A New Level of Realism

2022 is off to a great start. Though it involved a LOT more cats than I thought it would. First off, I really need to say that I never expected myself to commit to so many cat drawings, but I suppose fate would have it that way * shrugs * I think it’s nice to draw the same subjects over the years and see how you’ve improved or your style has changed though.

This very first cat drawing began in my cousin’s room in the December of 2021, one of the nights while I was there on my sewing trip.

Funny story? Back then I was actually trying to hype myself up to draw more portraits (ahem, we shall not mention the fact that the portrait that I initially intended to work on is still currently half complete…) but I don’t really know if it was me chickening out or if it really was a valid reason but my brain was very convinced that I needed some kind of drawing warm up first so I could get the proportions more easily. Long story short, basically, this cat, the most amazing cat portrait I have ever done, is meant to be a quick sketch (liesssssssss) I was literally just casting around for a subject to quickly sketch and my cousin gave me this absolutely gorgeous reference picture, I just couldn’t resist at all!

I ended up sitting for hours and hours in the dead of night for multiple days the whole week I was there with my sketchbook, that reference and my bunch of colour pencils entirely absorbed in this one drawing. I’m not sure why either, but I approached this piece with a bit of looseness at the beginning, but as I got the rough shapes and proportions down, I got totally carried away with layering the colours and suddenly, I was spending a LOT of time rendering the fur on her face. Of course, as all vibrant and realistic pencil drawings go, you need a lot of patience to layer over and over. The basis began with the vague colours I would spot in certain places, and as I keep adding and refining the shades, you work on the little details and bring the drawing into focus. This time though, I think I didn’t think too much about what I was doing technically. I just looked at the reference picture and let my mind and hands do the work. Maybe I’ve gotten used to this process with so much practice but I really really don’t think that I did anything too special with this piece that made it turn out to be the most realistic piece of work I’ve ever done thus far. I was just very conscious of how I needed to lay down the colours exactly where I saw them and push the contrast a lot by not being afraid of pressing down hard with the black pencil where there really was a shadow.

In the past, one thing that held me back a lot was fear that it wouldn’t turn out looking realistic if the colours were too bright, or the black was too dark, or the shade wasn’t just right. But you know, not making the colours thick enough is what makes the drawing look thin and well, a drawing. I shouldn’t be afraid of messing up. Focusing too much on the goal of realism distracts you from the idea and the representation that you are trying to portray - it makes you forget that you are ultimately still creating art, not taking a photograph. The difference with this one, perhaps, was the way I approached this drawing. It was meant to be fun, just a sketch, something that wouldn’t matter if I messed up. It was just a warm up practice. Until it wasn’t.

Clearly, I could see the face of the cat coming together - and going well. I could see the potential forming. And that was when the panic kicked in. My brain suddenly went, “NO! It looks too good now. What if you mess up the body? Or you keep working on it and ruin it? It will look so weird with a gross out of proportion or oddly coloured body and such an amazing face!!! I can’t proceed. I’ll just mess it uppppppppp!!” * insert insecure panic * I obviously had no faith in myself (geez me)

In my defence, this is an entirely normal reaction. Most of the time, when things are going well, we suddenly have this expectation of having to do as well as we did before, to “keep up the good work” as people always tell you. Because of that expectation, the possibility of failure becomes so much more real and the fear of that swoops down and holds you tight. So, to be honest, I took the excuse of not having the time to avoid continuing to work on that drawing for a bit. In hindsight, I think I was trying to comfort myself when I decided to post this half complete drawing on Instagram being all like, “Well, a drawing is never done. It can keep being worked on because artists will always have something they want to improve about it. I’ve never really let myself leave a drawing half done and let it be, so here is my first attempt. The first edition of my art piece.” Which, okay, it’s a fair point to make because it’s true that a work of art exists in many forms and is only considered “done” when the artist says so, even though it could just as well be “done” at any other stage (which is a very interesting concept to ponder by the way) but I think in some sense, I was also kind of giving myself an excuse to record this piece of work in all its “perfectness” and leave it there for a minute so I won’t have to face working on it anymore and the potential failure of that.

