[WIP] Cat in a Bag - A Study

Despite being able to buy a beginner-level drawing tablet, I still have been struggling to get myself into the groove of practicing art. I did not know how to start and losing that sense of direction has always been a major pain point. Consuming different tutorials have also led me to feel overwhelmed, too. My only consolation was knowing that I am not alone in this and I have to let myself make mistakes.

Work in Progress	Reference photo by edbo23 from Pixabay

This will be my first attempt at studying a photo. I came across it as I was looking at C/Freewriters' event, A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words. This cat in a bag was too hard for me to resist!

Progress

There were so many thoughts that impeded me from starting this. What was my art style? How am I going to start this? What if I'm shit at it on the first try?

I knew had to stop thinking.

I created two layers at first - one for the paper bag, and the other for the cat itself. During the whole week, I found myself replaying videos for digital painting basics (1, 2) so I started using the darkest value of colors I found from the photo. This goes to say that I don't know much yet about those... I was actually wondering if that was the best thing to do.

Two things stuck with me while I was watching digital painting tutorials. The first thing was to work with shapes instead of lines. Second, don't be afraid of committing mistakes. I forced myself to avoid the eraser too and to mix colors with the darker ones.

Perhaps I was taking things easy, or maybe I just like cats, but I started to further zoom into the picture and just focus on it. The white space was definitely bothering me... I did not realize how much patience is needed to get this study done, haha. All I wanted was to paint a cat!

There was so much mixing, remixing, and repeating portions of the image. There's shading over the head that I did not bother touching - maybe I can revisit it at a different time. At some point, I caught myself getting fixated on trying to get the fine details done. I took my time working on the ears, the whiskers, and more of the fur on its face.

Just as I nitpick everything I do, I have critiques on this piece as well. I'm not yet completely happy about the snout and the way the tissue roll looks. The paws need more refining too.

In the end, here's what I've settled for! I genuinely enjoyed the time I spent creating this from scratch. Maybe I acquired some small experience points for creativity!

I wonder what would be the next thing I'll pick up...

What drives you to create art in a specific style? Talk to me!

And yes, you've reached the end of this post. Thanks for hanging out! See ya when I see ya.