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Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Just Sketching


I'm on the hunt for inspiration at the moment. Although we are getting some much needed rain, these grey days are taking the wind out of my sails. I did find the cutest photo of two cats snuggling together on Paint My Photo, posted by Kathleen and I decided to use it for a sketch. Lately I've been using tracing paper in place of drawing paper just in case I like the sketch enough to pursue it further and decide to transfer it to working paper. Tracing paper is cheaper than good drawing paper, it can be drawn on easily enough and holds up to erasing remarkably well plus there's no need to trace my drawing, then turn around and transfer it to my working paper. It saves a step.

The challenge here was to fix an area of the larger cat's face where it meets the head of the kitten. In the photo the eye closest to the viewer is kind of smooshed and distorted so it needed some tweaking. Once again, I'm posting this mostly for my own benefit to see if my changes 'read' correctly.

13 comments:

Vera Dennen said...

Billie, this is so sweet. Do you ever turn these into paintings?

Nick said...

I'm not a pet art fan, but I love cats and that is quite a drawing - beautiful, Billie. And the gesso paintings are really good, hard to beat that stuff for texture and getting a nice resist. And easy to lift.....just in case!!!

Billie Crain said...

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this, Vera. It caught my attention and I was looking for something to work on. I may wind up getting out my colored pencils at some point and giving this a go.

Billie Crain said...

Thanks, Nick.:) This was just 'busy work'. I'm not a pet art fan myself but I've been doing a lot of it lately. Well, just two actually. I seem to have misplaced my groove. Need to find it again and soon.

I really love working on the gesso and also plain old matboard. Can't beat the effects that are possible on those surfaces.

Billie Crain said...

Thank you, Jan.:)

Tracey said...

love all the texture, hard to believe that is on tracing paper ;) I think the only thing I see that maybe could be tweaked a little is the mom cat's left eyelid in that it seems too straight, maybe slightly curved to follow the shape of the eye ball?

Billie Crain said...

Good eye, Tracey! Thanks.:)

Tracey said...

actually, never mind, I was just sitting here looking at my cat and his eyelid is totally straight, who knew ;)

Billie Crain said...

Ha! I did the same thing with my cat last night and noticed the eye looked straight, too. Makes no sense but that's the way it looked.

"JeanneG" said...

Awwww.

Billie Crain said...

I had the same reaction when I saw the photo, Jeanne.:) I had to do something with it.

Perovskia said...

Adorable. I love how cute and cuddly they are. Captured purrfectly ;)

Billie Crain said...

Thanks Perovskia and welcome to my blog.:)