Inktober Black Cats

October 20, 2015 · by karencomics · in Cats, Ink, Inktober. ·

More Inktober goodies — this time I decided to tackle the challenge of black cats. Shiny black cats. Black cats are notorious for being hard to photograph, and drawing them can present the same problem. You want to get the highlights, but they still have to look… black. Same with crows, black horses, black velvet… you get the picture. If you don’t put enough light spots in, they just look like a cardboard cutout. But too much, and suddenly it just looks like a grey cat (or whatever) with very dark shadows.

So I gathered up some photos of black cats, locked myself in my studio for a couple of hours, and this is what emerged:

The first black cat. I struggled a bit to get the balance on this, but finally found it, I think. It was a very glossy kitty! The outlines and black for these was done with a brush-pen, and the stippling and crosshatching was done with a Pigma Micron .03. I’m not sure what the paper is because it came from my scrap pile, but I think one of them is Stonehenge and one of them is Opus Watermedia.

I tried simplifying the black areas a bit on this one and I think it worked better. Also didn’t resort to crosshatching to darken the grey areas; I just made my strokes closer together. It gives a smoother look. The challenge on this one was my brush-pen — it ran out of ink, then wouldn’t flow when I put in the new cartridge! So I switched brush-pens and the faulty one is now soaking. Take that! recalcitrant brush-pen!