Hey Hive!
We're back again with another Art Attack! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my drawings and the process behind them. A behind-the-scenes look at my artwork, if you will. This is not to say that I'm very good at art, or that I'm a professional in any way. In fact this is the opposite, and serves as a reminder to how I first started, and lets me track my progress too!
So if you weren't aware, I've been streaming on Twitch for quite some time now and it's been fun trying out different games and making new friends! I was also fortunate to become a Twitch Affiliate only a month after I started streaming!
One perk of being an Affiliate is you can create custom rewards for your chat to redeem with channel points. Since I'm an artist I thought I'd reward my loyal viewers with some free artwork!
So we're still on our series of me sharing art pieces that my chat redeemed using channel points since I got flooded with requests when I first put in this channel reward so I was busy for quite some time.
This art piece was redeemed by one of the VIPs on my channel - rhaiya! He's a big fan of Gudetama and he gave me creative freedom to draw anything as long as it was Gudetama. I don't know much about the character other than he's a sleepy egg. But since there's thousands of fanart of him online I had to do something different to make it more unique (and worth the points).
Source: Pinterest
So I thought of drawing Gudetama on top of Rhaiya's favourite carb which is noodles and I decided on ramen! But to make it more unique and give the piece more depth and make it more complete I thought of adding a cat looking at it hungrily in the background, kinda like this:
Source: Fit4TheGame
It was going to be similar to another piece I did a long time ago of Paimon eating a Slime Taco, but with a better perspective?
Anyway, for the cat in the background I was thinking of drawing a cute Neko Atsume cat but since I've never tried a creepy style before and it was close to Halloween 2021, I decided why not try to draw a creepy Cheshire cat for once! So this was my sketch:
I actually modeled this irl and pretended to be the cat to try and took pictures to get the perspective right, but because I had to make the ramen itself visible the angle had to change. I think it still looks okay though.
For the ramen I wanted to make it classic and accurate but I didn't want it to be too realistic too since it wouldn't match with Gudetama. It was a tricky tightrope to walk. These were some of the reference images I used. The ramen was either too simple or too complicated so it was tough.
But after some time, I think I finally got it! It still retains the cartoony look while being somewhat accurate, and is a suitable background to Gudetama too so that he stands out. I thought the outline of the Cheshire cat was also really on point.
I think my mistake here was using the wood brush but every time I tried to adjust the perspective it just ended up looking weird so I left it as default although it made the table look too flat.
To compensate and give the piece more depth, I added some lighting effects to highlight Gudetama even more although in hindsight I probably should've added more shadows to the bowl and utensils. I also made the cat dark on purpose to make it look even creepier and also seem like he's creeping on the unsuspecting Gudetama.
I think this piece turned out really well! After the initial struggles with the ramen it was pretty much smooth sailing and I was really excited about the Cheshire cat! It looked just as creepy as I envisioned and the colours turned out even better! I'm so glad Rhaiya loved it too!
Here's the full timelapse for this piece:
For every redeem I'm always challenging myself to draw in a different style or try something out of my comfort zone so that I'm learning and practising my art skills while expanding my repertoire and getting creative! I've been enjoying it a lot especially since these are things I wouldn't normally think to draw. So it's win-win for everyone!
If you're interested, I draw on stream sometimes and we also play a ton of different games, host tournaments and more on my Twitch! Come hangout with us sometime?
Thanks for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
