Tl;dr: I made an orange tabby cat puzzle and donated it to a Cat Rescue for their fundraising auction this weekend (Fundraiser over, Orange tabby made $250 for the Catcade ).
I make hand-painted wooden art puzzles, and came up with this fun idea to create semi-custom puzzles by having a cat head shape with eyes and a nose. Then we pick a mouth style out of 10, and a decoration out of 10, which equals 100 possible puzzle combinations. Each piece has been puzzled out, and by using layers in inkscape and turning on and off the correct ones, I get a different puzzle!
Here are 3 others in the same collection that I have made – “Blue Raspberry” is at the Live Auction for the Catcade Cat Prom, “Dear Elsie” took a boat overseas to France, and Bird Mouth was teh first!
Oh my word!!! These are wonderful! I sincerely hope they raised tons of money for the Cat Rescue in your area!! I love each one but this orange baby is just perfect! Love it!
So I have to ask and verify, the lines around the mouth and eyes are just from painting/drawing, and they are not cut lines? I would have sworn they were cut lines until I saw the unpainted version.
Very nice! Did you custom make the jigsaw pieces yourself? They look very original, quite a different design from the jigsaw puzzle generators! Great workmanship and painting!
@wesleyjames , I had to look again until I understood what you were seeing – the “mouse paw” is whiskers that happened to be inside a round connector, so kinda looks like a paw. Which is a great idea, and I might end up adding a waving paw to a future one!
@advtrvlr, I do design the jigsaw shapes myself, it is a style know as “Victorian Cut”. A majority of wooden puzzle sellers (scroll saw or laser cut) cut in this much more fun and intricate style, compared to grid cut of a standard cardboard puzzle. If you are interested in non-standard puzzle generators, try these two: Fractal jigsaw puzzle generator or https://cuttingtemplates.com/templates/differential-growth-puzzle (be aware that this is am http site, not https, so it might come up as “danger!” on your browser).
@Pearl, I use a combination of cutting and scoring, and the lines you see are either/both, depending on where cuts intersect with image. It makes it a bit easier to paint, a bit like paint-by-numbers!
@cynd11, my newest order of coloring is to gesso the ply, cover both sides with masking, cut, remove masking and wash with a bit of dish soap and a wet microfiber cloth, then to watercolor it with professional grade colors. Then clear coat with Krylon Triple Thick Clear Glaze, to make the colors sing again. It is quite a bit different to paint watercolors on gessoed wood compared to watercolor paper!
@kelley1, the blue cat is my colorful representation of the black cat Elsie, who live in France and loves to watch the Eurasian Blue Tit birdies outside her window. Her owner was delighted with how she turned out!
Well…now that i slow down to look…so it is. But I suppose that’s where the whole subjective art thing comes into play. And hey, inspiration indeed springs from anywhere….but usually someone making a mistake.
So I have to ask, because I struggle with whether to paint before or after, do you airbrush or hand paint each piece individually? Your finished product is so clean around all the puzzle piece edges. I struggle with painting in general and would love to be able to get a finished product even half as nice as yours. Your work is so amazing.
@wesleyjames, I also find that mistakes can sometimes be the best inspiration as you have to figure out how to make it fit!
@spedneault, my newest order of coloring is to gesso the ply, cover both sides with masking, cut, remove masking and wash with a bit of dish soap and a wet microfiber cloth, then to watercolor it with professional grade colors. Then clear coat with Krylon Triple Thick Clear Glaze, to make the colors sing again. The watercolors mostly sink in to the wood and don’t show on the edges or the score and cut lines, which is why I use them, plus the multi color blending effect.
Try it, it is pretty fun, but that clear coat is a huge part of making the colors pop again!
