Kitty's Drawings

Hiiiii

Today’s random sketches – drawn on the train. No referencing peeps here. Except the dude with the hair hehe.
Nothing finished for you lately cos I’m workin on stuff. I can’t show you half a drawing as I swear it’s a curse…I’m already a bit over that drawing of the secret blogger. But I really should finish it. When I’m done with this weeks CHOW (theme is Atlantian Anarchist – yeh that’s right).

There! Click to make larger if you want to

Bya!

A few sketches from the train today. Not trying to be realistic because I can’t really sit staring at people too long. So these are drawn with only a quick glance to try and capture as much in my memory as possible, and then draw what I can.

A kid, some crows and a guy at one of the stations with a backpack. I’m not sure if he actually had a backpack – I only got to look as the train was pulling into the station and he got on a carriage behind me….I was more interested in his pose and his clothes. He looked kind of beat!

And this, drawn last night as my beautiful kitty Boof was sleeping. It’s great to have a living creature that I can draw from life! And he’s just too adorable when he sleeps – his face was all mooshed into the couch. Awwwww.
This took about 20 minutes.

Trying to be a bit more considerate with my lines. And build tone with lots of light strokes instead of fewer heavy ones. Probably best for all that fur too!
Oh man it is SO much easier drawing from life instead of a photo!!! I thought it was meant to be the other way round….but somehow I can understand the form better when I see it in 3D in front of me.

Sooooo…..in other news…..The boyfriend is working Saturday night again. I think I will continue my binge of Mad Men episodes. THE OUTFITS! Holy Cow. And maybe I will squeeze some drawing in. Oh and make some tiramisu….got a craving! Hehe.
Till then!
Bye!

So here it is, Wednesday and I finally have the drawing I have been promising since SUNDAY.

And it’s not even the same one I was talking about! Pah!

Soooo…its another kitty. Yes. I draw them endlessly. They are just so fun! I drew this one roughly in my diary at about 2:30pm today – then rushed home to draw it using Painter. It’s taken me about 2.5 hours and I’ve added the paper effect again cos its too cool. This little fella is a bit sly….

The reason I’ve been slackie on the blog front? We had a client come visit us from NSW yesterday and today – HUGE client, very important. Their senior graphic artist was coming to check out our operations so she could better understand the kind of files we need….So a bunch of guys from my work and me took her out to dinner….and she’s as young as me and a totally cool chick! Heheh – we got along really well! Yay! ….So I was being sociable last night.

And Monday – well, MONDAYITIS. ‘Nuff said.

Soooo it’s been a while hasn’t it? Almost a week. Well – I am in a bit of a creative slump at the moment. I’m currently working on a piece for Art Jumble which is now going to be late. The idea started off fun and now it’s just becoming a chore. Don’t you hate that?

I think I need to loosen things up. Just sketch. Stop diving into projects that take more than a little research to complete. Blah. I’m finding it hard to switch between sketch and colour blocking. I spent HOURS trying to draw a nice line drawing for the Space Girl theme (Art Jumble) and then last night I thought: “Why the hell am I trying to get the line right when I gotta colour it in anyway – just block the colours in you dimwit!”. So I started that today and then its all more MEH cos I can’t be bothered now. Over it. One redeeming feature which I’ve attached below – spent a few more minutes making this a piece on it’s own.

Actually – I kinda like it now. Hehe. The paper effect is very cool don’t you think? On the weekend I had the chance to drop by Mag Nation in the city (LOVE that shop!) and bought myself a copy of The Complete Guide to Digital Painting. It’s full of tutorials on what you can do with Corel Painter. It features mostly photo manipulation in the sense that the base of the paintings is always a photo. They look great so I will have a go at some of the tutes on the disc when I get a chance. One thing I was reminded of is the paper effects you can add at the end. There’s lots of materials like different kinds of canvas and even wood grain.

So I guess in the space of writing this post I went from being very un-enthused and not feeling very creative, to redeeming a crappy piece of art with a cute kitty cat. See – kitties can always save the day!
I feel much better now!

Now the kitty has colour! And a frame too, plus a bit of a shadow. I think I quite like this. Still nice and simple. I guess I will have to show SJ now – but I have become quite partial to this little kitty.

Other news – I am heading down to see my parents in Tassie for a WHOLE WEEK in May. Yay! I get to play with my letterpress. I can’t wait to take some photos as well as have a go at using it.

It’s gonna be interesting cos I really don’t have any firm idea of how to work it all. Thankfully, my Heidelberg is auto-feeding and there is little chance of me lopping some fingers off during it’s running. I’ll have Dad to supervise anyway and he’s good with machinery.

I am going to see if I can get some plates made here at work and find some other materials to see if I can do some tests on it. I’ll need some paper and some ink. Does anyone know where I can get some letterpress ink here in Australia? I only need one colour for now and only a very small amount.

Somehow I’ll scrounge together a little business with all this. I don’t have a press name yet or anything (been wracking my brain for ages now) or a solid timeline for when I will start for real…but I’ll get there. I know that my style is more suited to fine art prints and maybe business cards – wedding invites aren’t quite my forte. The line version of this cat is what I hope will be my first ever print. Can’t wait!

I’ve put the little kitty through the Illustrator machine. Ah the wonders of Live Trace. Tweaked a bit of course, to get the lines smooth.

I’m a little bit at a loss as to where to go from here. The line is just so nice I don’t know if I should add colour or text…or….Umm…I dunno! 

Suggestions?

I had the best intentions of actually getting further with this today…but then, well…I finished work and had to go to kickboxing pretty much straight away…that’s two hours gone. Then it’s to the supermarket and home to make dinner. So now it’s 8:30pm and I have to get up at 5am so it’s nearly bedtime for me.
Ah well tomorrow is another day!

And Easter is coming which means NO WORK and more time to stuff around.

Being an orphan (well sorta), I don’t have any family to go to…no car to drive anywhere with. Besides, everyone else leaves Melbourne over the Easter break so hanging around means you’re NOT following the crowd. Haha.
I’m too much of a stooge to pay for the exhorbitant fees everyone puts on everything just cos it’s Easter (in terms of accommodation and airfares).
So Melbourne it is! The weather is looking to be very pleasant so we might just do the usual of going to town and hanging about drinking coffee and lounging at MagNation (man, I love that shop!)….add in a bit of window shopping. Ah, perfect weekend.

SO! Back to my drawing. I think I like these eyes…this is the kind of look I was after – something a little bit more sneaky and sly. If SJ wants something even more evil looking then I shall keep this little kitty for my own and possibly make it into a more complete piece.

Another thing to note…I realised today how comfortable I am with Painter. Initially I had this scanned in and laid out on an Illustrator file as a template to add a vector layer over. But I’m not ready for that refinement yet so I was just fumbling around with the new blob brush tool which comes with CS4.
Then I tried Photoshop and got even more frustrated because the brushes were so awful and heavy. I know PS gives you a lot of scope to make your own brushes but Painter is just so much like real media you can’t beat it.
So it was Painter where I ended up again…This drawing came from no scan and drawn within 5 minutes. It will probably end up back in Illustrator.
More to come as I do it!