Exercise: Visual distortion

For this exercise I was asked to go through a process of stylising the drawing of either a cat or a dog. I chose to draw a cat from a photo I found online, trying to describe some aspects of its appearance or personality. I first started a moodboard of interesting cat photos on Pinterest here that I liked and that could also inspire me towards the end of the exercise when bringing in other elements to the image.

I quite liked the elegant black cat in the bottom left corner above so I picked that one and was instructed to do a realistic drawing, which I did in pencil then different shades of grey ink pens and some black as per the below, trying to emphasise its fluffy hairiness!

I was then asked to do a second drawing using no more than five lines – which could be joined up, overlap or not be connected and either straight or fluid. This was quite a fun exercise and I did this more than a few times to get one I liked the best.

I preferred fluid strokes since it reflected more the elegance of this cat and tried out simple line drawings to reflect the shape and particularly is gorgeous fluffy tail!

On the basis of the favourite line drawing (the last one on the right), I created various ideas for a collage from various magazines. I had travel, science, photography and well-being magazines and searched for a lot of textures and colours that could be interesting. I was asked to deliberately distort it and introducing surreal elements. I tried out a few different things as per the below, from space cat to cubic buildings, they all looked rather weird!!

I was then asked to produce a drawn version of the collage. Since I tried a few, I picked the one that was smoky/cloudy looking (bottom right in the above selection) but mainly from pictures of skies/planets as I found it quite mystical. I was asked to edit and select from the collage and using the properties I wanted to create a strong character to the cat. I came up with the below ink drawing which became even more fantastical as I went along!

I was then asked to incorporate this into a bigger image. I decide to do this by making it a witches cat, sitting on a broom flying through the sky and looking at the moon but on a black background so it looked almost translucent. I tried out some compositions and trials on black paper as per the below.

And then got to this final drawing using pastel and posca markers on black sugar paper!

Final reflections

I got into quite a creative flow with this exercise, really enjoying all the experimenting and laughing at the bizarre distortions. I think that the process of cutting and using images and textures helps me gain a lot of creative freedom and spontaneity that I need to try to also ensure I bring to my drawing – which I find harder to do as I am so used to drawing in the classic sense. I am quite surprised by what I came up with in the end considering how it started and had I been asked to try to achieve this not using collage, I think it would have been a very different result – and that is really the point – so this has really taught me the value of experimentation!