Finished a comic today - Melon and Jelly

I have some plots ready to apply to some cartoony cat characters that I recently developed on paper, after their living in my mind for sooo long.

One image is finished, entirely created in ink. I'm waiting for some camera equipment to charge up so I can photograph it in my highest quality for archiving, in case I'm famous some day. Meanwhile, I have cell phone photos to share.

In the beginning

The idea was an intro to the characters: one cat stuck in a tree, doing what kitties do, and the other patiently trying to get his or her attention. I wanted to try a perspective drawing, so the tree cat would be close up and in your face, to emphasize how animal instincts take over. First I collected photos of plants. I sketched plants. I wandered suspiciously in the garden outside my apartment building, with a clipboard and sketchpaper in hand. My drawings turned out pretty well, but there wasn't really an ideal specimen to practice on. It needed to be a houseplant, like a potted tree or something sturdy enough to (sorta) support the weight of a cat climbing it.

Then I needed images of how a cat looks when clinging to a tree. That was easier, thanks to a Google image search. After that, I had enough technical info to begin drawing on illustration paper. I also knew that I wanted to use ink, because I received so many interesting and supportive comments for my only ink painting so far which hung in a gallery a few months ago. This image will be ink success #2!

Plant shaping up with perspective

Cat body in progress

Background colours starting to appear

Inking gone wild

When working with ink, I have difficulty deciding where to start. So, I usually start filling in some colour, similar to adding mass or tones in an underpainting. With ink, I'm not sure how one does an underpainting, so since I'm using acrylic ink, I treat it a bit like an acrylic painting, where subsequent colouring covers over even the most bold initial marks.

The 'cat up tree' image is only my second ink drawing that is fully painted with ink. I'm not sure ink is meant to be used this way, but I like how it looks, so I'll keep doing some pieces this way.

Unfortunately I constantly forget that some inks are opaque, and many of mine are transparent. It's challenging to lay down colour such as white, to hide a mistake or change some shapes. For example, my little cat standing on the floor was intended to be a beige colour, but once the brown dried, white glazes looked strange, and I found that pinks subdued my harsh brown much better than white did. Between the start and finish of this image, I added white and cool grey to my collection of colours, so that I can make beige, and subtle shadows for occasions like this, where the whole page is going to be filled with colour.

It would also be ideal to take the time to add tones before diving greatly into colouring for these situations. For some reason, I feel compelled when using ink, to just dive right in and colour the items. Maybe it's the nature of acrylic. It dries quickly and you can address one piece of an image at a time, quite differently than working with watercolours.

Subsequent comic panels will probably be made digitally with Painter or iPad apps like ArtRage or ProCreate, or minimally-inked, to save time and get my ideas out quickly.

Green ground balances green leaves perhaps

Still learning colour mixing

Close to finishing

Background became golden to help plant stand out

I decided on blue, no surprise...I like bright colours

Don't drink the water! The coffee is okay, though

Cats are starting to have faces and details

Still not quite finished...and it's been a long process

Finally success!

The finished piece by Heidi Bada

I like how the flying bug turned out; he seems to be glowing and appealing to the blue cat Melon. The little guy on the floor kinda stuck in my mind to be a slower-moving character, so I'm glad he or she (I still haven't decided) looks cute and cuddly in pink, since my attempted beige didn't work. I was surprised how painstaking it was to create highlight and shadow sides to the tree and cat. The shadow portions involved grey sometimes, and other times just more brown, and yellow and white helped produce highlights. With practice, I'm sure this task will become easier. As I said before, acrylic ink dries quickly, including the stock on my palette where I was trying to mix lighter and darker shades for the tree and Melon (the blue cat). Now that I think of it, the pink cat should probably be female. Seems obvious now. But we'll have to wait and see! I guess that's my comic strip cliffhanger for you today.

Images are provided for entertainment; please don't copy without discussing with me first.

FYI- all images everywhere on my blog are All Rights Reserved. Do not copy or use the images in any commercial manner, such as printing to post on your wall or pasting into your website. I will consider requests to use images for academic and personal purposes, and I'm available for hire for commercial image creation and am willing to discuss rights management arrangements for digital, merchandise, and other rights to commercial and personal usage of my images.

