Have you noticed?

Big feet?

I keep seeing cartoons of people with tiny heads, small bodies, long legs and big feet. Why? it’s fashionable I guess, artists and illustrators are as susceptible to that as anyone else. But is it lazy, or is it what clients are demanding? I can imagine a conversation, “we like your work but can you tweak it?”, “how would you like it?” can you exentuate the feet and make the face small? “,” OK “….

I can understand the concept, the viewpoint is low down, a bit like when a child looks up to a parent. It also makes the subject figure appear stronger because it towers over it’s surroundings, like a giant with seven league boots striding over a diminished landscape. But to me? It’s getting boring. There is no nuance, the parts of the figures are like cut out pieces of paper, no real shading.

There are various illustration programmes that allow you to stitch together a figure by dragging and dropping various elements to ‘build’ a figure and it’s environment. Like other AI and tech systems it’s taking over from real artists and real interesting designs. It’s basically safety as opposed to unique ideas. Dumbing down another profession. I appreciate it makes life for clients easier, but where is the innovation?

Floating cat?

I tried to add a pattern underneath my kitty because he carpet he is lying on was dark and you couldn’t make out the outline easily. But I couldn’t finger paint around the cat very easily. Still I did an OK job. I wanted to add a black and white pattern to this photo of one of my black and white cats.

I love cats , they can be good companions and they are not as aloof as they are sometimes portrayed. I used Houndstooth check which seemed like a good choice. I should really try doing this in photoshop but I’m too tired to fire up my PC.

Similar

Great minds think alike?

I drew this this morning but hadn’t published it. I was just going through the reader section of WordPress and found someone else had done a very similar image. I did this digitally, playing with a drawing that I had been altering over the last couple of days. The other person’s art is four different female faces, using a totally different technique. It’s so interesting that artists come up with similar ideas from different beginnings. I like her style and work, good to see the creativity here!

Upside down again

Oh dear, I’m in a whirl again, lack of sleep isn’t helping. Someone was chatting with me today and yet again I found myself crying. When will I ever feel happy again?

It was raining this morning when I went out, so I decided not to wear a coat. Cool, damp, with a breeze, it was good to feel a little more comfortable. When I got home the fan went on, and that’s stirring the air up nicely. I’m going back out later, but for now I just had a nap (I must be getting old). The cat came and poddled away kneading my knees and then fell asleep too.

Shall I dream of life and loss again tonight? I don’t know. Its hard to control things when you sleep, then wake up in a tizz.

By the way the drawing on the right was based on the drawing on the left, just by sketching over it. I decided to turn it upside down to match my confused mood.

Profile with orange

Another quick fingerpainting this time just in sketchbook app. You can vary the pens and brushes, there’s a large selection, but they are almost too numerous to work with. It’s hard sometimes to decide which to use. Thank heavens for the back button so I can delete what I don’t like. This started out as a quick sketch that I was drawing to show a friend how the app worked, but then I decided to finish it tonight.