It didn’t sit all too well with me though. I never liked the idea of an “incomplete” drawing, because to me, I had wanted that drawing to be more. It could be more. I was just a coward who didn’t want to face the possibility of messing up. I probably also stressed myself out more by thinking to myself (while I was at the omg-this-is-so-perfect-I’m-so-happyyyyy stage) that I should totally give this drawing to my cousin as a birthday gift since it was turning out so much better than I expected it to. But that also meant I was thinking to myself, “It has to be a gift. It has to be good. I can’t mess this up.” And that obviously tripped me up. Recognising this fact, the way in which I kind of sabotaged myself, and also the fact that my cousin’s birthday was arriving and I reallyyyyy wanted to get him a present, I had to suck it up and psych myself up to face this drawing again. It went kind of like this in my brain:

“You’ve got this, don’t think about the perfectness or messing up. Just remember what you are trying to portray. It’s all in the reference.”

“But. I could TOTALLY mess this up!!!”

“No, shut up. You’ve done something amazing with it so far. You have it in you. Just keep doing what you were doing. If you’ve done it once, you can totally do it again.”

“Uhhhhh I don’t think just because I did it once, I can do it again. Maybe it was a fluke. Or I got lucky. Yeah. I CAN’T DO IT AGAIN HELP!”

“... Okay okay -” * takes a deep breath and tries a different tactic to argue with myself * “- then don’t try to do it again. Just get over yourself and work on it. It’s the intention that matters. Remember? Anything worth doing badly is worth doing at all.”

“But… it would still be bad… :( “

“Hmmm okay fine, how about you try your best and if you really screw it up, I’ll let you tear it up and we forget we ever did this? No one has to know we screwed up. You just need to try. You won’t know if you don’t give yourself a chance. Just do ittttttt. Besides, you’ve never shredded any of your art before, that might be fun. Come on, just try it!”

And so, ladies and gentleman, the thing that finally comforted and convinced my sorry butt to get over my fear was in fact the idea that if I messed up, I could totally shred it up. Sometimes, I forget that I’m the one in charge of whatever I create. I can create whatever I want to. I can destroy whatever I want to. That is a very liberating thought. Nothing is permanent. And that was what finally shifted the perspective in my brain back to the mindset I had when I was all “this is just a fun warm up activity!”

Of course, fears don’t just go away so easily. I definitely had moments while I was shading and mentally melting down like, “Oh my gosh, what am I doingggggg?! This is the entirely wrong shade of colour. Where is even the red in this reference picture?! NO! The proportion is wrong here. No no no the fur doesn’t go this way!!” and another part of me had to keep going, “ DON’T THINK ABOUT IT!!! Just keep going. Close one eye. Close two eyes. CLOSE ALL THE EYES!!! Just draw. No one will know. Just keep drawingggggg.”

And somehow, I kinda managed to reach a stage I was somewhat satisfied with. If I’ll be honest though, a lot of times, my brain is battling myself and cringing and judging myself whenever I draw. I suppose it’s true that you are always your worst critic. There will always be something I wish I could have done better or done differently, but at the end of the day, if you keep pushing at it rather than letting it push you over, I think the results never made me feel bad enough to want to actually shred anything (yet).

It’s not perfect, maybe the body didn’t turn out as good as the lovely face, but a lot of times, the moments where I give up, let go rather than hold on so tight to the idea of perfection, let a bit of frustration and instinct take over, those are the times where my drawings take on a bit more of an abstract artsy look. Sometimes when all the lines are too well controlled, everything looks too good. Too manufactured. Too perfect. While it’s nice to achieve hyperrealism, I also ache to have an artsy touch to my work. A bit of abstraction, some loose brushstrokes, some odd colours that never appear in the reference. A point of interest. You know what I mean? Something that makes it special. That makes it different from just another photograph. I’m working on that.