Tiffany Kitty has a teardrop

I made a quick animation using a drawing I made yesterday with Photoshop. The animation is done in Toon Boom Studio. Photoshop was just acting strange so I went with TBS then it was acting stupid, so I restarted it, a few times, and it eventually worked. The result is below, with no audio added yet. When I'm ready to make a few kitty sound effects, I'll try to add them. I've not tried that in TBS yet, so it's a good opportunity to familiarize myself with those tools; Photoshop requires audio to be produced elsewhere, then imported, which is a pain in the butt for a simple project like this.

Let me know if you like my kitty drawing too. It took about 4 hours to complete the whole drawing with Photoshop and a Wacom tablet, but it turned out exactly as I pictured it in my head for a change, including the slightly dramatic lighting.




Ok...now I don't like how YouTube replaces my video at the end with a bunch of thumbnails...so I slowed it down so you can be sure to see the final speech bubble. Sorry for confusion, but YouTube doesn't have a quick way to replace a video once it's uploaded.

My first HTML5 animation was a success, now visible on Youtube and my website

After some experimenting with the capabilities of Hype 2 on the Mac, I came up with a short animation about Christmas and cats that I have shared on Youtube at http://youtu.be/ITsWH0Rzigc and on my website www.patiostudioproductions.biz. Full audio is only included in the website version, because exporting to video doesn't seem to include audio.

Let me know what you think, there or here in the comments.

Here's the YouTube version, but it's better to see the website version because it utilizes the audio files and original HTML and graphics files.

Now that I know Hype 2 works well, and is very easy to use, I am excited to come up with more compelling stories. I can justify putting time into complete cartoon or line art illustrations, with suitable components to be animated with HTML5 and Javascript. For my samples, I am planning to make a few educational and entertainment pieces. My college and university studies offer lots of enjoyable subjects to choose from, that I'll try to show in a funny or unique (but compelling) way. For entertainment, I have a few cartoon characters that I draw frequently and would love to portray in animated stories. Not to mention promotional animations for my own and others' websites.

It's exciting, especially after I decided Madefire's online animated comic book creation tool seemed to have an unnecessarily dark and mysterious learning curve. My project there failed three times, and I say that's the end of that!

Madefire out...Hype 2 in. Plus, Hype 2 creates HTML5 assets ready for FTP upload. I've never used an FTP client before, but on short notice, and strong desire to show off my Christmas cat and tree animation, I figured it out (using FileZilla) and it worked perfectly. The first and only thing you'll see on my 'practice' website space (www.patiostudioproductions.biz) is that cat and tree animation!

Busy with a variety of artistic media

It's hard to choose some days. I always start with at least two goals for the day, such as finishing a painting and doing a digital painting exercise. Any gigs I get off fiverr.com are done in addition to that, because I have a high drive for learning newer, better techniques than I learned way back in high school and days off during a long period of work and studies.

Last week, I decided to focus a little, however, and I set aside many drawing goals (ie. life drawing studies) so that I could try out some animation, motion graphics, and video compositing techniques I found tutorials for. I ended up downloading an animation software demo that lasts 15 days - Toon Boom Studio.

I've also completed a study in motion graphics that went from basic motion tricks to creating animated logos in Photoshop. I went on just in the past few days, to try to figure out how to add masks to videos, so that people can be highlighted or cropped out for example, even when they are moving around in the frame. Clearly, there's lots to be covered in my bag of interests.

So far a single activity hasn't popped out as 'the one' that I'll prioritize in my personal and commercial pursuits. In the past few days, my animated stick man has gotten more sophisticated, and so has my video masking. Meanwhile, all of those activities require keeping my drawing skills keen. Thus, tonight I set aside most of the computer activities and started a simple watercolour painting exercise using my favourite subject, cats, to try out some quick colour decisions and glazing techniques.

