A “Fantasy” Illustration
My second-to-last assignment in my second digital painting class was to create a “fantasy” illustration. But it was strangely limited—we had to take a public domain story and illustrate it. I’d wanted to do a spin on one of my books (from a TikTok video I made bringing dragons into one of my novels) or do the winged cat character I’ve been working on, and the instructor just flat out said no. So I picked Puss in Boots and made him Puss in Chucks instead. We had to write a “summary” of the story we were illustrating, so I just riffed on the original Puss in Boots (part of it, anyway): The Story Puss in Chucks There was a poor man who had naught save for a tabby cat. He was starving so he thought he would have to kill the cat and eat it. The cat read his owner…
A Playing Card Design
For my Digital Illustration class, we had to make a single playing card. One of the common characteristics of many playing card designs is some kind of interesting background. I love Islamic art (the patterns, specifically—both the geometric and the vegetal ones), so I decided to make a geometric pattern inspired by this style. And since cards often have some kind of figure on them, I (of course) decided to try a cat. I decided to do the 9 of hearts (for 9 lives, and the fact that I love cats). Thumbnails The first step was twenty thumbnails. I was developing the two separate ideas, the cat and the pattern. Then I combined them for a few of the last ones. Cat Thumbnails Here are some of the early ones: The last one was me just being ridiculous. But none of them quite spoke to me, but I liked them…
A Digital Cat and Castle
We had another assignment in my digital illustration class, with the prompt Castles in the Sky. I missed the “in the sky” part and just thought it was supposed to be fantastical. I also didn’t realize at first that there was supposed to be a character in it. We had to do a bunch of thumbnails and value and color studies. Some of my thumbnails below. I first thought of doing something with books, and I did a few with that idea: Then I thought of the onion domes you see on Russian churches, because I’ve always thought those we kind of cool. But after doing a rough thumbnail with them, I had a more interesting idea: cats heads instead of onion domes. I ran with this idea and did several different castles this way. Here are a couple: I decided to try a noncircular shaped castle and came up…
A Bunch of Sculptures
I posted about the first sculpture I did for my 3D art class this past term. We had one project every two weeks, and the last one actually involved making three different sculptures. The first one was a two-piece abstract sculpture where the two pieces interact symbolically, and where one piece is organic and one geometric. I decided to do an organic cat with its tail looped back onto its back and a geometric hand grasping the tail. It’s supposed to represent the relationship between cats and people. We had to carve the pieces out of floral foam and then coat them with glue so we could paint them. Here are a few shots of the final product: I ended up kind of liking this even though it’s rudimentary and I forgot to paint the cat’s nose and eyes. The next assignment was to do a site-specific paper sculpture. I…
The Cat Librarian
In my current illustration class, we had another assignment involving an animal, so I had another great excuse to draw more cats. The prompt was to put an animal into a situation that normally only humans would do. Of course I also love books, so I first thought of a cat reading or being in a library or bookstore. We had to start with thumbnails for this, as usual, so here were some of my ideas: My favorite were the ones with the cat as a librarian rather than just reading. And I liked the idea of a poor librarian trying to work while other cats wreak havoc. So my favorite was #8 because I loved the cart, especially with a cat sleeping on it. I also liked the one of the librarian sleeping on the job, because no way could a cat work an 8-hour shift without a nap.…
The Musician and the Dancing Cat
I’m in another illustration class, and we had three prompts to choose from for our first assignment: Dining with a robot. The musician playing for the dancing animal. How the magician sawed the woman in half. Obviously I chose number 2 so I could do a cat. My understanding of the assignment was that we were supposed to be doing the figures in silhouette, so entirely black. But it turned out that that was just for development of the idea. We had to do a bunch of thumbnails, so I did those, although I didn’t have any amazing ideas. I basically tried a person playing different musical instruments, and a cat dancing in different ways. Here’s what I came up with: I liked #7 because the idea was it was a line dance, but I developed that and a couple new ones for three rough sketches I had to do.…
A New Sculpture
I’m taking a class in 3D design, and we had to come up with a sculpture based on a wireframe that we cover with a bunch of a single item. I’m honestly not sure where I got the final idea, but I originally planned to do a hemisphere and give it cat ears, but then I figured out we were supposed to do something more tangible, so I decided it would be a cat head poking up from some clouds, visible from a little below the nose up. The basic idea was that there would be a cat head surrounded by a flatish space representing clouds (actually thes part is meant to be “bumpy”). Step 1 was to do the wireframe. I actually did this completely from my head and didn’t draw anything, because it was so clear in my head. I used three different gauges of wire because I…
Sweeping a Cat Shelter Project
For the final project in my Life Drawing 2 class, we had to put at least one figure in an interesting setting. We had to look at a database of images of models in a variety of poses and work from that, picking three to play with. I worked on several ideas: I ended up going with the third one, with this model: At first I thought we could draw the figure clothed, and I liked her clothing, but it turns out they had to be nude (we were allowed to add transparent clothes, but the anatomy has to be visible). I developed my idea into a line drawing here: I got some feedback on the proportions of the figure, so I had to fix that in the final drawing. The piece had to be done on large paper and in color, but any medium was acceptable, so I decided…
Bastet Does TNR Project
For one of my classes, I had three weeks to develop another project that had to depict some kind of guardian figure. To get the mental juices flowing, the suggested things like an angel, a gargoyle overlooking a city, medieval castle guard, and Native American deities. This one came to me quickly. I decided to do something with Bastet, the ancient Egyptian goddess of cats, fertility, and more. She has a human body but the head of a cat. In the early days of her mythology, it was usually a lion head, but later it was a domestic cat. I found a good image to work from that I loved: (Found at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bastet_dame_katzenkopf.jpg) Her ears are tall here but she looks so sleek. The next step in the project was to figure what she’d be doing in the painting. I brainstormed a few things, but right away an idea I…