10 secons sketches

Outside the art studio; out in the living world things move really fast. You can't ask the businessman who is already late for work to pose for a 10 minute life drawing. The solution is to get good at doing fast sketches with a black Sharpie Marker. I like these markers because they are permanent, and that forces me to make strong decisive lines in each drawing.
On the left is our cat, Lady Light. She is a Siamese kitten perching at the window sill, but she won't stay there for long. She likes to jump up and paw at things she sees outside the window. Lady Light never sits still for more than 10 seconds, unless she is sleeping. Even then, if you try to draw her when she is sleeping, it always seems like she can feel you studying her. She will wake up and run away to find a place of peace where she can rest undisturbed. To make the 1o second drawing you must have the awareness of a sniper. You have see your subject in the moment of whatever it's doing in that very instant that it's doing whatever it's doing it in. Your mind must be like a camera burning the image from your eyes into an everlasting impression in your mind, that lasts long after the cat has left the stage. You have to see the anatomy, and the size and shape relationships to get the feeling of the spontaneity of the subject's action in the drawing.
I will be doing a series of 10 second sketches of my cats in the months to come, and try to capture the essence of their personalities as a starting point for what may evolve into a series of acrylic paintings, or perhaps even a 2D, Flash animation.