I just wanted to write to keep you interested, and know that I'm not falling off the radar. I have taken a bunch of photos and computer screenshots and need to sit down, organize them, and post them with useful stories about work in progress and my reviews of techniques I've learned recently.

Also, one drawing has been chosen to appear in a group show at Pandora Arts Collective later in November. It's the Forest Kitty ink drawing I previously blogged about. I'm excited about that, and to see the work of my drop-in art group peers on display together.

Happy graphics/video/animation/painting everyone!

'Cat on path' drawing took a lot of time and involved a lot of ink

I completely neglected to blog as I was creating this one, over a period of about 3 days. So here it is. It's one that already I am arranging to frame and hang on my wall. It seems worthy of trying to sell on ebay some day, or my local shopping site usedvictoria.com.

Here's a quick look at the finished piece:

Forest kitty ink drawing by Heidi Bada

A few points to remember about my artwork

1. All images anywhere on my blog, stores, and other online or print locations are copyright protected. I'm shocked that people these days think they can use peoples' drawings and photos in their ads. It doesn't matter that a (c) copyright symbol isn't present. Please spread the word that you need consent to use other peoples' images in your ads, signs, flyers, websites, and so on. I'll stop the lecture there.
2. I'm looking for feedback and of course let me know if you'd like to buy a print. My next step is to upload it to my FineArtAmerica and Society6 stores (Society6 seems to have cheaper shipping but I'll leave it up to you to decide). 

How this image evolved

Since the piece is completed, I'll give you the whole story with my recollections.

First, I thought I wanted a sweet little forest scene with munchies for the cat. I sketched on scrap paper to get the figure close to real life proportions, and wanted to keep that cute little face that appeared even though it seems like it's straining to see something off to the side.

Basic cat on a path surrounded by weeds

I thought a cat on a plain green background would be boring, and I saw an opportunity to make a foreground of encroaching branches. I was also trying out a potential maximum for the reach of the grass, represented by those yellow bushes in the top region.

Grass and leaves added

I'm pretty sure I didn't like what I saw. I wanted to see what the sky would actually look like, not knowing how dark my new blue ink would dry. Yikes! It's pretty opaque and medium-dark.

Sky and rocky foreground started

Going on my idea of leaves, which at this point weren't standing out very noticeably, I also discovered the bottom region needed a foreground too, as an environmental cue that the pathway is an opening for your eye into the picture and perhaps adventures of this kitty cat.

Now a step back to see some balance in the image

I seem to have gotten quite involved at this point, and didn't snap any more cell phone photos. I really wanted a bright cat, with an inviting environment to explore. Given the sorta dark sky, I started to sense an evening time for this image. 

I smoothed out the grass and the rockery to match the even tone in the sky. The cat's colourful coat required several...coats...of ink to cover the area and allow some highlight variations while I also had yellow on my ink palette for doing the green grass and leaves. While the leaves ended up brighter than the grass, they actually stand out as an eye-catcher for the cat's yellow eyes I think.

The land unexpectedly started to look like it was rolling off into a valley at left. It reminded me very much of rolling hills along the roadside in the interior region of B.C. where I've travelled.

I thought I'd leave the ink work done here, with a viewer wondering what the cat is thinking, what it's looking at, and where it might be located. I think the bright leaves indicate the location might be close to streetlights or houselights, and it seems cozy to me.

Finished now

New ink and pastel image done: You're Watching?

I've been busy organizing my website and learning some new HTML skills the past few weeks. Normally, I would like to post on my blog more frequently.

New cat drawing: You're Watching?

You're Watching? by Heidi Bada

So this drawing was done with some self-imposed pressure. Also I was a little unhappy with recent efforts at drawing the image in my head of a cat being interrupted while cleaning its paw.

Here it is, in pastel and ink. I think this time I captured the eye properly, to show that she is perturbed while being watched.

Prints will be available soon from my FineArtAmerica and Society6 galleries. Of course, this original is for sale too!

Website Project

Now the other thing I've been working on, the standalone website, started out as a venue to show off my HTML skills. However, it quickly became a goal for me to show off my illustrations in a comic book format. Then it was not so much comics necessarily, but just any storytelling goal using a website and modern HTML and companion tools.

