Bailey and Arthur

 

7/17/24 Bailey (reference photo by Andrew Banks)

Bailey, a beautiful chocolate lab that I first drew last December, had suffered from a painful cancer and recently had to be put down. Her human had posted a final photo in a Facebook group, and I decided to surprise him with this drawing. I never met Bailey, but I know she was much loved, and her last gift to me was the joy I received by drawing her again.

Also last winter, I had made a drawing of Megan, who has the most enormous eyes of any cat I’ve seen (or at least that I’ve drawn). Megan’s human contacted me recently to commission a portrait of her other cat, Arthur. She wondered if a mostly white cat would be challenging to draw, and I laughed and said Arthur would be easy compared to the many all-black cats I had drawn! Well, the last laugh was on me – I had a heckuva time with Arthur’s nearly all-whiteness! And maybe I’m just out of practice, but I’m once again feeling like cats in general are more difficult than dogs.

8/6/24 Arthur (reference photo by Karen Wong)

With my current interest in minimal tonal comics using only occasional spot color, it was fun to get a realistic color fix with these pet portraits. My first drawing of Bailey had been with Viarco ArtGraf “tailor shape” blocks for the primary color on a Field Notes cover. This time I wanted to make a more formal portrait, so I used only Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencils on Lenox Cotton paper. I did the same with Arthur. As you can see from the photo below, I used a surprising number of pencils for a white cat.

This winter, I’ll probably do another fundraiser using pet portraits. Of course, I enjoy giving the money to a good cause, but let’s be frank: This time I’ll be doing it to get a color fix, especially using my beloved colored pencils.