Interiors with Gustave

When I come home from work for lunch, or at the end of the day, it is not uncommon for me to see this as I'm entering the house:

What I typically find whenever I come home.

My cat Gustave absolutely loves staring at people. If he were human, he'd probably be considered a creeper. Between his large, yellow-green eyes and his long, black fur, his presence often exudes a certain portentous quality. If I were superstitious, I'd even call it ominous, but he's such a goofy character, I find his intense gaze more humorous than foreboding. For all his visual presence, his personality is far too silly for an Edgar Alan Poe story.

It wasn't at all unusual then, when I woke up a few months ago to find Gustave staring at me from the bedroom. Normally I'd just go back to sleep, but something about the scene struck me, so I decided to sketch it:

What caught my fancy was the juxtaposition between the bedroom itself and Gustave's presence. The morning light gave the room a warm, glowing quality with ample reflected light, reminding me of Charles Sheeler's interiors of his Doylestown home. Add fluffy Gustave with his wide, staring eyes into this Precisionist vision, and you've got yourself a pretty funny juxtaposition.

Image courtesy of https://theartstack.com/artist/charles-sheeler/staircase-doylestown-1

While the light itself reminded me of Sheeler, however, the actual palette felt more akin to Andrew Wyeth. These house I live in these days has white walls, with a light, gray-green trim around the doorways and a light brown wooden floor. It's a study in muted neutrals not unlike Wyeth's palette, and in the stillness of the morning, the space exuded a mild disquiet.

Image courtesy of https://www.delawareonline.com/story/life/2017/06/23/brandywine-river-museum-andrew-wyeth-centennial/418525001/

 Then there was the doorway itself. I found Gustave's presence by a door, a liminal, transitional space, intriguing, and thought that it imbued the scene with a sense of foreboding. Even if Gustave himself is not a menacing cat in personality, his visual presence in the drawing itself evokes a slightly unsettling quality, given the negative attributes historically associated with black cats. In retrospect, Gustave's appearance in the doorway reminds me of the illustrations of Gustave Dore, particularly his opening scene for, appropriately enough, The Raven.

Image courtesy of https://theyearofhalloween.com/2014/01/31/friday-night-features-the-raven/gustave-dore-the-raven-etched-illustration-darkness-there/

A few days after I made that first sketch, I started paying more attention to Gustave's presence around the house. As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I've lately taken a greater interest in my immediate surroundings, most notably my walks to work, but I've also started casting my visual net inside the house. Given that Gustave is such a prominent part of my life, it only seemed fair to start drawing him more frequently, so I began a series of interior scenes, all featuring my cat.

This second scene resonated with me because it took the idea of the liminal doorway one step further with the introduction of the hallway mirror. Gustave himself sits at the entrance to a hallway, a transitional space, while the mirror on the hallway closet door reflects back to us the living room that Gustave is staring into. With its themes of reflection and transition, this particular sketch reminds me of sixteenth-century memento mori portraits and still lives, paintings meant to remind viewers of the transience of life and our inevitable motion toward the permanent transition of death. 

Image courtesy of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon_(mythology)

Gustave almost seems like a little Charon here, the ferryman to Hades in Greek mythology. Instead of the River Styx though, he's merely the guardian of the hallway, which, incidentally enough, leads to my bedroom. 

The play between reflected light and shadow soon became a driving force for these sketches. When drawing Gustave, I always made a point of drawing him as opaque as possible in order to heighten the contrast between him and the surrounding space. Being an only cat, Gustave tends to perceive himself as the dominant presence in any space, so this is as much a pun on his personality as it is a pun on Precisionist painting. When I shared this particular sketch on Instagram, a couple of viewers commented that it reminded them of Edward Gorey's work. I hadn't thought of that initially, but given his tendency toward macabre humor, I can see it now, particular in all the linework needed to fill in Gustave's form.

Image courtesy of https://vimeo.com/73252561

 I took the macabre one step further when I did this sketch. I had gotten up in the middle of the night to get some water, and sure enough, I found Gustave staring at me from the study, the tapetum lucidum of his eyes giving off an eerie glow as they reflected the hallway nightlight. I learned that term years ago in during a middle school trip to Catalina Island, and thanks to the stupid dance the counselors made us do to remember the word, I've never forgotten it.

Sometimes Gustave takes a more subtle approach to his staring, as is the case in this drawing. In this reversal from the last sketch, I'm now looking out from the study, while he's the one in the hallway. I only saw half of his face this time, but it was enough to make his presence known. As with all the previous sketches, the play between light, shadow, and reflected light especially intrigued me, all interrupted by Gustave's opaque black fur and gaping eye.

 In more recent sketches I've been showing Gustave in motion, as he's rarely a static animal. In this drawing he's on what I call ghost patrol, that time in the night when cats scamper around the house to rid themselves of excess energy. Gustave is an enthusiastic ghost hunter, and tends to barrel forward with his front paws splayed out in front of him. Even if he can't catch the ghosts, his thundering, awkward gallop is probably sufficient to drive them off.

In a change of pace from my previous sketches, this more recent one shows Gustave nearly asleep, those wide-open eyes nearly closed now in somnolent contentedness. This spot by the window is a particular favorite of his, allowing to enjoy the warm sunlight as well as watch birds.

It's been a fun challenge to draw Gustave all around the house, and to pay attention to the nuance and variety available within a single theme, whether it's the vantage point within the room, the thematic undertones of the scene I choose to draw, or Gustave's own demeanor. I definitely would like to so something more formal with these sketches, perhaps a group of paintings, but for the moment I've been enjoying being able to draw Gustave in new ways. And of course he appreciates the attention, because he's the only kitty that matters.