Art Attack! #6: It's-a-Me, Meowio! :3

Hey Steemit!

We're back again with another Art Attack! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my paintings and the process behind them. A behind-the-scenes look at my artworks, if you will. This is not to say that I'm very good at art, or that I'm a professional in any way. In fact this is the opposite, and serves as a reminder to how I first started.

Sorry about the missing last week's update. But with the shift to hive.blog, I thought giving the platforms some time to adjust would be prudent.

Anyway, in the last post, I shared one of my first game-related pieces! It was a mashup of 3 of my favourite games, which coincidentally all had Golden Flowers!

Anyway, the piece for today is game-related too! It's actually one of my... I don't wanna say disappointments, but I felt like this piece had a lot of potential, but didn't turn out quite how I pictured it.

The idea was pretty simple. I'm a huge fan of the Mario franchise; and I really like how the cats look in the mobile game, Neko Atsume. When I first heard of Cat Mario, the first thing I thought of was what if I drew the Mario characters in the style of Neko Atsume? I mean, there was already a neko named Peaches. So, Princess Peaches should be pretty cute, right?

Source: techland.time.com

If you're not familiar with Neko Atsume, it's a mobile game where you collect kitties! You put treats and toys out on your yard and wait for them to show up and snap a pic of them to add to your album!

Source: apptrigger.com

I don't really play mobile games, but the cats are soo cute I couldn't resist!

Anyway, I thought of drawing it in the same style, not just in terms of the cats themselves, but the layout as well. So each cat would be doing something with a toy.

I had a few characters in mind, but I started with Mario and Luigi of course. I decided to draw them playing with a mushroom ball (which is actually a collectible in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story)

Since they were supposed to be in the foreground, I found that I drew them too small, and had to adjust. So I redraw them bigger; alas, the pains of physical art.

There. That looks better.

Next was Princess Peaches!

I think she's definitely the best part of this piece. See how I had her sit on a peach cushion too? 😄

After that I decided to add Bowser/Meowser, and Donkey Kitty!

I had Meowser sit on his throne with his minion toys and Donkey Kitty playing with a banana toy! 😄

So far, it looked pretty good. So it's time to outline!

I decided to add some additional background elements, like a lava lamp for Meowser, and a potted plant on the right. To kinda give it that living room vibe, like Neko Atsume has.

Time to paint!

I took quite a while deciding what colours to paint Meowio and Luigi, because I wanted them to be different but still similar.

I thought this was a good pattern for Luigi, but I couldn't decide for Meowio, so I did the background elements first.

Then I painted the other cats as well, because I still hadn't decided. At least Princess Peaches turned out really well!

I think this is when it started to go downhill. I wanted to do a contrast to Luigi for Meowio, but I had already coloured his eyes and mustache. And I thought I could just go over those with white, but I didn't have a thick enough white paint, so it just turned into a disaster.

I decided to make the background like the light brown of the wood floor living room. But, I wrongfully made it all the same colour because I got distracted watching a stream. Woops. 😕

As a result the perspective was off since it looks like they're all on the same plane, when there's supposed to be 3 levels - foreground, middle ground and background. It might've been more than just the colour, but it didn't help. This was also my first time trying to draw/paint with different levels like this, so you know, mistakes happen.

I tried to fix it as best as I could with white paint to make it lighter in the back, but I don't think it helped much. And the facial features on Meowio just turned out kinda creepy-looking.

It doesn't look that bad tbf,especially for a first timer like me. Each cat looks nice and cute (except for Meowio), but maybe I drew Meowser and Donkey Kitty too big. But overall, it looks kinda meh.

But hey, that's life. Sometimes things don't turn out the way you want. You just have to dust yourself off and keep trying. And since I started doing art again, I learned that art is just like any other skill. The more you practise and do it, the better you get!

I did post this on reddit, and the comments were really nice, so that's encouraging. I don't think this piece will go up on my wall next time though, but I'm glad I tried it out. Maybe next time I do a layered piece it'll be better!

Thanks for reading!

To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!

Check out my previous post in this series!
Art Attack! #5: Golden Flowers 🌻