Drawing cats and doing the freelance thing!
Hello all, back for another weekly update, and this week I'VE ACTUALLY DONE SOME ARTWORK!!! (We love to see it!)
After spending my weeks working on websites and payment links (all of which are fixed now by the way, thank God!), writing proposals, and applying for opportunities I finally got time to do some drawing, and even got a cheeky little opportunity to use some of the new paints I received from a friend for Christmas.
a little while back I saw this print design on Instagram that had Garfield laying on a sofa with the phrase "don't let the cats out or the cops in" and I fell in love with it, sadly I couldn't find the post to reference it here, but I pondered on it and I thought "huh, rather than buying this one, wouldn't it be cool to make my own version with portraits of my own indoor cats, and hang it in my hallway?"
So, that's what I set out to do!
I started with the paintings you see below of my gorgeous boy TJ, I wasn't super sure how I wanted it to look at that moment, and honestly was just having fun playing around with my new paints, but I struggled a lot with getting the white of his face right, and ended up making him look old, I played around with different materials and textures, but I realised I was trying to paint these almost hyper realistic pictures of him, which just isn't my style at all, so I realised, why am I doing that? and decided to try and find some inspiration to get him further back to my style of working.
I decided to look at some illustrations and designs for some inspiration to look at a different way of doing things, so of course I returned to my biggest source of inspiration, tattoos!
Below are some of the resource images I used, and please go check out their original creators. I knew that I wanted to capture him in a way that showed his gorgeous eyes, his fluffy little face, and the sweetness of his expression. So from looking at these I decided to tweak how I was adding texture in, how I was painting his eyes, and decided it might be wise to add a body in to make him look more balanced, plus this will fill more of my canvas when I come to paint the actual painting.
So, after looking at some inspiration and trying out a new way of drawing, I came up with a TJ design that I think captures his gorgeous little face perfectly! (not that big man seems too bothered by it. Kids, am I right?)
And now that I had this technique and idea solidified, I decided to move on and do a painting of my gorgeous girl Gizmo. I started out with her little head as trial, and I'm really pleased with how it came out. I think the next steps are for me to add a body in, and then once I have this down for a Gizmo painting I can move on to my big boy canvas and start getting the final product finished!
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