Category: Student Posts

For my Avatar I wanted to create an image that would reflect what I like, what does comics mean to me, and what I hope to achieve through this class. I used my own pictures of my uncle’s cat and the plants I grew at home as the basis, and I also searched up a few mushroom pictures on Pinterest as references.

The focal point of this image is a black cat playing classical guitar, which basically represents me. I’m particularly fond of black cats’ bright yellow eyes that seem to secretly observe and keep a record of everything, and their sleeky furs which look like silk. And my uncle’s black cat Boby is just one of my best friends and I’ve been using its photo as my social media profile picture for years. In terms of classical guitar, I’ve been playing it since high school, and even though I’m still bad at it, it’s one of my favorite leisure activities. The music notes float in and out of the door, symbolizing that music allows me to temporarily detach from the real world.

The door at the back of the cat represents the boundary between the real world and the illusory land of imagination, dream, and art. It also represents how I feel when I’m reading or creating something of my own — which is what I’ll be doing in this class. Here the imaginary world is overgrown with giant plants and fungi. Even though I’m a terrible gardener, botany has been my favorite drawing subject.

Except for the pale green color in the background, I only used black and white in this image since I particularly like illustrations that look complex and a bit out of order at first glance, and the easiest way to achieve it is through delineating details through fine lines. I usually add more layers of shadow, but for this assignment, I want to keep it simple and retain a relaxed free-hand-doodle quality.

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Link to pics for reference:

https://pin.it/6K45ol7

https://pin.it/50DgZ0Z

This avatar represents a large aspect of what I consider to be part of my identity. Since young, I have always held an interest in cooking: during summers I would enroll in cooking classes at the local community college, I would volunteer for bake sales at the local church, and I would burn through several hours under the tutelage of my maternal grandmother. Although different cultural foods interest me, what truly captivates me is the savory Mexican cuisine I grew up with and continue to expand on.

Throughout the process of creating my avatar, I had trouble with the measurements and navigating my way through pixlr. After spending some time on the site, however, it became much easier to understand. The image was cropped into a perfect square, the lines looked smoother, and the shading more saturated. I feel that with enough practice in this site, the task of uploading images into WordPress will be done in a more timely manner.

My avatar’s motivation came from my most beloved British Shorthair cat. He’s a British shorthair, so I decided to use gray and black color. Additionally, I believe in the “less is more” principle in Chinese traditional painting when it comes to drawing, so I want my avatar to consist of simple textures and figures. That being said, I utilized “monoline” and “floral pencil” brush to approximate the impressionist and simplistic stroke while preserving the character’s countenance and character. The big ears were the only part I combined two strokes because I intended to emphasize it as the cat’s defining characteristic.

My greatest difficulty was that I don’t know how to even start, because this is literally my first try in almost 8 years. For some technical reason I couldn’t use procreate for free so I tried three different applications. However, I guess I could build on this style further in this class.