Oona is pushing paint aroundTook a break from drawing today in favor of doing annoying things like emails and looking at my bank account (need to calculate in both prep time & recovery for that one lol), but! This is the stuff from yesterday's evening #catober session. So technically still day 6. The tiger construction was me following along with Joe Weatherly's animal anatomy class, the other one just drawing from ref.
#catober day 8 (7? not sure how to count now that I skipped a day of drawing but not posting 🙃 ). Again with the sequence of knowledge gap mapping, then study page (in this case after some of the teaser pages of The Weatherly Guide to Drawing Cats which can be found here http://www.joeweatherly.com/book/4284/the-weatherly-guide-to-drawing-cats ), then drawing from ref.
I don't want to move on from the sitting cats before I really got them down, but also I was getting bored, hence the cats washing - they are still sitting on their hind legs! Just in more interesting ways. Funny enough these kinds of poses don't show up much in the animal anatomy classes. Wonder why...
#catober day 9 I did draw, but not post. So here it goes. Started with knowledge gap mapping, then 2 pages of studies after The Weatherly Guide to Drawing Cats (http://www.joeweatherly.com/book/4284/the-weatherly-guide-to-drawing-cats).
#catober day 10 I just got started, but not sure I will get around to doing much more today, so here goes this morning's sole page of knowledge gap mapping.
this was the rest of #catober day 10 :) Ballpoint is fun for doing constructive studies when I don't want to use pencil/graphite, but it scans pretty badly. Alas.
#catober day 11. Had two days that were emotionally exhausting, so no energy for the more demanding pages of knowledge gap mapping or anatomy studies and such. But the simple draw draw draw from ref always works and goes a long way to soothe me.
Halfway through I got annoyed with how small the A4 paper is and how little fits on it and decided to just pack the pages more by using different colored ballpoints. I enjoyed the creepy red pupil-less effect on that one cat 🙃
#catober day 12 I was drawing but away from my scanner, so here it goes: one page of knowledge gap mapping from memory/imagination, and one anatomy study of hind legs after Gottfried Bammes.
#catober day 13, again did the drawing but not the scanning, only direct drawings from photos of cougars this time.
this was #catober day 14, two pages of mapping knowledge gaps from imagination, one page of anatomy studies, one page of drawing from ref. Not done in that order, but I don't remember the actual order anymore.
#catober day 15, one page of knowledge gap mapping, one page of notes on the lesson on spine and ribcage of felines from Joe Weatherly's Animal Anatomy class, a page of studies on the same topic from Gotttfried Bammes, and lastly a page of tigers from ref with ribcages inscribed.
#catober day 16 I started with some knowledge gap mapping from memory/imagination (recognize the sitting tiger from the day before, and how my memory distorted it?)...
... and then did a bunch of pages of memory recall training homework for a class on "drawing from memory and imagination". First page shape analysis from reference (blue), then first attempt at reproducing it from memory (green), made notes on my mistakes, second attempt (red), again some notes, then a third attempt the next day (black).
I am not entirely sure this kind of memory training is the best way to move towards where I want to go, it makes me think in 2d so much, really invites one to simplify into flat graphic shapes. I doubt that doing these teaches me much about the structure of cats in space. It does point out biases in my perception/memory rather mercilessly though, so probably worth it simply for that. And I will stick with them for now just for the sake of the class anyway.
#catober day 17 was another frazzled email writing & preparing for guests kinda day, so just some random sketches of cats from ref
#catober day 18 back to my favorites for some simple sphynx cat fun from reference
...and some memory recall studies also still from #catober day 18 - first an analysis after a page of Weatherly's Guide to Drawing Cats (blue), then first attempt at drawing from memory (green), notes about mistakes I made, second attempt (red), and the last page is trying again the next day (aka catober day 19)(black).
day 20 of #catober I was hanging out with friends, so no time for focused studies - but a bunch of surprisingly colorful cat doodles happened anyway :) (Not in ink though, so not an inktober day after all...)
I keep drawing and falling further and further behind with the scanning and posting. Sketchdump incoming to make up some of the distance.
So, this was day 21 of #catober - wanting to draw a lot without thinking about it I decided to just work my way through this set of "cougar" reference images, sketching every single image. There are 500 photos in the set, we'll see how far I'll get.
#catober day 22, a page of front paw structure studies after Joe Weatherly's 'Guide to Drawing Cats' and an attempt to reproduce them from memory a bit later. *ouch
#catober day 23 was another social day, so I just doodled some cats with the pens I usually use for writing, then used a waterbrush to clarify the shapes and let the ink bloom. I am pleased with the graphic shapes and how the ink washes came out, especially on the red page. Might do a bunch more of these at some point. But also the pretty ink wash effect feels a bit too easy, almost kinda cheap. 😂 Maybe I'll go direct to blob with a large brush next time.
#catober day 24 I binged on working my way through the set of cougar photo references
#catober day 25, again working my way through the cougars, but also a bit of anatomy study and a page of knowledge gap mapping from imagination.
#catober day 26 started with a page of knowledge gap mapping from imagination, then some construction studies after Joe Weatherly. I tried to reproduce each of them from memory immediately after making them (so, first study - memory sketch, second study - second memory sketch) and found it interesting how much better the whole body one worked than the Lynx head. But then I am much more familiar with general cat construction at this point than I am with Lynx heads, so it does make sense.
#catober days 27 to 29 I was bored, OH GOD SO BORED with drawing cats, all mammals really, it felt like they are all the same, all the same skull-spine-thorax-pelvis, all femur and tibia and just tiny variations, and how I miss drawing invertebrates or at least birds or even just random stuff. Even architecture, artifacts, non-organics. Anything other than mammals. Crabs! I wanted to paint crabs so badly. But I also wanted to finish catober, so here a bunch more cats.
...and yesterday I was still bored, so for #catober day 30 I decided to make a bunch of loose ink blobs instead of the serious structural studies. Still cats though, and still in ink.
Ink blobbing is great (in this case: first making the shape of the cat as a clear water puddle on the paper, then dropping ink into it), it has built-in anti-boredom properties, like the time pressure that comes from only being able to work the blob while still wet, as well as the ink always doing a surprising delightful weird whatever it is it wants to do.
Because of the time pressure and no fussing around these go really quickly, I made 20 in the time between dinner and going to bed.
doing these really feels more like playing a game, including the dynamic of "just one more...just...one...more..." and I only stop once it becomes hard to find more horizontal drying spaces within easy reach 😅
...and more. But this is the last batch of them, promise! I haven't done any cat drawing yet today, maybe I will just play around working over some of these a bit, giving them eyes and mouths and such. But working into ink blobs with another medium, or even just more controlled ways of applying ink can be tricky. The blobs have a vibe of their own that doesn't easily mix with other kinds of marks.
Yesterday I was still a bit tired so thought I would just quickly work into one or three of the ink blobs. Which of course ended with me adding some details to all 20 of them...so here are the reworked ink blob cats for the last day of #catober.
...aaaaand a wee little webshop with the first batch of them already uploaded :) https://ko-fi.com/playinprogress/shop
[boosts very welcome!]
I will add more drawings to the shop in the coming days, so if there is anything you're particularly fond of let me know and I will make sure to prioritize it.
[edit: this one has sold :)]
More of the reworked ink blob cats for #catober day 31, all of these now up in my shop https://ko-fi.com/playinprogress/shop
Ok tired now rest will have to wait for tomorrow. And yes I totally got the date wrong when dating the first few things I finished yesterday, but the drawings don't mind :)
Jim Postier@playinprogress very nice!
@JimPostier Thank you!