My project for this month is coming along, although I'm struggling a little to balance it with my school responsibilities. Summer classes are hard! Figuring out how to cope with multiple responsibilities is never bad practice, though. Not to mention having something creative to do outside of school is refreshing (I'm taking art history and Japanese culture classes, so not much art creation going on right now). Here are the drawings I completed since my last update!
In case you missed my last post, what I'm doing here is going through my pet photos, choosing ones that seem like my pets will look interesting or funny without the support of their context (i.e. their environment), and then drawing just my pet and seeing how it ends up looking! So, with the drawing above, removing Kenshi's context made him look like a round head with a couple of paws underneath 😆 Kenshi was my dog all the way from high school until just a few years ago, when he passed away. This sweet-faced pose reminds me of all the good times I had with him 🧡
My next drawing features my handsome prince, Bear, who recently passed 🤍 This is one of the most successful pieces from this experiment, because it ended up looking like he's breathing fire! I decided at the beginning to make the photos a Patreon-exclusive reveal, as a digital reward for Studio Mikarts members, so if you would like to see the secret behind this or any of the other images, just click through one of the links below the drawings, and you'll be able to sign up!
Next is another drawing of Sun! This one didn't turn out as engaging as I expected, even though something very specific and cute is happening in the original photo! The thing I'm learning the most while doing these drawings is that I'm not really able to predict, just from viewing the photo, how successful the final drawing will be. Maybe I'll get better by the time I finish all eighteen drawings for this month 🤔
The tenth drawing in this series features Kiki, our only female cat, who is very spunky. But this drawing doesn't show that side of her! With this one, I was hoping to capitalize on the perspective to get an interesting result, but in the end, what I found most compelling about it was the way her fur pattern came out. I must admit, I'm pretty proud of being able to capture it using nothing but black lines on a white background!
Here is the third appearance of our recently-departed prince, Bear. The photo behind this drawing was taken when he was in his prime, the pinnacle of big and fluffy! It's been so long that I completely forgot that he used to look like this 😮 So far, folks have had some guesses as to what's got Bear in this position, but no one's gotten it right, hee hee...
The final drawing in this post was completed just yesterday. It's Kiba, the black Manx's second appearance! This is based on another older photo but Kiba's looks haven't changed as drastically as Bear's did. He's a naturally small, short-haired cat, so the changes he's undergone as he's aged aren't as obvious 😅 I love how the final drawing makes his body look smaller than his head! Or maybe like he has the body of a perching bird XD
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I realized I'll have the perfect number of drawings at the end of this project to spread them out evenly across three blog posts, so that means there's just one more Pets Out of Context post on the horizon. I'll be moving onto another project next month, but there's always the possibility of more drawings in this style later on. Please look forward to the final six drawings in a couple weeks!
