What a square adoption

I was working on this illustration way back in February when my computer fell apart on me and I was left without Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop.  I had to wait until the computer came back from the shop and I could see whether or not any of my files were salvageable.

The computer decided it wasn't on it's last leg, and I upgraded to CS5...and then I forgot about this illustration.  I'm currently updating my website (www.isaacmarzioli.com) and I discovered it again while going through my files.  I didn't have a background on it, and while i originally was going to have them in front of a supermarket, I went with a more whimsical background.  I almost drew eyes in on the hills, but everyone is doing that these days, so I refrained.

I did the illustration to commemorate our adopting two little kittens from Forgotten Animals of LA.  They're a fantastic organization that goes in and rescues strays and finds homes for needy animals.  And what's nice is that they have huge hearts and really care about what they do.  They even take in sick animals that the owners have given up on and get them treated.

Our two cats are the ones in front - they're twins. 

Squaremania: Kittens for Adoption

This is a piece I've been working on for the last couple of weeks...I did the drawing about a month ago, and used this three day president's day weekend to finally finish it.

This last month my wife and I adopted two kittens from Forgotten Animals of Los Angeles.  They're a terrific agency that rescues strays and finds loving families for them.  What's nice about FALA is that they take the time to find good people to match to the animals.

Since then I've added kittens to my cast of characters for Squaremania.  I wanted to do an illustration of these kittens and this is what I came up with:

 

The two kittens in the front, the twins, are based on the ones we adopted.  They also had two brothers (the grey kitten and the orange kitten in the back of the box) who were adopted just today.

I do the cleanup in Adobe illustrator.   Then I paste it into photoshop (keeping the vector lines in tact) and when the painting is done I go back to illustrator to 'self color' the lines.

And these are the combined color layers in Adobe Photoshop.  There will end up being one more layer when I add the background into it...so far it's just the characters (and they're floating on a blank whiteness...):

Squaremania: Kitties for Adoption, the cleaned up version

I played with the size of the panda a little bit so that way he would be bigger than the kitties.  I think I'm going to add some sort of background in there too - so I've printed it out again and I'm going to flesh out what's going on around them...

Squaremania - Kitties for Adoption, cleaner rough

I liked this rough drawing enough that I'm going to finish it up and make a proper illustration out of it.  So far I enlarged the drawing in photoshop, lightened the opacity and printed it out so I could use that as a guideline for a tighter drawing:

I changed the adoption sign to make it more like something that someone would have on or near a box of kittens.  The original drawing actually said, "kitties for sale" but it was pointed out that my wife and I are going to be adopting.  More important - there are way too many stray kittens in need of homes that a person doesn't need to purchase them, but rather, rescue them.

Squaremania - Kitties on the Run...

My wife and I are going to be adopting a couple of kittens from a rescue later this month - but because of it, I seem to be drawing a lot of cats recently.

This was based on one of the kittens we saw.  He would pretend to be grooming himself and then suddenly pounce at nothing and then run around.  It was ridiculously cute how much energy he had.

We ended up choosing a brother and sister who were twin himalayans.  I don't know why I drew them being chased...but if people don't adopt kittens and puppies, then they get put down...so that's something to think about if you have room and time to care for an animal.