I'm now taking a different direction with my website project, studying successful websites and figuring out what makes a good story in websites. I don't have anything up and running on my website to share yet, but rest assured this blog will be plastered with it when I've got at least a few illustrations in place.

My goal is to use ordinary webspace to demonstrate illustration as a storytelling tool, in both animated and static forms. Could be for entertainment, but more likely advertising and product demonstration. I love working with video as well, so the trio of illustration, animation, and video combined in a webspace creates a fun environment for me to work in. I'll want to create the images and the interaction/animation functions for custom projects, ideally.

It turned out that self-directed comic book sharing on comic book sites is a difficult way to get noticed and get feedback I need, regarding engagement of viewers and the qualities of my characters and storylines.

Using a website of my own, I can at least share my work, get more HTML experience, and get direct feedback from friends and fans.

My animation style was originally inspired by some Madefire comics I found using my iPad in the app store. I like how animation is minimal, and simply enhances the storyline (usually).

There you have it: a commercial application of illustration that is quite exciting and delightfully unpredictable as technology changes. Sounds good to me.

New watercolour sketch in my portfolio

Check it out - click the Portfolio tab in the menu. It's a watercolour sketch of a cat sleeping. Here's a sample. It looks better on my portfolio page.

Watercolour sketch by Heidi Bada

How to finish this off? Another cat pastel nearing completion

This one is made using pan pastels. I like the current unpainted state of the foreground objects.

Frisky Tail nearly completed

The whole point of this picture was to convey a typical reward that a cat looks forward to, being pat on the head.

But as I finished some of the background details, I noticed a bit of a social theme emerging. There's a mouse right in front of the cat. The sun is shining. The trees are lively and full of energy.

The cat unfortunately, like many people, is ignoring the world at his footsteps in favor of a quick fix. It's easy to look cute and get a pat on the head! It takes energy to enjoy active and cognitive pursuits.

In any case, the foreground objects will probably be completed with a bright color scheme to draw attention to them.

Let me know if you like it! The finished work will show up at my Society6 and FineArtAmerica shops, and my portfolio too.

Cheers,

Heidi

The paws grew claws today! It's a start on the finer details

Prissy Kitty looking a little more life-like today

Finally my colours and pen-handling on the Wacom are coming together. I decided to try adding some claws with a fine soft pastel, and add a whole additional layer of colour, so that I can even out the colour in the body and face. I believe I'm finished the tail now. My painting was brief - about 30 minutes today so far - and I like how the strokes of soft pastel created some appropriate highlights and shadows in the tail and front paw, plus edging to define those shapes.

Disregard the red background for now; I have a photo of a background I plan to work on and it has a cherry wood type of pattern.

I also spent a little time browsing tutorials online, to see if any more sophisticated technique could be applied. I found a useful tutorial that shows the basics of painting light and shadow on a still life, ironically done with Photoshop! It's title is Painting Light and Shadow, by Mattias Snygg.

Think I can finish this digital painting?

Just remember, it's my first one in a long time, and first one using a Wacom tablet.

My very first ones earned ribbons at my local country fair. The judges didn't know what a digital painting was, and no one had really heard of Corel Draw yet. That was my start with digital graphics, in 1993 to 1994, the first few years after I finished high school.

The kitty drawing (Prissy Kitty, I've decided to call her, to match her mean glance at the viewer who is interrupting her cleaning routine) has a face shaping up.

The eyes were detailed today

I'm crazy addicted to this digital painting, and at the same time need to read through the Corel Painter Getting Started Guide. I can't find keyboard shortcuts fast enough when I need them!

Progress on kitty painting...now it has a background in progress

Here's my Prissy Kitty digital painting so far, with a background started today. I'm following the basic steps in a tutorial on building up a 3-dimensional cartoon-like image.

This image feels like it's on track thanks to tutorial

I had been working on this image bit by bit, while learning to use Corel Painter AND my Wacom tablet. This tutorial was perfect for developing my image properly in terms of digital painting steps. I like the image in my head so much, that I'm being quite tedious in my process.

