I've always enjoyed drawing but haven't really done much of anything recently. I don't know what it is about this site but it has finally lifted my art block! who am I kidding, it's definitely because cats

My main goal atm is to draw busts of my custom and the first five. It is mostly a slow process

• Burr done!
  
• Teak in progress!
  
• Imposter done!
  
• Wednesday done!
  
• Noon done!
  
• Brie done!

I guess this is just a place for me to put my doodles and maybe some in-progress stuff and notes


What I was originally going for was drawing somewhat realistic cats but then realized that a) shading would suck b) my art program is not really suited for that. This is all about me letting go of that perfectionist streak and figuring out vectors as I go.

I'm aware that eye colour for not-cats is dark brown, but I just really enjoy that extra splash of colour, it brings me joy. I've tried to keep the lineart relatively simple. Shading is minimal and mostly for eyes. I've tried to keep the original colours and patterns, with a few changes. No clothing (at least yet).



tl;dr here's my custom, Burr with burdocks for obvious reasons. The "border" is a repeating South Wind symbol.



They were supposed to be giving you that snide lil side-eye cats give you when not impressed but somehow this feels more like... smoulder???

Things I suffered with while drawing this:
- where do eyes go????
- the heck is this tabby pattern
- gradients
- ear fluff.......
- cat noses

I might eventually come back to this to touch up the pattern a bit but I'm pretty pleased with this for now

Edit: updating image links

Good luck on your quest! Burr looks so good
I have a tip about the unexpected smoulder: the more highlights you add, the cuter/more kind/more interested a character's gonna look. In the reverse, the less highlights the more stern. The placment also matters. A highlight close to or on the pupil (black part) looks cuter than one on the very edge of the iris.

@Zav Thank you! And you are right, I did some testing and the highlights really do matter, huh. Maybe I'll play around with them more if I redo the tabby pattern, but I think part of the issue is also the eye shape, should probably be a bit more squinty. For now Burr can smoulder

My next cat was Wednesday, because I wanted to draw a longhaired one! The lineart caused me a lot of issues for some reason

Attempt #1: chaos, maniacal cackling, we are facing right!


Wednesday has a gentle personality so not quite what I was going for.

Attempt #2: less chaos, sweeter, this time facing left


I actually really liked both of these? It's just minor changes with how the face is positioned and sized.

Final result went back to facing right, but I ended up changing the positions again as well as tweaking the ears. The tabby pattern was causing me issues (again) because I needed a wider forehead for the lil W pattern. I went with wobbly lines for the pattern to indicate fluff. The face pattern was originally similar to Burr's, but I ended up adding wobble to it as well because it looked weird compared to the other stripes.



Here's Wednesday keeping time. The border is a repeating north wind symbol.



Things I suffered with:
- how to draw pattern on fluffy cats
- ear fluff, again
- tiled clones and how do they work

such a sweet face! your style is adorable, looking forward to seeing the rest of them!

@Almond aww thanks! Imposter is almost done, just need to finish the border, but after him it'll be a while before next one. I spend way too much time moving nodes around like two pixels to the left and then cancelling all my changes at the end of the day.

*slams hands down* Oh boy was this an adventure. A wall of text wheeeeeeee.

My next cat was Imposter. I wanted to do something more complex this time and kinda wanted to do a cat screaming. His name is Imposter and he has a dramatic personality, so that seemed like something that would suit him. The downsides? Cat mouths are a) complex and b) kinda creepy. Sooo a change of plans, I decided to do a nice lil smile for him! We are sort of entering the uncanny valley here but I also ended up loving the end result

Lineart? Simple! Draw a potat and add triangles, we are done. The smile? Also simple! I did have to spend a lot time trying to figure out cat teeth and I definitely didn't need to know that people enjoy photoshopping cats with human teeth

So, lineart is done, face is complete, time to start the pattern! This should be easy, right? Just a little oval and then some stripes, right?



Yeah no. Just no.

Time to google furiously what lynxpoint looks like on real cats. I couldn't do the traditional tabby V eyeliner because of the pose. Here's attempt #2 with a runaway stripe and a basic outline for a tie.


Shaping the pattern around the eyes and the mouth really did help quite a bit, but it still doesn't look like lynxpoint. I was kinda despairing at this point but figured I'd try making this softer with gradients:


Actually pretty decent! For some reason the lighter dark brown on his face pattern did not work as it should with a gradient and would either make a huge dark splotch in the middle or add a white edge to the gradient, which is why the colours are so faint in this one I did tweak it a bit for the final version.

With a smile like that, Imposter is obviously a Business Cat and he wears his tie with pride! I had to struggle with tiled clones again but the goldfish pattern ended up looking nice.

Since Wednesday was also a North Wind cat, I didn't want to do the same border pattern again. I thought the symbol for his dramatic personality might be good. Wonderful idea but I struggled with it so much. I couldn't figure out how to place it and what do with the bottom part. Shoutout to @Ternbased for helping me! She suggested ditching my original colour plan (which was goldfish yellow for the roses) and using just the roses as the border (originally had straight lines between Imposter and the roses like with Burr and Wednesday)



tl;dr Here is Imposter ready to become employee of the month. The border is the symbol for dramatic personality flipped and repeated.



Things I suffered with
- literally everything except the lineart

@Hemlock
Yeah no problem, I do think the tie pops nicely like this. It's totally the name, but I feel like Imposter may have sabotaged the competition: can't trust that smile!

Taking a detour from cat busts to doodle Emerald

And another detour for Amethyst



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