My Drawing Process of “Cats In The Garden”

I participated an art challenge on Instagram for the first week of the year 2023, the prompts are all about cats and flowers. I am a cat lover (we have a cat, I will introduce her soon…) This is the last prompt “Cats In The Garden”. Let’s see how I work on this illustration.

First, I did some research on Pinterest, to navigate some images about cats and plants, then it came to me the idea to draw like this, here is my sketch below. Then I outlined the sketch with an oil black color, to give a thicker stroke (and I like the dirty spotted effect).

Then I tried different color combinations on Photoshop, after many attempts I found a satisfying color palette and the effect. As you can see it was almost like the final illustration, and it could be easier stopping here 🙂 Anyway, I preferred using traditional colouring method by hand, for this illustration I’ve used acrylic gouache, to have a similar engraved printing effect like the result on photoshop.

After the colouring, I outlined the illustration again and added details with a dark brown color pencil. Then scanned it again into Photoshop, adjusted the color, light and contrast.

Then the last step is to try some solid color blending with photoshop. Here came the final result that you see at the top of the article. I really like this kind of colouring style, how about you?

To see my other illustration of the “Cats In The Garden Series”, please go here https://margothuang.site/portfolio-item/cat-and-flowers-illustration/

And I am happy to share with you that I like these series of illustrations so much, I also sell them as Original A4/A5 Prints and as Stickers on my shop here https://margothuang.site/product-tag/cat/

Thank you for reading and hope you like it.