Just like anybody else in tune with their profession, a good artist will rely on intuition. I ignored mine while I was working on this cat illustration, intended to be a unique product. I think this is a pretty good effort. It's not complete, but it does not need much more to make it a finished piece.
Only it's all wrong. After two days of massaging pencil tests to get the pose just right (please click here to see JSVB Post #740, which is one ruff draft), I inked out the cat while ignoring a little voice in my head that kept insisting that something was wrong.
Later that night as I was sleeping, I had a dream that made sense of my intuition. Like an actor in a theatre farce, I bolted awake in bed at three o'clock in the morning and swore like a sailor. I realised that I have very nearly managed to draw the mascot for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats football team. I knew I had seen this cat somewhere before. I was chagrined to realize that without actually copying the Hamilton design, that I had almost replicated it. Two days of work down the drain. At least I caught my mistake.
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