9/28/15

Cat Portraits

You've all been so encouraging about the kitty portraits that I spent some time looking at cat pictures to see which ones I might use to create portraits of Gracie and Smitty. A few of you had ideas about how to turn photographic images into line drawings. After watching several tutorials, I was able to get it done, but it didn't work as well for me as simply converting the color photo to black and white.

The biggest problem I found in attempting to convert a cat, in particular, to a line drawing is that kitty "edges" are not as well defined as the edges of people. When I converted them to line drawings, they were a little too "fuzzy", which is the perfectly appropriate word to be very useful. Perhaps with a different photo editing program I might be able to do a better job with it. For now, I'm satisfied with these black and white photographs. 

Here are four I picked out of Gracie. I think the top one is my favorite, and probably the easiest to create a drawing from.





In all cases, I would leave out all the background details and simply "float" the cat on a plain fabric background.

Here are the ones I created for Smitty's portrait. Again, the first one is my favorite.


It's hard to decide between the first one and this one. His face is a little younger in the one above. Have you ever noticed that nick in Smitty's left ear? A gopher did that right before he killed its biting a$$ and ate it. (TMI?) Can't say I blame the gopher.



So I've pretty well spent the whole morning choosing and converting these. If I can get myself off the computer, I'm committed to catching up on housework today. Fortunately, there isn't much. Then, I can get going on the next two block sets for Yard Art.

7 comments:

Shirley said...

Gracie has such a beautiful face! Smitty is a handsome guy - and I do think he looks like a male. Will be fun to see your creations and the process. Thanks for sharing!

gpc said...

Definitely the first ones, although all of both are (of course) beautiful. I look forward to seeing your fuzzy creations. :)

Dana Gaffney said...

I think your right about which pictures to use, but that third picture of Gracie where she's laying down, oh my goodness, when you get good at this you have to revisit that one.

Chris said...

Love your kitty portraits. Almost as sweet as the kitties.

Dar said...

They are all winners in my book. With both of them being so pretty (Gracie) and dashing (Smitty) it's hard to chose just one. They both have beautiful markings.

Junebug613 said...

It must have been so hard to pick which picture! They are both so sweet!

Kate said...

You've got some great photos to work from.