Week 48 - A white cat on a lavender background

Ultramarine Blue. Lavender, Indigo & Green Grey

November’s theme of “Cats” and #mewvember ends this week and there’s one final cat-related painting that I’ve taken colours from, by the American artist Gertrude Abercrombie.

My #coloricombo #mewvember cohost for this month is Terry Runyan and there’s a giveaway of products and art materials this month, including Terry’s fantastic book Painting Cats and one of my 2025 calendars published by Flametree. Have a look at this post for details on how to enter the draw.

Cats and giveaways...

Look out for for December’s theme soon. Will it be Xmas related?Maybe…

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Gertrude Abercrombie (1909–1977) was an influential American artist known for her surrealist works often featuring self-portraits and dreamlike, mysterious imagery.

Known as the "the queen of the bohemian artists", Abercrombie was born in Austin, Texas to parents who were professional opera singers and happened to be based there at the time. Whilst Abercrombie was young, the family was very mobile, living in various towns and cities across America and even in Berlin, Germany prior to the First World War. On their return, they settled in Chicago.

She studied Romance Languages at the University of Illinois before taking up figure drawing and attending the American Academy of Art in Chicago. She worked briefly as a commercial artist, mainly for department stores before taking up art full time.

Abercrombie was a prominent figure in the city's jazz scene and was friends with Dizzy Gillespie (who performed at her second wedding in 1948), Charlie Parker and Sarah Vaughn, whose music all inspired her own creative work. It’s often compared to the surrealism of René Magritte, who she acknowledged as an influence, but her style remained distinctly personal and idiosyncratic.

“I am not interested in complicated things nor in the commonplace, I like to paint simple things that are a little strange.”

When she died, her will established the Gertrude Abercrombie Trust which distributed her work and the work of other artists she owned to a number of cultural institutions. Today, Abercrombie’s works are held in the collections of the Smithsonian, the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and are considered iconic examples of American surrealism.

Read more about Abercrombie here. You can see more of her work here and watch a short video about her here.

"White Cat", Oil on canvas, Gertrude Abercrombie, 1939

Colour Combination

The colours for this weeks prompt are Ultramarine Blue. Lavender, Indigo & Green Grey. Use the #coloricombo colours along with a light neutral and dark colour to create an artwork in any medium and style. 

November’s theme is “Cats”, remember to tag #mewvember. You can use this as topic and create in any way as you wish, using the week’s colours in any medium and style.

I love to see what you do with the coloricombo colours. If you'd like to share your work, please tag #coloricombo and #estemacleod on social media. You're also welcome to post in the private Facebook group Creative Prompts. If you are enjoying these weekly colour prompts please share them with others who’ll like them as weel.

Let’s Paint Cats….

Keeping with this month’s theme, the mini-course Let’s Paint Cats is available at a 25% discount until the end of November. All of my courses have one year’s access from registration.

Paid Coloricombo subscribers get a 40% discount, please see below for your exclusive code.