I went too far into my shading and highlighting earlier, trying to establish some depth to the character, before I found this tutorial. Depth can be established by painting, like in real life, with tints and shades of colours. That is was I initially did here. I also tried some dodge and burn tools that other tutorials suggested, after laying down a relatively flat colour to work with. It's useful to get practice in both.

And thanks to the Corel Painter Getting Started Guide I mentioned in my last post, I'm finding tools faster and more reliably already! And with only an hour of practice so far.

This tutorial starts out with blocked-in colours (in Photoshop I believe) then lighting effects, then details. The background is dealt with fairly late in the process, which suits this image similarly to the example shown in the tutorial. We'll see how it plays out in Painter and my kitty drawing. I'm still intending to have a leering glance on her, being interrupted by an admiring passerby looking at her shiny and clean coat of fur.

Prissy Kitty coming along, even though I was busy doing a few freelance gigs today

Fiverr.com is keeping me really busy with app reviews. I love that computer geeky stuff, too, but I felt a little weird the past few days to not have much time to work on drawings.

So tonight at 11:00pm I blocked out a little time and no pressure to make a little progress on my sleek cat drawing idea that I started recently.

Cat looking a little more colourful after 20 min

I feel good that I made some progress. I still need to define in my mind how elongated I want her to be, and what kind of muscle tone I want to portray. I'm definitely leaning towards the clay sculpture look that I love so much.

Thoughts about transitioning from traditional to tablet drawing

While working with Corel Painter for this drawing this evening, I discovered a pastel drawing tool that feels very much like traditional Pan Pastel. It was Real Soft Pastel brush. I managed to get a real soft imprint as though I was using a sponge with Pan Pastels, especially when holding the pen in an overhand grip.

This pen grip doesn't always work with the graphics tablet, and works a lot better if you tilt the tablet so that the pen is making adequate contact at an angle. It effectively makes you notice how your whole arm is moving, rather than just your wrist. I prefer to not rely on my wrist, as I'm looking for soft, sweeping movements of course for my kitties.

I don't see any discussion online so far in my travels about how to transition from traditional drawing methods to a drawing tablet. I don't really want to give up my spontaneous and freely-moving arm gestures; a lot of comments online about Wacom tablets indicate the users are adopting a handwriting grip when using the pen.

I'd love to hear opinions on how people hold their drawing tools, whether pen, pencil, brush, or digital tools. Even my drawing books don't address this much, except for the one I'm currently reading. It's called Drawing Basics and Video Game Art by Solarski and it goes into some good detail about how to hold a pencil in various ways for drawing.

Another cat drawing came to mind - she's busy making herself look good

I got an idea to use the idea of a cat to portray a glitzy glamorous personality, to be interpreted whatever way the viewer likes, using pastel.

The visual style I want to use is the same one that dominates my mind but I work hard to get close to it using pastel. I believe acrylic would get to the effect quicker, but I enjoy using pastel, and now my Wacom tablet more than acrylics which are more costly in terms of preparing a surface and potentially ruining brushes.

I've decided the illustrative effect that I am most enthusiastic about can be described as claymation or china doll appearance, but in paint or pastel, which looks kinda like what these artists produce:

1) Will Terry, whom I found by accident online today. My favourite image of his is a good example of that 3-D clay sculpture look I enjoy. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy, and I believe it is a great way to portray cats. I believe cats belong on a pedestal. I'm sure my cat theme in my drawings tells a lot about my personality.

2) Jaime Zollars is another artist I found in some book in the past and I made a note of the name. My favourite image looks so serene and emotional.

3) Shawna Erback, found on Fineartamerica.com. My favourite image is video-game-lifelike even though you can't see the girl's face.

4) basically the entire graphics in the movie trailer The Boxtrolls, showing on TV right now!

I started this cat image as a digital painting. I've gotten as far as a pencil sketch. She'll have a glaring stare at the viewer, to say 'leave me alone while I'm washing.' I'm pretty sure every hair will be in place, except maybe a tuft that is disturbed currently by her tongue. And she'll have a pretty bow or bell on her collar. It might just be my most challenging personal project yet!

