"She's been sitting there for hours. I think she knows that snow is solid water"

What is up everybody? How is the first month of your new year? Been busy with school work this week but ey! I manage to produce this for @aranda's Drawing Challenge. The full drawing is at the end of this post for those who want to skip ahead.

So the theme/task is to draw what is basically a nekomimi, which is basically a girl with cat eats (tail may or may not be included). It's a kind of character type that I'm pretty sure anyone of us growing up in the boom of anime's popularity must have drawn at least once (don't lie, everyone did it). I haven't really drawn one since I was maybe around 12-14 years old (?) so I thought it's be interesting to try it out.

My approach with this drawing is a bit more like a stress reliever so a lot of my usual processes won't be included this time around. So I was doing a few things that may or may not have worked out but we shall see.

Reference/Inspiration

So I start by reference hunting. At first I thought I'd draw our family cat but he's been my muse for cat featured drawings before so I wanted to explore something different.

So I found this stock image of this Siberian long haired cat. It's super hyper-edited that reminded me a bit of the dying days of MySpace where emo kids used to do the same thing. It's also a really cool tone. My colour palette tends to be relatively warm and high saturation but I wanted to see what I can do with something more muted and cold in temperature.

Sketch and Line

The lineart this time is little more inspired by the Art Nouveau style which tends to have this super thick outline around the finished base lineart. My lines tend to be pretty thick on its own but they're pretty much flat and constant for me.

One of the more tedious things of lining this drawing is figuring out where all that hair is supposed to go. While I absolutely adore a thick and loose braid, lining it can be confusing. Just shows that I need more practice for these types of hair.

Colouring and Beyond

While I intentionally wanted to do a full on Art Nouveau style drawing, I decided that it would be better if I did an independent study of it later. I do my usual steps here on start with shadows. I always find it easier to figure our what exact colours I want in the end. This is made a lot easier since I have a reference.

It's a mess of figuring out what to take it and what to exclude from the reference. I didn't want to follow it to the teeth but I also didn't want to stray too far from it. This is one of the challenges faced when drawing with a singular reference material.

Final Drawing

I did a couple of last minute edits before putting it up, notably on the colour of the bits of scratches all over Beri. While this isn't my neatest drawings (so many little colours popping out from under the lineart), it's pretty fun and I can say that my stress levels have gone down quite a bit.

So I hope you guys like the drawing. Do check out @aranda's contest post. There are quite a few entries from amazing artists.

Anyways, see ya next post~!

Full Process Gif

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