Victorian Cat Designs

A couple embroidery designs from work (UrbanThreads). The guy cat on the left was drawn a year or so ago and his new feline friend was added last month to our collection. It was a good challenge trying to make the two look like they go together, even though it had been some time since the first cat was created. In hindsight, I think I would give the guy cat a neck. That might help the proportions of the two cats to look more equal. It was fun researching the Steampunk/Victorian themes for costumes and attire. It was also fun to flex the character design muscles a little bit. I really tried to nail a cool silhouette with each of their poses and give them a little attitude.

Victorian Cat and Monkey Sunset

I'm having a lot of fun taking my drawings done in Illustrator and playing around with textures and color in Photoshop. The cat on the top was drawn in pencil, cleaned up in Illustrator and finished in Photoshop. We'll call him, "the Catitude, Dude!"

The drawing on the bottom was sort of a warm up sketch before work. Pascal Campion does these really great illustrations that convey a lot of emotion and story in them. He does one a day and gives himself a hour or two to finish it and I was inspired to do my own. Technically, it's not the greatest drawing and that's something I'm working on "letting go" and focussing more on telling a story. Norman Rockwell's illustration teacher once told him; "If you throw a tennis ball hard against a wall, it will come back at you hard. Likewise, if you feel a drawing hard, your audience will feel it, too."

Comments, feedback and suggestions are all welcome and thanks for stopping by!