And that meant, with my new sense of liberation (kinda), I decided, “Go big or go home and cry.” So I sucked it up and decided to mess a bit with the background. I just grabbed a few of the colours I know I’ve used in the drawing already (so the colour scheme remains cohesive) and then decided to just do whatever I wanted. Okay, fine, it’s still pretty neat (coz it’s me, what did you expect?) but for my standards, not blending stuff out or making smooth gradients is a big thing! Besides, if you actually took a closer look, I decided to be brave and take a page from a fellow artist’s book by letting these random pencil strokes overlap a little on the cat itself rather than staying entirely clear of it. In the past, when I shaded backgrounds, I made sure they faded away around my subject in the middle so that I don’t “mess up” the lovely whatever it was that I completed in the middle. This created a sort of distance between the “subject” and the background, which I suppose if it’s the effect you wanted to create then great! But I think the background is as much a part of the piece as the subject matter. They should be cohesive and act as one drawing, rather than look like two pieces of a larger body. By overlapping them a little, being less afraid of having them interfere with each other, I instead merged them and created a sense of belonging together. If you know what I mean. Does this sort of make sense?

In fact, I loved this effect so much, when the opportunity to draw 3 more cats came up, I really couldn’t resist the urge to recreate the background effect! This time, I was also working on a gift for the cat(s’) owner, which did give me some mild stress (like sure I did one good cat portrait and my mini freak out was for nothing, but what if I can’t do another good cat portrait?! That level of realism is literally unrivalled in the history of alllllll my workkkk) Having already faced my demons once though, it became easier to ignore that mean, unfaithful, disloyal voice at the back of my mind. I just dived right in and went for it.

Overall, I think I didn’t do too awful and at first I was kind of disheartened because I was all, “the first cat I drew doesn’t look very much like the reference… And this is a little out of proportion… and the overall composition looks a little iffy to me… AND it’s a little too near to the edge of the paper?!” but after giving myself some time to appraise my work and actually switch from “critical artist” mode to “casual viewer” mode, I was better able to appreciate the overall look. The contrast was there, the proportions were definitely not the worst I’ve ever done (in fact, you probably won’t notice anything odd unless you had the exact reference right next to the drawing. Or if you’re the artist herself. Or some super sneaky art critic. Who knows * shrugs * ) The best part was probably realising, “hey, the first cat doesn’t look too much like it’s muse, but as I worked on, the second and third cat definitely had some observable resemblance to their muses.” See? I’m improving! And I was kind of right, I do need a bit of warm up XD (this is why you never start working on the most important part of the drawing firsttttttt but actually, that wasn’t true for my first cat drawing and that gorgeous face hmmmmmm)

Still, I think these turned out really classy once I’ve framed them and I was (and still am!) very proud of what I managed to achieve within the first two months of 2022. It’s amazing how far I’ve come! Perhaps it’s also because I’ve spent half of June in 2021 working on over a dozen animal portraits and now I just got a better hang of them (and colour pencils as a medium in general). Isn’t it cool though, to know how much time and practice can make a difference? I’ve spent over 15h and 2h respectively for these two cat drawings (okay, these timings are an estimate, it has been like two months, forgive my memory…) which I suppose shows from the difference in the level of realism (but also size! The first one is bigger!) One great thing for having completed these two pieces though, was that I started off my year right. I did something worth being proud of and I know that it will only get better.

I’m proud of the realism I now know I am capable of. I’m proud of myself for facing my fears and shutting up my horrible self in my brain. I’m proud of me for doing all this early in the year. Without realising it, I’ve set the mood for the rest of the year and all the time to come. I will keep creating, trying and exploring new things to push myself out of my comfort zone. I know that I will be okay at the end of the day and if it isn’t, it’s going to still be okay because I can give myself the grace to start over. Shred it all and try again. Just having that reassurance is half the support you need to create something that you can accept and be satisfied with.

I may not be a big cat lover or anything, but you know, I really like these drawings of mine. Even though they are no longer physically with me, they have taught me the lessons I needed and will always be with me in my heart. I’m glad that they will be equally special, even if it’s in a different way, to their new owners. I believe, framing these up and sending them off to their new homes was what finally gave me the confidence to decide, maybe this year is the year I can truly start commissions and really sell artwork that I enjoy creating and people enjoy receiving.

And with that, I have officially kicked off commissions! You can head here on my website to contact me with any requests you may have for special art pieces done by yours truly :)

Thank you for all your support, if you somehow made it through all my rambly-ness and reached this little unofficial announcement at the bottom, you are amazing! It is for you that I write and continue leaving my random pockets of thoughts here <3

Love, Cuix

P.S. I'm finally reviving my blog after a whole YEAR and uncovered this lovely little blog post I had that was fully written and just sitting in my drafts... oops :')