Expressive colour

This was drawn for my drawing in colour course. The topic was expressive colour, and the instructions for this really mystified me. We were to draw a scene from our window or in our house, or a set of objects that have a strong association for us, and use colour to express a mood. First off, isn't colour always expressive? And secondly, why a set of objects? For examples, we were given some landscapes of stormy weather. The colour wasn't to represent the exact colours we saw before us, but something else, a feeling you want to convey.

I don't usually start a drawing with the intention of conveying any feeling, what I hope to do is show what I saw. So this assignment was a struggle for me, and I'm not sure I got it. If we were to start from the domestic, the most obvious thing for me to draw was my cat. He's always lying around the house somewhere and I obviously have more feeling for him than I would an object. But as I set out to draw, I wasn't sure what drawing the scene of him asleep could convey...languidness on a summer's day, laziness, sleepiness? Who knows. I didn't think too much about the colours I chose, I just chose them by some instinct, and I'm not sure it worked. I was uncomfortable throughout the process because I was never sure what was expected of me, and at the same time I was certain that my tutor would think that drawing my cat was just too twee and not the done thing. Well, I did it anyway. And if the very least it achieves is another set of questions that sets me thinking about what art is and why I'm drawing and what I want to achieve by doing it, then so be it.

Below are some pictures of the moments I did enjoy, when Caesar got interactive and tried to join in with the art. I'm gonna end up as the crazy old lady with all the cats, aren't I?

Well, there would be some pictures if blogger was working properly, but it's having problems uploading photos yet again, so there's only one. I'll post the other one separately later.