with a clear label I printed from my artwork “Solstice”. It’s made from a purchased shaped glass votive 3.25″ x 3.25″ and comes with an LED tea light. Price includes shipping.

Solstice votive.

I etched the inside of the vase to better diffuse the light from the candle, then printed the design on a purchased clear vinyl label and burnished it onto the vase.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

“Solstice”, pastel, 6″ x 6″, 2003 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

This painting is indeed from the Winter Solstice in 2003. As the sun began to set on a zero-degree day with a foot or more of snow the light was so beautiful that I took off in my car with my camera and art supplies. At the top of the hill the gentle pink and coral tones of the sunset melded with the blue of dusk on the field of unbroken snow at the old Christmas tree farm, one of my favorite spots. It was too cold to draw outside since I can’t wear gloves and would soon be dropping my pastels in the snow, so I positioned my car on a convenient side road and sketched this in my front seat. As it does sometimes, the sun seemed to hang in the trees just before it disappeared: solstice, “sun-stand-still”.

The moment when the sun stands still,
as it seemed to at this frigid, snow-covered
winter dusk,
spruces standing dignified sentinel
to the moment
of transition.

It’s just a little thing, 6″ x 6″, one of my favorites, especially now that the place is gone to development. It became the inspiration for an exhibit I hosted in 2004, “Winter White”.

And this painting, which I’ve always loved so much, has a wonderful home with a friend who also loves it very much.

(This is another of those beautiful places that isn’t there anymore.)

OTHER VOTIVES

Find other votives featuring cats, butterflies, flowers, nature and wildlife in my Handmade Gifts Gallery or search “votives”.

Other items with the same art or design

To find all items on this site with the same art or design, use the search box for the name of the artwork and you'll find all that's available.

Don’t miss any new items or opportunities!

“Follow” the Portraits of Animals blog with the link in the upper left. Sign up to receive posts in email, or in your favorite reader using the links in the right-hand column.

Sign up for e-newsletters

You can also sign up for my monthly e-newsletters to receive special discounts and find out where I’ll be with my artwork.

Click here for the Creative Cat Preview E-newsletter, for feline and animal-specific products and information.

Click here for the Art & Merchandise E-newsletter, for landscapes, nature, urban scenes and more.

For art, photos and writing as I develop it, visit my blogs.

See feline art and photos as they happen on The Creative Cat, along with feline news, health, welfare, rescue stories and more.

See daily photos as I post them on Today.

Read poetry, short stories, essays and more on Paths I Have Walked.

. . . . . . .

© 2018 | www.PortraitsOfAnimals.net | Published by Bernadette E. Kazmarski

All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.

This glass votive is etched by hand and finished with a clear label I printed from my artwork “Stained Glass Cats”. It’s made from a purchased glass vase 3.25″  x 3.25″ and comes with an LED tea light. Price includes shipping.

Stained Glass Cats votive.

I etched the inside of the vase to better diffuse the light from the candle, then printed the design on a purchased clear vinyl label and burnished it onto the vase.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Here’s an idea that’s been occurring to me lately as I watch the cats in the sun by the dining room window in early May. I love the way the glass in a stained glass panel is shaded light toward the center of its shape, darker outside by the shadow from the lead between the shapes, and even the rippled quality of the color in many pieces of glass. I’d considered oil pastel for this but they weren’t handy when Jelly Bean, Mewsette and Giuseppe gathered in the late afternoon sun in the dining room window. The geranium leaves were aglow, shadows were deep and colorful, and each cat is its unique color. I followed the simplified shapes and colors I saw through squinted eyes.

OTHER VOTIVES

Find other votives featuring cats, butterflies, flowers, nature and wildlife in my Handmade Gifts Gallery or search “votives”.

Other items with the same art or design

To find all items on this site with the same art or design, use the search box for the name of the artwork and you'll find all that's available.

Don’t miss any new items or opportunities!

“Follow” the Portraits of Animals blog with the link in the upper left. Sign up to receive posts in email, or in your favorite reader using the links in the right-hand column.

Sign up for e-newsletters

You can also sign up for my monthly e-newsletters to receive special discounts and find out where I’ll be with my artwork.

Click here for the Creative Cat Preview E-newsletter, for feline and animal-specific products and information.

Click here for the Art & Merchandise E-newsletter, for landscapes, nature, urban scenes and more.

For art, photos and writing as I develop it, visit my blogs.

See feline art and photos as they happen on The Creative Cat, along with feline news, health, welfare, rescue stories and more.

See daily photos as I post them on Today.

Read poetry, short stories, essays and more on Paths I Have Walked.

. . . . . . .

© 2018 | www.PortraitsOfAnimals.net | Published by Bernadette E. Kazmarski

All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.