Back with a tabby cat

It's been a long time! I really thought that 2009 was going to be good year for my drawing. Instead, I did nothing at all. In March I was diagnosed with a posterior vitreous detachment in my left eye. It has left me with hazy vision and floaters and coupled with my extremely poor vision it makes it difficult to see fine detail. I've also spent a lot of time on photography!Still, I'm going to try again and I'm starting with a tutorial piece of a sweet tabby cat by Pauline Longley. I'm trying a new support - Clairefontaine Pastelmat and mainly Derwent Coloursoft pencils with a few Prismacolors thrown in. As you can see, not a lot done yet - I've just transferred the line drawing to the grey pastelmat. At least my scanner still works!

Birman kitten line drawing

Not much to show for this week, every day I have been stopped by more pressing things from getting on with a new picture. Today, despite an awful dull day I have just managed to get the line drawing of a birman kitten on to the drafting film. One of my Flickr contacts has kindly given me permission to use her beautiful photos as a reference, thanks Alice.

This picture will be a close up of the kitten's face. I've worked out how to get the line drawing on the reverse of the drafting film so it's the right way when I turn it over. This means it will be much easier to erase the lines as I go along and is one of the good things about drafting film! Looking at it on screen, I can already see that the whiskers need repositioning.