Sketchbook Week 3: Acting the Goat

In week 3 I was told to draw either animals or fruit and then stylise them into characters. I chose animals as it was quite a challenge, and I am used to drawing animals with a realistic style so I wanted to explore stylising them. There weren't many animals to draw from life and I wanted to explore each character in a bit of depth so I drew one kind of animal for 2 days. Therefore I only drew cats, dogs, and seagulls.

Day 1 and 2

For the first day I focused on drawing cats from life so I could have a reference of their form and expressions. I then took this ahead on the second day and drew some quick expressions, which developed into my fighting cat and crouched cat. I found that the cats I studied looked either very annoyed or cute, so I wanted to show both of these in my characters. I showed the annoyed side by making it a fighter character, meanwhile the cuter side is shown through lots of curves and softer shapes. I also came up with some concepts of a geometric styled cat and how I could use simple shapes to create a character.

Day 3 and 4

Next I found some seagulls to draw on campus, and tried to show their annoying, sulky personality in my character design. From my reference drawings I found seagulls and quite vicious, and they also don't care about others. Therefore, I made my character reflect this, but exaggerated it for a better character. I mostly drew just the head of the seagulls as I was trying to get the right expression for their personality. 

Day 5 and 6

For day 5 I drew dogs from life, which was quite easy to do as there are lots of dogs on campus and in Falmouth! I don't usually draw dogs so it was a bit of a struggle at the start. On day 6 I made my dogs into characters. I wanted to express the more humorous side of dogs, whilst also showing their cuteness. So, I came up with a character who has wide eyes, a lot of fur, and a sad expression which changes to a goofy one. 

Day 7

Finally, on day 7 I drew all my characters together in a 'line up'. Bringing all the characters together showed the variety of expressions and personalities, which I really liked. If I had more time I would've loved to explore these characters further with new poses, expressions, and stories.

Class Drawings

I drew my classmates and found I quite liked the quick characters I produced. The first drawing (my least favourite) was done when everyone was drawing each other so it was very pressured, however the other ones were done whilst in class. I included these mostly to remind myself that sometimes good ideas and sketches come when I don't expect it.