Drawings: Kittehs!

I know it's been a while, but I finally have some drawings to show (wow, really?). I've been trying to push myself to keep drawing more... for several reasons. First because I'd like to, and second (most importantly), because I've been commissioned by my brother (♥) to do some illustrations for the political campaign office he works in (pics will be posted when finished). I need to get all the ugly drawings out now so I can start drawing good stuff! So, I've been doing some life drawing of my tuxedo cat Lucky. I think pets are the perfect life drawing models because well, it's free, and they're always lying around in the cutest positions. I think cats have such a beautiful round and fluid shape. They can stretch their bodies and torque their spine into crazy shapes. I love how their ears are always listening to the sounds around them. Okay, enough babble, here are my drawings:



I originally drew them with a blue Col-Erase animation pencil (the best type of pencil to draw with, IMO), scanned them, desaturated them, and then bumped up the contrast. Cheating a little? Maybe. But I wanted them to have a nice and crisp presentation, rather than the faded blue pencil.



I have always loved drawing cats, and drawing Lucky made me remember how much fun it is. Okay, waaay off tangent, but it's time for a story: One of my favourite artists who draws/paints animals is the German Expressionist painter Franz Marc. He created amaaaazing paintings of red deer, yellow cows, blue pigs and blue horses with gorgeous round shapes and some cubist influences. This Google search shows some of his amazing paintings. I LOVED Franz Marc in high school, he was definitely one of my art heroes. I loved him so much that one of my high school projects was of two brightly coloured cats curled up sleeping on a cloud in the sky. I painted everything in bright colours. I might have that painting somewhere in storage... who knows. But the models for those sleeping cats in my projects were my kitties. Like I said before, cats are the best life drawing models! :)



When I used to draw a lot (in College), my art teachers would say that for every 100 drawings, you'll maybe get 1 that's good... or something like that. They were really strict on us (man, do I have stories!). We were taught that unless your drawing was amazing (or got an A), you might as well throw it out and do it over again. So I would throw away my sketchbooks filled with drawings that I didn't like. My Mom was completely appalled and would rescue my sketchbooks from the garbage all the time (which annoyed me greatly, lol). But it's kind of silly because I really think you need to draw bad drawings to get good ones anyways. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just a part of the creative process. So now that I'm drawing again and showing my stuff without fear of criticism or bad marks (since I'm doing it for fun), well, it reminds me of my Mom rescuing the drawings I thought were not good enough. I know she'd be happy that I kept these and posted them on the internet! :)