Good morning, Cat's Meow

CatsMeow specializes in cut-and-pasted MS Paint collages, kitties, and marzipan babies. She's a top artist and pioneer at Paint Avant-Garde, and I recently had the great fortune to interview her:

You seem to be well-versed in the art of digital drawing. How did you get started in this wonderful pastime?

I was probably around eight years old the first time I saw someone draw in Microsoft Paint. Witnessing someone draw on a computer screen with a mouse blew my mind. I was never particularly good at drawing or coloring on paper, but for some reason I developed a knack for drawing with a mouse or touch pad. I've used more advanced digital drawing and editing programs before, but I always return to MS Paint. It's like an extension of my body or something. I know my way around the program and with it I can build images of whatever I dream up. Sure, there may be jagged edges but that's just become part of the style. If I really wanted straight edges, I could do it, and without a more advanced program too. MS Paint allows me to feel like I am the one drawing, and not just "cheating" by letting the software do it. Restrictions often give way to the best creativity.

I absolutely love "Buffalo Gals" - it both comforts me and horrifies me simultaneously. What is the inspiration behind this artwork?

Thank you, and I am so glad to comfort and horrify you all at once! I took a guitar class in high school and one of the simple traditional songs in our book was "Buffalo Gals." The lyrics go, "Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight? Come out tonight?? Come out tonight?! Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight, and dance by the light of the moon?!?" Well, I added the excessive punctuation for dramatic purposes. Anyway, I thought these lyrics were funny so I sketched a very literal cartoon of some buffalo-headed women dancing in the moonlight. My classmates enjoyed it so eventually I made it into an MS Painting, to horrify and comfort the world.

What's the meaning of "Fingerlegs" (or "We're all different with Linda Ellerbee")?

Well, I saw a picture online of a person who had their forearm amputated, and they had gotten a tattoo of a big fingernail near the end of the nub, so their short arm had essentially become a giant finger. Then I wondered, what if someone had a big nail tattooed on each of their amputated legs? It would be just like when you take your hand and make your index and middle finger walk across surface in front of you. Only the real thing! Fingerlegs! So I clipped some anatomical drawings to see how someone might look with either the tattooed arm as legs or with real fingers as legs. I liked them both, so I mangled up some more people and added Linda Ellerbee's head on one.. Why Linda? Maybe because I miss watching Nick News in the morning, or maybe because her head really complements those uneven foot-hands.

"I Made It!" seems to sum up 90% of my experiences at McDonald's. Is there a story behind this artwork?

My college roommate worked at McDonald's and told me about this custodian who worked at her store, an old black man with big separated teeth and such. Somehow (probably because it actually happens all the time) we came up with the scenario of a McDonald's customer angrily returning their food to the counter, yelling at the cashier, with the crazy old janitor in the background claiming responsibility for the order. I brought the vision to life because I believe the janitorial takeover of McDonald's food service is a growing worldwide concern and it is imperative for the public to witness such accurate propaganda as I have made here...I made it!

What about "Normal Woman" and "Clones of Normal Woman?" This woman appears to be exceedingly normal.

"Normal Woman" was a follow up to "Ordinary Guy," which were both experiments in MS Painting technique. I wanted to see how it would look to paint over a large photograph in patches of color I sampled from the original photo. It turned out cool and it's kind of a fun way to get a good (or normal?) looking picture. I got the photos from actually searching images of "normal women" and "ordinary guys." So that woman is, indeed, exceedingly normal. Her cloning incident happened when I was trying to choose a background for her. I had recently learned how to easily proportionally resize selections on MS Paint and went a little crazy with the normal woman, if that's possible. I took a screenshot because I liked how it showed the Microsoft Paint window, hinting at what I'm working with.

Who’s your favorite artist on Paint Avant-Garde and why?

I've really been enjoying the works of Austerlitz. Why? Well besides the recurring inclusion of my most favorite things (cats, Whoopi Goldberg, and Fred Savage), I'm just very jealous that I didn't think of "The Great CATSby" first!

Is digital drawing your only creative outlet, or do you have others (and if so, what are they)?

Besides writing obscene poetry, I have a disturbing and often visually nauseating blog at http://manglejangles.blogspot.com/.

And finally, what’s your favorite color? Why is it vastly superior to other colors?

Bright fuschia, and honorable mention to cyan, because I find that those colors are the most difficult to stare at. Especially when the two are alternating in front of your eyes at a rapid rate.

And the most childish artwork is...attack on canada!

The world's longest unguarded border explodes in Austerlitz's artwork "attack on canada (terrorist haven)." These child-like scribbles are undeniably a pure art-form, depicting how insidious, unscrupulous, despicable Canadians are harboring terrorists, and how the free world (Team USA) is in the process of kicking their sorry maple-syrup-eating arses.

GiliusThunderhead also weighed in on the scene, depicting a nightmare scenario where the whole damned Pacific Northwest secedes and take sides with the Maples Leaves. The filthy rapscallions.

With a PA-G score of 9, this artwork was bumped to the top of the heap, earning it the title "Most Childish Artwork" in all of Paint Avant-Garde. Congratulations Austerlitz! But more importantly, this artwork highlights the grave danger our country faces from the scheming, conniving beaver-lovers right across our border. Time for more nation-building, anyone?

