Today was a pretty stressful day so, to get my mind to shut up and prepare to sleep, I thought I’d draw our family kitty as she was relaxing on a blanket just in front of me.
Cats seems to be the true masters of chill. They can go from manic play to barely conscious in the blink of an eye and look as if they haven’t moved for days.
I don’t often draw from life, partly because I always seem to be too busy but also because there seems to be a mental barrier that suggests that drawing from life is harder than from a photograph.
It’s not. If anything, I think I found our little cat easier to draw in front of me than I might have done from a photograph.
Being able to just shift my head slightly enabled me to get a much better idea of the shape of her body in a way a static photo would never allow. I’ve also found that every time I try to capture her on a photograph, her tortoiseshell coat transforms her into an amorphous blob in the picture.
I’m going to push myself to draw more from life as I found this piece so relaxing to draw. It was liberating not having to hunt down a reference photo and just fall into the mindful pattern of rendering our little furry family member.
About the image
I drew this on an old Android tablet (a Samsung Note Pro that I’ve had since 2014) in Autodesk Sketchbook with the Staedtler 180 22 Noris stylus. It’s so much more comfortable to hold than the tiny, oddly shaped stock stylus that came with the tablet.
It was drawn with just the pencil tool on a single layer. I wish I’d done the rough sketch on a separate layer so I could have cleaned it up afterwards but sometimes the construction lines are part of the charm. 🙂