Learning Photoshop for Illustration: Part 2 - The Final Sprint

I was hoping for a positive outcome in the previous post, and thankfully, it arrived.

After much deliberation, I went with Draft 3 - a cat in a living room. But before I go further about the technicalities of the illustration, I'd like to tell the background story of it because that's what an illustration is about - illustrating a story.

The cat is actually a character from one of my imaginary children's story books for the autism community. This one tells a story of a cat who has to cope when her day doesn't go according to plan. One of her plans is to sunbathe in the morning but it cannot happen that day due to the rainy weather. Later that night, she makes it up by basking in the artificial light from the reading lamp.

Now, let's get into the process.

I almost didn't go with this draft because I couldn't sketch a cat, neither traditionally nor digitally. This illustration required the subject to sit in a certain position and if I didn't achieve that, the rest of the composition would be useless, with or without the cat. Since I didn't want to go into the hassle of drafting a new idea, I decided to force myself to learn drawing a cat in that exact position. Using some reference photos and glimpses of my cats as unpaid models, I was able to come up with some traditional sketches of just the cat before proceeding with the digital composition.

The final artwork! View it larger here.

I felt a great deal of relief and joy when I finished the final illustration. Overall, the entire experience of taking and completing the course was quite satisfying.

Apart from the content of the course, I've also learned that it is possible for me to achieve my goals even if I skip some steps, but I'll always be reminded of what I'm lacking. For example: when I got stuck with the draft sketches, I wished I had learned traditional illustration before diving headfirst into digital.

In retrospect, I had skipped steps or 'cheated' a lot of time in my past projects and learning processes because I was more focused in the end results (this time being the final project for the course) instead of the complete experience. I strongly feel that this is the root cause for my impostor syndrome so in order to minimize that, I've made it my personal and professional goal to keep learning and improving my skills whenever I think it's necessary. This project in particular highlight my need to study more about visual perspectives and shading.

High on dopamine that hopefully lasts until the next project, O.

Bonus content:

• Domestika course - Introduction to Photoshop for Illustrators

The evolution of my cat sketches. The first one looks like a squirrel.