The beauty of living in the Dutch countryside! During our occasional morning walks in the neighborhood, we usually pass by a huge farm field of sheep. They just roam around in the open space with no care in the world, enjoying the fresh air. At times, they approach walkers like ourselves and just give that adorable blank stare. It was that one particular day, though, when we came across two cats on separate occasions. One black one was meandering around a fence, whilst a ginger one was sitting down by a stream relaxing. Although I tried to meow at them for attention, both were completely oblivious to my affectionate attention so I just left them as is. Cats can be quite moody and aloof at times! Nevertheless, I thought it would be a cute idea to draw a little story about this. A morning of spotting cats and sheep!
The Drawing
This one was going to require careful focus on composition against a landscape background. As such, I took out my small A5 sketchbook and penciled out a draft of my thoughts. All taking into account the one-third rule of course, and carefully trying to figure out which sheep or cat goes where. It’s a story drawing and hence, it has to come from my imagination rather than actual. Once I was happy and confident enough, I transferred my thoughts onto a larger A4-size Toned Grey sketchbook by Strathmore. Challenging part was getting the cat in a sitting positions which is a change from the usual standing on all fours. Nevertheless, I achieved what I was looking for in the end. Let’s see what happens now!
Adding Colors
I was going to choose colored pencils but decided to go for charcoal and pastels for a change. One medium I have not used in a while was Cretacolor’s Colored Charcoal, thick sticks which come in earthy shades including blue and green. By using the flat end of the stick, I was able to create an interesting effect that resembled water with the blue. The same with the clouds by blending white and grey. For the grass, I merged the light and darker green and smudged them with my finger and cotton buds. Yellow Ochre was the color used for the sun. And now, for the smaller areas like the animals, hard pastels, also by Cretacolor, seemed a good choice both in brownscale and greyscale sets. Finer details such as the eyes and cats’ whiskers were drawn in with charcoal and chalk pencils. Et voilà!
A rather simple piece this time but quite illustrative. I love how a simple morning walk turned out to be a story to paint about! It is also not often that I get to use charcoal and pastels in stick form so I found it was a good change from wet mediums and even digital art. Now that it is autumn too, earthy shades seem like a great choice. Need to practice more, but drawing animals is so much fun as well! Look forward to getting further creative by walking around the neighborhood more!
My Kawaii Quarter 