Tuesday, February 4, 2014

How To Draw A Cat


Right now I'm working on illustrating a children's book.  One of the characters appearing on every page is a cat.  Now I can draw a cat.  Circle for the head, triangles for the ears, a cute little upside down triangle for the nose, three little whiskers on each side of the cat's little chiny-chin-chin.  But my standard little cat wasn't cutting it...and unfortunately for me, at the time I didn't have a cat around to draw from. Not that it would have helped. Have you ever tried to pose a cat?  Here, kitty-kitty, stand with one leg here and one leg there.  Angle your head to the side.  Just a little bit more.  No, don't run away.  No, I don't want you to twine around my legs, I want you to pose!  Look, cat, if you aren't going to pose you definitely can't lay on top of my work.

Do you have a cat around?  Go ahead.  Try getting it to pose.  I dare you.

So I muddled through drawing my cats in the storyboard and immediately after finishing, I set about drawing cats as part of an art-warm up.  Twenty cats before breakfast?  No problem...those Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest "cute cat" videos and images actually counted as work!

But it made me think about all those moments where I've drawn a cat and people have said, "Wow! You're so talented!  I wish I could draw like that."

They didn't see me as a kid practicing diligently from "How to Draw" books.


They didn't see me redrawing lines and erasing wrong lines.

They didn't see me studying cats for the shape their bodies make standing, walking, stretching.

They didn't see the pictures of dogs, bears, and furry creatures that help me make it look easy when it comes to drawing cat fur.

They didn't see the frustration caused by my expectations for my own cat-drawing abilities rising parallel to my skills so that even as I improved, my perception of my abilities stayed the same.

They didn't see the cats that, despite all my best efforts, didn't quite turn out as expected.


They didn't see the twenty cats before breakfast.


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