I might also want to create a copy using pan pastels. I think the glow of white paper underneath the light dusting of pastel pigment would look seriously vibrant and engaging.

Cheers for a work in progress!

Hey...at least I got the basic form out already!

Where will I start with using my new Wacom tablet for digital drawing and painting?

I've been asking myself that since I bought my Wacom digitizing tablet a few days ago. It's not an easy answer. The product doesn't come with a manual, no surprise, but it also doesn't have anything to help a traditional artist or a Photoshop photo editing specialist adapt to this new tool.

Do I redo my drawing and painting skills using the tablet instead of pen or brush?

Do I open a blank window and press the buttons and move the pen around to see what it does?

Or do I try out the Corel Painter X3 trial app that came with the device - hoping that Corel has created a digital drawing tutorial to learn the tablet's features, and digital painting in general?
* note: several other drawing apps come with the device, but Painter is the only one I'm familiar with

Or hope and pray for help on YouTube?

Being the type of person who just likes to jump in and do something, rather than search online for an answer to a specific but obscure question, I make a short plan:

1. Open Corel Painter and follow any tutorials it offers using my Wacom tablet where possible
2. Try Wacom website (again) to seek instructional videos on using the hardware properly - during installation, videos offered gave me no instructions on what its buttons do, and I didn't feel inspired to search YouTube for other videos at that point
3. Use Painter while working through a book I just studied at library: Bold Visions, oriented towards digital painting

The results follow! 

I spent the whole afternoon getting a good feel for the device, and Painter to boot. All I knew about Painter at the start, is that it is the best app for simulating watercolour painting, and I love that idea!

I just finished doing a thorough practice using the book Bold Visions, and it works with environments, lighting, forms, shadow, and many examples of working from sketch to forms to details. This exercise gave me an opportunity to work with the copious notes I made.

In Corel Painter and Corel.com

Starting point for learning more about Corel Painter

To my delight, it offers a learning module full of instructional videos. Many cover how to work with brushes in the app, and some videos cover full image creation examples. Non-video written tutorials are also available for those artists who prefer to work with step-by-step instructions. I clicked on Digital Art.

After viewing a few videos, I was still only working with basic strokes, and still didn't know how I'm supposed to hold the stylus, or what the buttons do when actively painting. Note - the System Settings app in a Mac computer creates a Wacom category when the device is installed, and it lets you program the buttons and set up your usage preferences.

In Wacom.com

Here I found a different pathway to find tutorials. At the main wacom.com website, I hit the ? icon to get Support. Then Product Tutorials. There I chose my model (Intuos Pro) and also saw a Webinars tab that turned out to offer Painter and other painting tutorials that apply to any tablet.

Tutorials organized by Wacom product families, plus webinars

Continuing with the Intuos category, I found two tutorials that go beyond the installation process. One is for working with "radial menus" and the other is about configuring buttons and preferences. Finally I found answers to some of my curiosity about how the features work! I mean, I saw quickly that the buttons can be programmed, but without experience using buttons in conjunction with a drawing tablet...well let's just say the information didn't register as to how I might want to program my buttons and radial menu. A nice feature is that by default, the second "express button" down brings up a diagram of the buttons and stylus, and clicking on any part brings up the appropriate settings from the Settings-->Wacom Tablet module on my Mac.

*note - the tablet needs to be turned on (it isn't automatically on when using without cord) in order for Settings --> Wacom Tablet to open.

Good to know: 1) settings can be recorded for different apps, 2) the second button down on the tablet brings up a reminder of all the current settings for all the buttons

So there you go...I feel much better prepared for Painter, and I'll create some real pictures using my tablet with techniques learned in the Bold Visions digital painting book I found at the library.

Using Bold Visions techniques

The overall technique is probably the same any artist would learn in art school - rough in shapes, add tone to establish depth and three-dimensionality, and finally add details. The procedure using something like Photoshop or Painter requires several layers ideally, to get the best control of the digital canvas.

