Milk Please!

Ginger Kitty is taking a stroll around the neighbourhood but got a bit thirsty before realizing she is far from home. Along the way, she comes across a dairy farm to see if she could get a little drink but the farmer is nowhere to be seen! One of the cows comes by though, and offers her a bottle of fresh milk from the shed. How sweet is that! As Ginger Kitty thanks her new friend, the two of them start dancing on the field so happy and free. It is such a pleasure living next door to a farm, especially with cows meandering around the field. Occasionally, I get to see cats too! How fun it would be, I thought, if I were to write a kawaii story and draw about it…

The Background

And this is the last of the digital drawings whilst following Mindy Lacefield’s “Procreate Cutie” on-line class some weeks ago. Of course, I do continue practicing and adopting what I had learned. It keeps my mind focused and creative! Plus it’s always fun to experiment and explore. One of the useful things I got into was playing around with texture using some of the brush and stamps I had purchased as add-ons as well as going back to the ones already available on Procreate. Here is what I started with:

The Drawing

After sketching my cow, cat and milk with my 6B pencil, I went about tracing over the outlines with my dry square inker brush. Separate layers applied for each subject and in turn, each part of the subject (ie. head, eyes, body etc) had its individual layers. Whilst this method is not in Mindy’s lessons, I thought having separate layers would be handy should I wish to resize, relocate or use clipping mask for any particular area. I then colored in the areas with the Medium Airbrush. Although Oberon was frequently used in Mindy’s lessons, I am back to using the airbrush now as I am more comfortable with it.

Adding Texture

Once I was done and satisfied with the colors, I firstly incorporated some shading to add some dimension. Having individual layers for each part comes handy for that reason as clipping mask is applied. Following that, I incorporated some texture onto the subjects once again with clipping mask so it doesn’t spill outside the area. The cow received some sparkly treatment here. As for the Ginger Kitten, I wanted her a more multicolored and thus added somd brown and white speckles. Even the milk too has some added dimension!

Finishing Up

I then merged the layers pertaining to the cow, cat and milk individually so that we have three separate subjects on their own. This gives me the opportunity to enlarge the cow and rotate her slightly sideways. Ginger Kitty stayed where she was but was also enlarged a bit in proportion to the cow. Finally the milk was also tilted sideways to make the composition more interesting. And now the background: More layers of texture was added, and I switched the background colour from a mint green to an emerald green before introducing some grass and doodles with a white gel pen. And now we’re talking!

And once again, another enjoyable go at digital painting! This time, I made one featuring animals as I have been creating plenty with Little One but I will definitely be combining both soon. Experimenting and playing around with the various textures is so much fun and certainly adds a new dimension to my illustrations. I love that it has that “intuitive art” element as well. Thanks to Mindy Lacefield’s classes, I now have a broader selection of tools which I’ve still yet to explore and enjoy. I shall definitely be doing more kawaii digital art so watch this space!

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