Evolution of the Cat

2016 – Arya and Tilly

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2017 – Percy

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2018 – Labyrinth

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2019 – Trixie and Mia (COMING SOON)

Over the past 3 years, I have created a cat portrait per year, and have already planned another which will be a commisioned piece at the start of next year, for my boyfriend or his family.

As the pieces have had some time between one another, I feel you can somewhat see the growth of my style from piece to piece, so I wanted to show that within my blog. In the first, I was starting to use a cel-shading method a lot in my work and this piece was quite experimental, as I still wanted to use the style, but did not want the cats to look flat, so decided to play around with some textured brushes. In the second piece, I have used a similar method to colour, but I feel it does look a lot softer, and I have built up separate layers of colour as to give the cat a fluffier appearance.

Now, looking at the illustration I have recently created, I feel as I have been experimenting more with digital painting, and I have been inspired by artists such as Ana Godis, following her process etc, in this design, I have moved away from the cel-shading style, creating a more blended and somewhat more realistic illustration. By doing this technique, I don’t want my work to become too airbrushed which is how I feel a lot of digital paintings can look, so to try battle this, I tried to use brushes that would give the design texture and could give it a more realistic look, as opposed to looking too smooth and somewhat flat.

I like being able to see all of these illustrations together as I feel they do show my progression within my work. I feel since they are all cats, you are able to see my skill development better, but since they are different types of cats, some with shorter hair, some with long and each with their own individual patterns, you can somewhat see my thought process, what methods I may have used to give the impression of the length of their fur as I have made each of them unique in themselves, I have not just stuck to one formula of ‘THIS IS THE METHOD YOU HAVE TO USE’ I have experimented with each of the cats/designs.

Although I plan to start working on the next illustration on the 15th of January, the day after my deadline, and that is not too far off the time that I have created my most recent piece, I am excited to experiment with the new cats, seeing how best to create their fur, patterns and feature etc.

If you are reading this blog, and like my work, and you do have your own pets or know someone who might want an illustration of theirs, feel free to comment down below, or contact me through Instagram @Melon.r. My college timetable may be an issue, but I would be willing to work with you, to figure out a timeslot, if you were to commision me.

Melon and Lime Comics – Meet Arya!

Following from last weeks comic, ‘Meeting Tilly’, we had wanted to introduce our other cat, Arya.

When coming up with a concept for this comic, we had so many different stories about Arya and her typical habits, so instead of just focusing on one story (as we had done for Tilly) we decided to incorporate all of our ideas into one, working in a similar style as to the comic we had created based on mine and Liam’s ‘Artist Quirks’ when that subject was trending amongst the artist community on Instagram.

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Although I did not have many technical difficulties with this comic, I believe because they were all designed on one page and opposed to designing the frames one by one which would be on a bigger scale, looking at the piece now, I do think I should have made the text within the frames bigger, so that they could be more readable. So this will be something that I will consider more in future comics.

If you enjoy this comic and would like to see more of our work, feel free to have a look at our Instagram page @MelonandLimeComics. We hope you enjoy!

Melon and Lime Comics – Meet Tilly!

Back again with a new comic!

This one is about Liam’s cat named Tilly, who I have practically adopted since first ever meeting her, seeing that she OBVIOUSLY loves me more!

Me and Liam were talking about the comics and how Wednesday (my kitten) has been a main character in most of the comics so far, but Liam also has two other cats that live in his room, who I also class as my children, so we wanted to introduce these characters into our comics too. This week we decided to start with Tilly.

Tilly is the type of cat that you have to be patient with, she pretty much hates everyone, including me when we first met (she’d just run and hide from me), but once she got to know me better, and I learned more about her tendencies, she let me cuddle her (at her specific times only) and has ended up sleeping on me most nights.

Liam and Tilly, on the other hand, have more of a love-hate relationship, I guess because he has to live with her all the time, and I’m just blinded by heart goggles, but she tends to do things that anger him more, such as jumping onto his PC, knocking things over, etc, but I seem to be more patient with her, which is why I believe she loves me more, other than the fact I feed her meat.

So, me and Liam had wanted to express this relationship and introduce Tilly into our comics, and to our audience, expressing her personality as best as we could.

I did have similar struggles when it came to producing these comics as I had last week, (i.e. my computer running slower, especially when it came to colouring) but since I knew this would be an issue again, I was somewhat more prepared, in the sense that I knew what was to come, so I would say that I got slightly less stressed than I had in the previous week.

If you are enjoying our comics and would like to see more, please check out our Instagram @Melonandlimecomics. We do hope to make and post at least one comic per week. We hope you enjoy!

Melon and Lime Comics – The Routine

One week later and we’re still going, are you amazed? I’m amazed!

This comic is based on my love for my new kitten Wednesday. My partner made a comment that we were basically the same, just constantly eating and sleeping, so he had suggested that be the bases for our next comic, so HERE WE ARE!

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I did have struggles with this piece, not necessarily with the content, but more with the process of creating it, I found it took waaaaaaay too long to create this piece, as my photoshop file would have too many glitches or would buffer a lot, especially when I was trying to colour. Ideally I think this piece should have taken 20 minutes per frame at maximum, but instead, it had taken me 5 hours to finish the whole piece. I was not pleased in the slightest.

I don’t know if this had meant that the file was too large, or whether I need a new computer, but I don’t believe I could have done much else to make the document smaller, and I probably have attachment issues to my laptop, I’m scared to get rid of it and get a new one, which I probably should do, but probably won’t, not until its very much dead.

So, this may be a recurring issue in weeks to come, when I work on the comics once again. Soooo, FUN TIMES AHEAD!

WE’RE BACK! Getting Back into Comics

Melon and Lime comics has been on a bit of a break whilst both me and my partner have gotten back into the swing of college but now, WE HAVE RETURNED! With a comic that gives a bit of an update as to what we’ve been up to whilst we’ve been away.

I’m so excited to get back into the flow of working on new comics again. We aren’t necessarily going to have a set day in which we will post as of yet, as we don’t want to make any promises we can’t keep, however, we will be attempting to create at least one comic per week.

If anyone reading enjoys this piece, we have more content on our Instagram @MelonandLimeComics, so please have a look, we promise there will be more content coming soon, now that we’re back into the rhythm of college, maybe? NO PROMISES! But we’re gonna try! We also plan to create a zine or book over the year, which we plan to release sometime in June next year, so keep an eye out for that too.