I started with no particular image in mind, just a cats theme and a textured pastel paper with a lavender tint.

I instinctively started outlining a cat with a pastel tool...then I remembered I'm not just sketching. I started over with the idea of blocking in shapes as an underpainting, still using a pastel:

I continued to work at adding colour glazes (influenced by recent studies in pastel) and edging. By now I was holding the tablet at a 30-45 degree angle with one hand, and drawing with a relaxed and loose grip (learned from drawing tutorials) with my dominant hand. Since learning to NOT draw with a handwriting pose, my drawing surface needs to be angled, including my tablet. It's proven to be effective for controlling my mark-making strokes. I'm certain that the classic handwriting pen posture was developed so we could colour inside the lines. No need for that here.

I'm having lots of fun using the tablet, as I would with tradition in-hand drawing tools. The ability to choose unlimited colours in my apps is invaluable, by the way. The colour picker is oriented around a colour wheel with tints and tones displayed in the centre, which is convenient. I wouldn't say that drawing on the computer is any quicker than traditional media. The colours and lack of dust are two positives, and when doing watercolours, I hear that Painter allows 'drying' the paper which is sometimes a pain when using real paint.

Here's some edging now on a new layer, in Gel blend mode.

More form and some edging

I haven't tried to smudge my pastels yet. It turns out Corel Painter includes a variety of Blender tools that smudge the strokes.

I've gone a bit farther ahead to do some detail in the eyes and nose, to get the shapes started in that area, so I can get onto shadows and light sources for the purposes of demonstrating the tasks I typically would do with a digital painting project. They eyes and nose layer is Default blend mode.

Closeup of eyes and nose beginnings

Next I tried to do some quick lighting and shading. I want to add highlight to the shoulder and under chin to use up some of the excessive facial region and body that I blocked out earlier.

In the process, I also added as much detail as I intended. Here is the final result:

Final cat by Heidi Bada

There you have it. A completed digital pastel drawing. Didn't cost me a penny, other than buying the drawing tablet. I started to enjoy using the device nearing the end. Using blend modes and adjusting opacity is a great digital feature in Photoshop or Painter, and opens up new kinds of images I can make. So I shall keep busy practicing my drawing and pastels, while also studying digital art and using my imagination to apply these modern tools appropriately for goals.

Watercolour cat painting is done finally

I finally found a way to finish off my cat drawing. See the video below - the solution involved Chinese White paint. Also, it has a name now: Innocent Kitty.

Innocent Kitty watercolour version by Heidi Bada

My comments via YouTube video:

New advancements on my watercolour cat drawing today

I just discovered that cell phone will share to Blogger! Let's see how this works.

Newest cat drawing made into pastel and watercolour

This post is a catch-up to get my blog caught up to my Facebook and Twitter feeds.

During the past few days, I've finished several pieces, and used my cell phone to get them quickly announced on Facebook, Youtube, etc. It's just so easy to do it that way. However, the blog here allows a more thorough explanation and the ability to label my posts. So here goes.

First of all, I created and completed a pastel cat painting recently that I want to show off. I like the drawing it's made from, and I made two copies - one for pastel and one for watercolour. The watercolour is still in progress today.

Pastel cat painting by Heidi Bada

Watercolour version still in progress

I also recorded a bit of commentary regarding the pastel version which was uploaded to YouTube:

New cat drawing in progress, waiting for daylight so I can trace it

I really like how the first version worked, made from a sketch done earlier today as an experiment and test of my memory of cat features. It turned out so likeable, that I want to wait till tomorrow to make some copies. My method is to tape it to the window and trace onto watercolour paper taped over the initial good drawing. It's quite late now, so I'll wait for daylight.

Meanwhile, I made a video (in two short parts) that show the work off a bit. I plan to make a watercolour with traditional washes, to practice my watercolour paint handling, and a pastel version using my new Pan Pastels, and also probably a charcoal drawing or ink version.

I'm still not sure which media I'd like to specialize in, so I feel compelled to try all with this cute drawing of a cat.

Enjoy my comments about the drawing below.