Kitty Complete!

I took a vacation day today as my 5 year old was home (PD day).  So I took the extra time to push things further along and finally finished the kitty image.  Well, I think it's done anyway.  I can't come up with any more damage I can do to it - so I declare it DONE!

To finish things off, I worked on the darks and lights of the fur to make it seem silky and shiny.  I was trying for very healthy and luxurious fur.  Then I sprayed the entire drawing with a workable fixative.  This allows me to work on the topmost highlights and whiskers without smudging up the work so far. (Warning about workable fixative - be sure that you are not going to want to do any more erasing on the original work as you can only add to the pic after "fixing" it.  You can erase anything you add, but nothing below that.)

So, I sprayed it thoroughly (it really sucks to think you've "fixed" a picture and then find out otherwise after the fact) and then applied the whiskers and some extra white to some of the highlights.  I haven't done the final spray to protect the image yet, but here's the finished piece:

If you'd like to see the steps it took to get to this final image, check out my past blog postings with "Kitty" titles.

Do you know anyone with a black cat that would like a drawing like this?  Or perhaps someone who really likes black cats?  Send me a message and we can talk ;)

I had some time left over so I thought I'd start tackling the skull image again.  As I said before, I was having trouble with some of the shading aspects.  I've been reading James Gurney's book "Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist" and he said that one of the best ways to deal with this type of problem is to make a maquette.  Essentially this is a model of your subject, usually made from clay or some other sculpting medium.  Since I didn't have any clay, I used some of my kids' play dough (home made):

One of the disadvantages of using play dough is that it's very soft and squishy so it doesn't hold the shape well or for long while you're holding it.  The advantage to doing a maquette, I found, was that I could see how the image should be in 3D.  It helped me make the image more accurate around the eyes and cheek bones.  I still have a bit of work to do on this one, mostly shading, but hopefully not too much more. This is what the drawing looks like now (can you see the name in the skull?):

Spring is definitely in the air in Kitchener!  I took some very nice pics of the crocuses growing in my garden and I may do a painting of one of them next.

James Gurney is the creator/author/illustrator of the Dinotopia books.  I've added Gurney's books to my recommended booklist.  If you're interested in checking out his blog, you can find it here: www.gurneyjourney.blogspot.ca/

Kitty Part IV

We might actually finish this piece soon!  It can be difficult when there is so much detail to decide when you are "done".  We aren't there yet (as you will see), but I think we're in the home stretch!

I had a horrible flu this weekend so I didn't get to do any work on kitty here, but this morning went very well.  I have found in the past that if you aren't able to focus (even a little) on what you are doing then you will likely do more harm than good and you should leave it for now.  Today was a different story however, and I was able to make good progress.

So first of all, I tried the kneaded eraser to remove the offending arm.  Remember what I said about the green paper?  Ya, I noticed pretty quick that this wasn't the way to do it.  All I had was a green arm over a black body - not very realistic!  So instead, I went over the area with black conte (much better result) and used an eraser to re-shape the arm.  I had to go back to my reference photo for this.  And then I started applying the lights and darks.

I think the arm looks much more appropriate to the rest of the body shape now and even comes forward toward the viewer better.  Since I still had some time left over, I started putting in the lights and darks and shadows on the grass and leaves (right side of pic).  Instead of using a stump to blend the grey tones, I used an acrylic paint brush (natural hair) to sweep in the direction of the leaves.  The brush creates a much softer blending than the stump and I will be using it in my final application of fur on kitty (you can see that I've actually already done some on the new arm).

I'm not too happy with the leaves in the top left and I still have to do the shading, etc on the left side grass area, but we are in the home stretch now.  If I hold my breath and think it very quietly, I might even finish this week - but don't tell anyone ;)

Here kitty, kitty, kitty...

I had to take a break from the skull image for a bit.  There are some details with it that I'm trying to work out.  But in the meantime, I had this guy in my head suddenly for the last few days and thought I'd try to see what comes of it.

As you can see, I'm using a reference photo for the inspiration of this one.  It's still in the preliminary stages, but you can see that I've got the shape defined as well as the major lights and darks.  This piece is being done in conte on green canson paper. 

There's still a lot to do on it, but I'm pretty much done with the reference photo at this point.

What I will be focusing on next are the eyes.  In my opinion the eyes can make or break an image.  If you get the eyes right, viewers will forgive other minor deviations, but get them wrong and the whole image is wrong!  Unfortunately my understanding of cat eye biology is limited so I'm going to have to do some research to get them just right.  Because I like to work in a "realistic" manner, I will also double check my shape placements before continuing with the midtones, lights and darks. 

I plan to better define the grass and clover leaves so they are thick and lush-looking.  I also have to better define the light source (from the right).

Blog Update!

I have added new pics to the "Drawings" page if you are interested.  I've also added some details on what they were made with.