Çaturday with Charlie

Charlie deigns to pose

On the occasion of just after his second birthday, and having become jealous of his brother getting a portrait last week, Charlie deigns to pose. When you see him on his own like this he looks like a big cat. He isn’t. He’s actually very small and slightly built. He just gives the impression of heft. When you see them together, it’s obvious that George is 30% bigger.

As you can see, some parts of this sketch are more, well, sketchy than others. I was having trouble with my iPad: every time I came close to finishing, the native photo app just dumped all the edits and I was back to square one. After the third time I lost patience and just roughed out everything from his chin down.

I’ve learnt a fair bit since last week’s attempt. I’ve found that if I begin in Abode Fresco (or Sketch as was), then continue in Apple’s native photo editing app, I get enough of what I need for my level of skill. Right now I don’t need the ten million zillion choices of Photoshop; it’s overwhelming. At the level of figuring out how to show the curve and flow of fur, and how to create shadow (I truly am a beginner at this) I really, really don’t need to figure out the difference between ink and scratchy ink, or wet edges and shape dynamics—I just want a fucking pencil, y’know? Anyway, I’m enjoying this sketching thing now that I’ve found a way to make it simple.

Now that the cats are done I’m turning my attention to some birds, trying to figure out how to make little pictures I can use as icons for the maps I want to make. Per requests on Twitter and Facebook I’m starting with a couple of stabby birds: a bittern (for both SPEAR and MENEWOOD) and a shrike. But I want to do a wren and robin (a British round, Robin Redbreast: I love little round birds that look like truffles you could just pop in your mouth). Then maybe an eagle owl or tawny owl, too. Perhaps a rook. If I can figure out how to make something look fluffy I’ll do an owlet. After that, back to mammals: hedgehog, otter, horse…

Expect more random sketches in the future.