A little “Starry Night” and a little Chagall, a tribute to Char-Cat, who flew away.
On August 21st we said goodbye to our cat of 10 years, Charlemagne. He was a great cat. He loved people. As I’ve said previously, he did indeed have a black heart on his side. It became two hearts when he sat down. He rolled in dirt like a dog, shook hands for treats, and bossed me around because I was the female. But he had the world’s loudest purr and was just the friendliest and most playful furball. He thought he was a person, I think. We are all sad that he got sick and left us a little too early.
Today, I finished this illustration. I like the image of him flying off, over the moon and back to g-d. I always imagine people and critters flying away when they die. It’s a calming and comforting image to me.
I’ll probably keep drawing white cats with black hearts on their sides, even though I deliberately never drew his spotting correctly. Here’s one of the last photos of Char. Maybe we’ll meet again someday, little cat.
What part of “Meow” didn’t you get?
What is it about February? I had actually finished the pencil sketch for this one when I realized I drew pretty much the same idea a year ago for “crash.” That was posted February 9th of last year if you’re curious. This version is a lot better. I can definitely see myself improving as I go along. Drawing 29 pages of book in the last 2 months helped quite a lot too (4 more pages left to draw and then I get to start coloring it). Incidentally, you may notice both cats have little hearts on their sides. That’s because they’re modeled after our real cat, Char, who really does have a black heart on his left side.
My intention was to do a piece on dance but this came out instead.
Charlemagne loves whipped cream. He communicates that he wants some by head-butting the refrigerator. When he’s all finished lapping it up, he head-butts me and purrs.
Sometimes you just gotta take a snowday!
My one year anniversary of doing Illustration Fridays is coming up soon. I managed to miss doing a lot of them mostly because my day job ate a little too much into my life. I’m a little bummed about that because I haven’t really taken the chance to keep up with as many of my fellow illustrators as I would like. Thank you to everyone who has left comments on my blog. It’s really lovely to be part of the on-line illustration community. I’m hoping to get to know more of you in the coming year, just as I hope I can continue to grow as an illustrator through continuing with the weekly assignments!
I wasn’t planning to do the topic this week but I drew this sketch in the 15 minutes I had to wait at the allergist’s after getting my shots. I’m kind of on a color kick, even though I need the inking practice. So I scanned the pencil sketch before I inked it so I could digi-paint it. I always like my colors better than my inks…
… but how else can I improve my inking? Of course, I COULD color my inks, like I did with the previous post. But it’s 2am so it’s time to stop. By the way, the next “Friday the Thirteenth” will be next month.