Visual distortion

This was a really fun exercise. I’m not sure that I did what was intended in the exercise but it turned out to be a really intriguing way to develop a character. The exercise was to sketch a life-like cat or dog, then produce a simple line drawing from the first image, to use this drawing to produce a collage and then to make a drawing from the collage. I think that there was meant to be more visual distortion involved but I got a little carried away when I noticed the magic carpet in the image.

Here’s my original drawing of my friend’s cat Lucy. It’s from a photo where she was attracted by something outside of the window. I like this picture because she is very alert and also (in the original, maybe not in this drawing) quite sphinx like. At this point I wondered about having her being intrigeued by an egyptian sphinx in the final image, or I guess she could turn into a sphinx.

From this original image I produced a line drawing using only five lines. In this line drawing I thought that it looked like Lucy was flying on a magic carpet; which was the surprise inspiration for the images that follow.

I then used the line image to make a simple collage. Lucy is actually dark blue and made from a magazine picture of shoaling fish … which I found amusing; however, this hasn’t come through in the image. I probably should have chosen an area of the magazine picture that was a little lighter. I think this is the point that I was meant to include more visual distortion. However, I was preoccupied with images of Lucy flying through the night to rid the world of evil.

I like the final image. While I was drawing it I had in mind children’s book illustrators such as Raymond Briggs. I can imagine writing books about the adventures of Lucille … but for now I should probably move on to the next exercise.