Independent Learning Project – Module 4 Make-up

This week, I followed a drawing philosophy that I’ve always had trouble with over the years: embrace your mistakes. I decided the medium I’d be using is colored pencil, and proceeded to do a quick drawing from there. I decided to draw my cat, Tulo. I haven’t really strayed too far yet from drawing animals at this point, but I’m working on expanding creatively by using a medium I don’t feel confident with at all. Here’s the reference photo of my cat:

He’s a beautiful little black cat. Part of the challenge was to make him stand out effectively using more than just a black colored pencil. As always, I started with the outline:

I proceeded to darken the outline with a black colored pencil and then lightly begin shading in the rest of the cat:

Next came the most creative part of this: using purple in the background of the cat in order to give it some pop. Tulo’s namesake comes from my favorite baseball player: Toronto Blue Jays shortstop Troy Tulowitzki. I became a huge fan of his back when he was a Colorado Rockie. I began following him during his rookie season and fell in love the moment he turned an unassisted triple play- one of the rarest plays in the game- and became a baseball fan as a result. Purple is one of the Rockies’ team colors, as is black, so I thought the combination as fur on the cat would be fitting for this project.

Here’s the finished product of what I did this week:

I wanted it to look sketchy and experimental when I started this project, but I’m not satisfied with the overall look of the fur. I used too long of strokes and therefore he looks much fluffier in the drawing than he actually is in real life. But hey, that’s why I’m practicing, right? I’m not good with colored pencils, but doing this drawing gave me some insight on how to draw fur with the medium. It also showed me that I need to be more mindful of my lines even when I’m trying to fill a space with color.My favorite part of the drawing is the way the purple and black look together in the fur itself; it was an interesting idea. Maybe I can revisit drawing my cat at a later date; for now, I’m okay with having practiced an unfamiliar medium that’s unforgiving with mistakes.