My drawing skills are tight. Dont' be steppin

When I was in elementary school I was pretty convinced that I was the best artist in the entire building. My skills were so damn tight that no one ever thought to challenge me. Then one day another boy casually implied that he could draw better than me...shocking! I was so infuriated that I proceeded to draw the most epic drawing I had yet created: Cat Beach. It was basically a beach covered with suave cats in sunglasses carrying skateboards, surfboards, and boom boxes. They were playing beach volleyball and mackin it with bikini-clad cat honeys that were lying on the beach.

I've recreated Cat Beach in MS Paint, and although its grandeur pales in comparison to the original, you can get some idea of its legend:

Inflict severe pain or death through art

You may know someone whom you strongly dislike. You may want to inflict extreme harm on that person or bring her to an excruciating end. Yet physically harming that person is only going to cause you a headache. You're probably going to have to deal with police, go to court, serve life in prison... you know story.

Since bludgeoning/kicking/stabbing/shooting someone isn't really feasible, why not think of elaborate ways of offing the person through art? That's what my 7-year-old students have done by drawing various stages of my pain and eventual death. Here are some drawings for your inspiration:

The book of death
This one is great because the teacher (me) is actually being crushed to death by a giant-size version of his own book. Oh, the irony of it.

 The shoe of death
Same concept, only this time the teacher is having the life squeezed out of him by a giant teacher's shoe.

The giant student -- bringer of pain
Here a colossal student is pounding the teacher into a mug with a table spoon, then drinking him for morning tea.

 

The intestinal escape fraught with peril

As if it ain't enough to plant the teacher into a lion's intestinal track. Now he's got to make a daring escape...good luck with that one.

The jetpack flight from hell
Give the teacher a jetpack and watch him fly into the sky. Then send a jumbo jet right into his path and watch the fun ensue.

The nightmare train ride
Kind of like a normal train ride, only instead of riding inside the train, the teacher is dragged underneath it.

Santa Snakes

I was obsessed with snakes and reptiles when I was younger and loved to constantly draw them. One holiday season, I was sitting around the house drawing a bunch of snakes and my Dad told me "It's Christmas time...why don't you draw something about Christmas." And thus, Santa Snakes was born. Although the original drawing is long gone, I've just made an MS Paint recreation of this legendary artwork:

Why fans are going to kill you in your sleep

In South Korean, there is a widespread belief that leaving a fan on at night can kill you. There are at least a few media reports each year about people dying from this, and all fans in Korea are apparently outfitted with timers so the fan will stop running after a set period of time. Even the Korean government warns consumer against fan death, particularly in the summer time.

There are a range of reasons that you should learn to fear the fan: fans create dangerous levels of CO2 in the room, fans can cause you to die from hypothermia, fans can cause you to die from heat exhaustion, fan blades chop up oxygen molecules so you can't breath them, and fans change the air pressure in a room, creating a vacuum of pain that will cause your heart to explode. Of course, all of these beliefs are refuted by scientific evidence, but science shmience. Fans are evil.

One of my Korean students brilliantly portrayed why you ought to run for the hills when you see a fan:

 And don't even think about getting into a UFO with a fan, fool:

"Zombie Chickens from Mars" explained

For some years during college and afterward, I worked with a philosophy author doing editing work and literature research for her books. She has two grandchildren and one day one of them drew a few artworks for me, including the masterpiece "Zombie Chickens from Mars."

So just what is going on in this picture? Well, to paraphrase what the artist explained to me, Earth is OVERRUN with zombie chickens from Mars that look almost exactly like normal chickens except they have bloodshot eyes and green slime coming out of their mouths (see the crazed, rabid zombie chicken on the right?). In this picture, a normal chicken is fleeing from a zombie chicken. He crosses the road to escape, but instead he gets hit by a car. How sad is that?

Normal dog, my dog

When I was young, my family had a big, fat 'lemon-drop' beagle named Eeyore who was mostly lethargic, undisciplined, and moody. He was basically the opposite of the archetypal boyhood dog, which I think of as being an energetic, frisky, loyal, and friendly sporting dog. Over time, I came to appreciate and respect Eeyore's stubborn personality and bizarre antics, but in the beginning I simply wanted a normal dog that could play fetch. One day, I grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and expressed the way I felt -- drawing the now-legendary "Normal dog, my dog."

Although the original artwork is long gone, I've made a left-handed recreation of the original masterpiece in MS Paint!

Behold! A childish art competition

My students have donated a stockpile of art to me and the more I look through it and contemplate it, the more I realize that children are artistic geniuses. Sure, they lack eye-hand coordination and aesthetic know-how, but they more than make up for that with their artistic inhibition and abounding imagination. Child art is cool for a lot of the same reasons that a 5-minute MS Paint artwork is cool -- the bar is set so low that you can forgive the tackiness and embrace the wackiness of the art.

So in honor of these little artists, I announce a 2-week "Child Art Competition" starting immediately and ending on Sunday, June 19th. Art that you submit to this competition should be drawn as poorly as possible (use the mouse with your left hand if you're a righty, or just get really drunk, then draw). You can either create your artwork from scratch, draw an artwork you remember from your childhood, or enhance and re-post art from PA-G's child art stockpile. Then tag it with "child art" to enter it into the competition (you can make more than one submission). May the most childish artwork win!