cat – Back to the Drawing Board

Drawing a Day Challenge: Day #7

Today is Drawing #7, which means one week has been completed! Woo hoo!

I feel like every day of the challenge there has been some circumstance or another that makes me question as to if I’ll be able to get that drawing done or not (I guess that’s why it’s call a challenge?). Today was no exception as it was a snow day (and another confirmed for tomorrow already!), and I find it really hard to concentrate with everyone home.

Thankfully, my husband took the kiddos outside to clear the driveway and play, and I was able to get most of the drawing done during that time, and was able to finish it up while the kiddos were playing quietly!

Title: Mozzie

Medium: Graphite pencil and white ink on acid free paper

Size: 5×7

Continue reading “Drawing a Day Challenge: Day #7” →

The Cat and the River Thames Easter Eggs

Behind the Scenes, Illustrations

I LOOOOVE Easter Eggs in movies. They’re little inside jokes, references, or messages hidden in a movie, and I just find them to be a fun little treat.

Well, I hid a few Easter Eggs in the second Boathouse Mouse book this time, and I’d like to share them with you.

And, because I’m silly, I just so happened to put them all on the same page, rather than spread out through the entire book.

To start off, here is Mozzie:

Mozzie is my kitty, and he was jealous that Magnus gets to be the star of the book.

The next kitty is Lily:

Lily is Magnus’s sister, and well, he couldn’t be in the book if she wasn’t included as well!

And the last kitty is Moe:

Moe was my daughter’s cat. He ran away almost 2 years ago, and although it wasn’t unusual for him to escape and be gone for days on end, we fear the worst as he never returned. I have him sleeping because we’re assuming he’s sleeping eternally now.

The last Easter Egg is this fishmonger and customer:

I’m starting something new with this book; whoever I dedicate the book to will be snuck into an illustration. I dedicated this book to my parents, so my dad is here as the fishmonger, and my mom is the customer. My mom hates having her picture taken, hence the customer facing away from the viewer (you’re welcome, mom!).

I hope you enjoyed these Easter Eggs! What has been your favorite Easter Egg in a movie? I love how in Disney and Pixar movies they always sneak characters from previous movies into other movies as toys, posters, or background characters!

Mozzie

Behind the Scenes

Here’s a little drawing I just finished:

Title: Mozzie

Size: 6″ x 8″

Medium: Graphite on paper

When: Summer 2014

Purpose: I had a lot of fun drawing QD and Milo, and wanted to try to do other animals. A cat seemed like a good next choice, so this is just a study of Mozzie.

History: Mozzie is my one year old cat. He sleeps in the most random positions, and his favorite place to sleep is on my office chair. Sometimes he’ll share my chair and then I can work on writing blog posts or editing pictures of my work, but more often than not he gets annoyed that I’m invading his space and walks away pouting. One day he was laying on the chair, hugging his feet to his head. He looked so cute, that I had to photograph him, and eventually draw him 🙂

Thought process: It was fairly straight forward. I liked his position, and the composition that I thought was best was just cropping in on his face and paws. The fact that Mozz is a black and white cat made it really easy to differentiate between the lights and darks when drawing him!

Problems I encountered: Keeping the white parts white enough. My paper itself is an off-white color, so the brilliant whites already were dulled down. As I draw, areas tend to get smudged as well, so I don’t think there’s enough of the bright whites here. If I had used really white paper, I could go back with paint or white charcoal to highlight the areas. On this paper, it would just look odd with the off-white paper.

Fun tidbits: Mozzie was named after a character from the TV show White Collar 🙂

We actually got Mozz as a kitten from Milo’s parents! He was born in their hay loft by a stray cat, and when I heard they had black and white kittens, I had to get one. He actually has a white tip to his tail, so it looks like he’d dipped his black tail into white paint and was trying to paint. Once I saw his tail, I knew he was the kitty for me!

This was the first piece I’ve used a mechanical pencil on. I’d seen and heard about other artists using them, but didn’t know if they’d really work or not. It was amazing getting into the tiny places and doing fur with it! I’ve officially added a mechanical pencil to my pencil case because now I’m not sure I’ll be able to do a drawing without it!

Favorite part: How fuzzy his chest fur looks (above his chin), and his front paw hanging in front. They capture his fuzziness and I think Mozz has awesome big white paws!

Least favorite part: Getting the black fur to look right. If you go to dark, you run the risk of the graphite getting shiny or too pigmented to be able to erase. If you go too light, it looks gray and there isn’t enough difference between the lights and darks. As this was just a study of a cat and not a full blown piece (think of it as a practice piece, a learning experience), it’s okay that it’s not perfect. It’s something I’m going to have to work on, though!

Do you prefer dogs or cats? I thought I’ve always been a dog person, but now I’m starting to lean towards cats!