{"id":892,"date":"2015-02-03T21:34:15","date_gmt":"2015-02-03T13:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/?p=892"},"modified":"2015-02-04T01:33:10","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T17:33:10","slug":"custom-pet-portraits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/custom-pet-portraits\/","title":{"rendered":"Custom Pet Portraits + I Love My Cat"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’d like to to share one of my latest projects, something I never thought I would do since I’ve never really drawn animals other than cats and birds before: custom portraits of my friend April’s Shiba Inus! When she first asked me I wasn’t sure if I could do it so I made this colored pencil sketch of her two Shibas sitting side by side. For practice.
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\nObviously I got the proportions all wrong. \ud83d\ude33 Anyway, working on the sketch allowed me to familiarize myself with their features and markings so I eventually felt more at ease drawing them. I think it also helped that Shiba dogs look somewhat “feline” ((for me at least)) with their upright ears and almond-shaped upward-slanting eyes.<\/p>\n

And then I made individual portraits, taking into account each of their distinct attributes — for instance a slightly crooked ear for one of them which was from an operation, etc — for a more personal touch. I was confident enough to use watercolor this time. I don’t typically use blacks for coloring but the black and tan Shiba variety called for it and I was quite happy with how they turned out and thankfully, so was their mom. \ud83d\ude42
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\nThese were so fun to do and once I get more dog-drawing practice under my belt, I’ll likely add animal portraits to my custom artwork repertoire. (I will have to draw the line at pet reptiles though… \ud83d\ude2f )
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\nMeanwhile.. it’s no secret that I love our cat. In fact he’s right there in my blog logo illustration which I haven’t changed for years. He’s also in my still-non-existent handmade store’s logo (see watermark) and in a lot of drawings I’ve done and even in some of Arnold<\/a>‘s comics as an Easter egg to friends who know us well. <\/p>\n

There was one day last week when my mind hit a blank\u00a0and I couldn’t start working. He was lying on his play mat\u00a0in front of me and, as if sensing\u00a0my anxiety, started rolling around playfully. I could never resist when he does that so I went over and gave him a chin and back rub. He looked so\u00a0content\u00a0and carefree that I felt like preserving that moment. Without thinking I started sketching him. He kept moving around while\u00a0I tried capturing all his poses\u00a0and that was the birth of the series of illustrations below (right) which I ended up turning into a pattern (left).
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It’s still being proofed over at Spoonflower<\/a><\/strong> but if you like cats too, my orange tabbies pattern is now available on phone covers, iPad sleeves, and more at Zazzle<\/a><\/strong> and RedBubble<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n
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\"Orange <\/a>
Orange Tabby Cats Sleeve For MacBooks<\/a><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’d like to to share one of my latest projects, something I never thought I would do since I’ve never really drawn animals other than cats and birds before: custom portraits of my friend April’s Shiba Inus! When she first asked me I wasn’t sure if I could do it so I made this colored […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":893,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,5],"tags":[51,60,21,32,61,33],"class_list":["post-892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-and-design","category-design-projects","tag-colored-pencils","tag-custom-portraits","tag-drawings","tag-illustration","tag-pattern-design","tag-watercolor"],"views":2405,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=892"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":917,"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892\/revisions\/917"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}