Hey Hive!
We're back again with another Art Attack! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my drawings and the process behind them. A behind-the-scenes look at my artwork, if you will. This is not to say that I'm very good at art, or that I'm a professional in any way. In fact this is the opposite, and serves as a reminder to how I first started, and lets me track my progress too!
So if you missed the last couple of posts, I've been sharing the process behind one of my biggest art challenges ever - the Christmas Countdown Challenge (which I completed back in December 2020)! This is where I draw pieces according to the song; The 12 Days of Christmas!
I'm sure everyone is familiar with that song and we're finally on the final day now since we did day 11 last week - Eleven pipers piping!
Anyway the final line in the song is:
On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
Twelve drummers drumming
Eleven pipers piping
Ten lords a-leaping
Nine ladies dancing
Eight maids a-milking
Seven swans a-swimming
Six geese a-laying
Five golden rings
Four calling birds
Three french hens
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree
If you caught my last post you'd know I actually already had a plan for this and I was pretty excited for it since I thought it'd look really cute! I'm sure everyone has seen this video before:
And I thought it'd be really cute to trace the cats with drums as the 12 drummers drumming!
But anyway, since this one was scheduled for Christmas eve, I thought I'd make it more Christmas themed especially since I'd been listening to a lot of Christmas jazz while doing all these pieces! So my plan for the background would be a nice cozy fireplace with a grand Christmas tree!
I tried sketching it out myself and I wanted it to look a little more natural rather than with perfect straight lines, but it came out quite slanted.
So after consulting some vectors, I straightened it out but made the lines around the bricks thicker and slanted in some parts to make it seem more natural. I also put a nice rug in front of the hearth since I've seen that in the chill Christmas jazz videos that I listened to and it looks so cozy!
I decided to reuse the Christmas tree I drew for Day 9 for this one since I was really tired while doing this challenge, and I knew it was going to take me a long time to draw it. So some shadows and tracing later, we get this:
I couldn't really decide how thick I wanted to make the outline of the cats. And I guess I kinda left it at that when I coloured. And yes that is a donut instead of a drum in front. I think that's in the video too and I thought it was so cute since it reminded me of Tubbs from Neko Atsume!
Speaking of Neko Atsume, I decided to model the colours after the cats in that game!
I wanted different patterns and colours for the cats and Neko Atsume is always a good reference!
After duplicating and changing the colours, we get these 12 cute cats!
And after adding shadows, the final piece was done!!
If you're wondering, my instagram handle used to be @duck.a.designs until I recently changed it to match my Twitch channel @ imTacoCat! You can check out my art instagram here!
I was really happy with how this turned out and it is probably one of my favourites in this series! The cats look really cute, and they stood out from the nice cozy background but not too much either. The overall piece turned out even better than I anticipated and it made me so happy!
And tbh I was just so relieved that this challenge was finally over! This whole challenge while fun, actually became pretty stressful. 😅 But it did push me to be creative and think of how I can create my ideas in a shorter time frame, which was cool too.
I had a special art piece planned for Christmas itself, and it was also going to be a present to my girl friends, so stay tuned for that!
Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
