Goth Cat Lady

Sometimes I take inspiration from regular everyday people. 

Anyones sharing an outfit of the day or a selfie can spark my interest and become my muse.

At the time I was part of a music subculture discord and was able to not only look at cool fashion photos but ask the posters themselves for permission to use their photos as reference.

Thankfully most people are flattered by the idea of an artist drawing their likeness.

Autumn was kind enough to be my muse not once but twice. She was my inspiration for “Strawberry Clown” as well as this most recent piece.

Autumn and her cat Nox

My first round of thumbnail sketches involved problem solving(in my head) the selfie distortion. 

Autumn was towering slightly over her cat but her torso was foreshortened  because of the way she sat to take the photo, however her head was above eye level and her cat took up most of the foreground. Autumn’s head although in the background, due to the selfie cam distortion really dominates the photo. Aside from the contrast of her skin color and her baby Nox being black. I almost had to create my own perspective to make my drawing work and add harmony.

thumbnail sketches are rarely pretty, but serve an integral part of problem solving, without wasting time.

I chose to remain with the original cat pose as I liked how she overlapped Autumn with her ears slightly over her lip and jaw. Had I turned the head that effect would have been removed and there would be more negative space between the two subjects adding a distance, where I much prefer them being close to one another, almost like an embrace

First rough drawing.

I’ve been on an Alphonse Mucha kick, having one of his art books handed down to me by my late father. His use of framing the figure really adds a whimsical flow especially when using a model as the center of interest.

Autumn's original outfit had some very pretty lace on her sleeves, although very attractive I didn’t want to preoccupy myself with recreating the same lace accents in a drawing although I could have traced them, I chose to go for something witchy and give her sleeves a vine look.  

I googled black vines and found Ipomoea, Blackie - potato vines. Deciding instead of making her sleeves 100% black, using a pen and ink pattern to at least direct the eye back to Nox.

From this point it was time to decide the values of the whole drawing.

I played around with 4 different ideas to find what values worked together and wouldn't distract or take away from the focus of the subjects. I ultimately went with the bottom right drawing because it possessed all the qualities I wanted. This process saves so much time because 80% of the decision making is already done and all one needs to do is put in the final 20% on the final drawing to reach completion without running into any decision making questions. Are all my drawings thought out like this? No. There have been plenty of drawings that from start to finish are done on one of two papers. However one can run into issues that at best takes more time and at worse completely ruin your work.

I’m pleased with the results.

This piece will be available on my store as prints and soft cover notebooks.