Two new Upstairs Tabbies this week!
Sir Archibald Catley, and Reginald Sweet.
Sir Archibald Catley
"Archie" is the younger brother of Sir Cedric Catley, Earl of Mewton. He loves cricket, but mostly because of the sweaters. He has one for every day of the week. He also loves butterflies, and anchovy pudding.
Reginald Sweet
"Reg" is the brother of Lady Clara Catley (the former Miss Clara Sweet and wife of Sir Cedric Catley). He served in The Great War, and came home with a nasty scar for a souvenir. He did some paw-to-paw combat with a Russian Blue, which resulted in a bad scratch that never healed quite right. He's a little self conscious about it, and doesn't like to sit for pictures. He's not all seriousness though - he enjoys a lively game of cards with his mates, and loves to chase grouse and peafowl on the grounds of his sister's estate, where he lives.
I'm also playing with some new shapes for the Downstairs Tabbies, which, when I get the kinks worked out, I'll do for the Upstairs bunch too. I think some little cards would be fun with this round format, and some other things.
I'm having a lot of fun creating these characters, and learning their stories. I'm also having fun doing the colored pencil + photoshop colored pencil brush technique (I do the first part of the drawing with colored pencils, then scan, and finish it up with photoshop, darkening or doing whatever was too hard or labor intensive to do with the actual pencils). I like that it this let's me keep the 'hand drawn' look and feel, but with a little help where needed.
I'll be doing the Catley children next I think. :~)
I have more of the below stairs cat servants to share with you. Some have debuted (wow, that spelling looks wrong - "deybyood" is what I mean, in case it is) already on the arCATecture
Facebook page, and all of them are already for sale as prints on
etsy.
I'm still fiddling with some of the descriptions for them in different places, and so they're just slightly all out of sink with themselves, if that makes any sense.
I've also opened a shop on
Zazzle, and the same is true there. It will take me a good while to get it all stocked up. I'm making each product one.at.a.time, since I have to place the art on each phone case, pillow, mug, tile, shirt, etc. etc. individually, to insure the best size and correct placement. So its my life's work now, basically.
In the last post I said I was determined to figure out how to do these all digitally. Well. I tried. I really did. But what I finally figured out is my 'ideal formula' for these kitties, as well as my other work, is to do 90-99 percent of it with colored pencils, then come in, if necessary, with some digital 'polish' to enhance areas that may not be quite strong enough with pencil alone.
I just can't get the same look of 'real' colored pencil by doing it all digital. The 'polishing' I do though is with a special colored pencil texture brush I made for myself, so it still looks like pencil. The combination works for me, and I'm thrilled to finally have this figured out.
I may take all these over to their own blog, and eventually their own website. (Even though I'm still lagging waaaaaay behind on the re-do of my own main website! which is half done, but not published, and yes, I was one of those kids who didn't finish one thing before starting the next, which drove my parents nuts. Some people never change.)
I think this may be all of the below stairs staff - at least for now. I supposed I could do an under butler, more footmen, housemaids, kitchen maids, scullery maids, hall boy, nanny or nurse (although she would technically be kind of in-between up and downstairs), groundskeepers, and a few other assorted folks. For now though, I need to get these ones all caught up with themselves in all the shops, then I'll move on to something else. I have lots of ideas for other characters, too!