Capture The Moment Birthday Cat, 2021
Janice Hu
13 in x 19 in

I wanted to do something related to memories or sentimental moments for this project, but I had some problems trying to choose an image to draw. I eventually decided on drawing the birthday of a cat. Since I was making a poster advertising for Canon, I thought it would be nice to draw an image that is cute and sweet, and a kitten’s first birthday sounded the best to me. I used Clip Studio Paint and Photoshop but encountered some technical difficulties while I was working on it. It also made me decide to repaint everything, which is why it looks different from my initial draft. At first I had a circular frame around my drawing to portray camera lens, but I didn’t know what to do with the background of it outside of the lens. In the end, I scrapped that and did it without the lens. I used many layers because I was afraid of making mistakes, so if I did I could just go back to the original layer. At the very end I added a glow effect that shows the light coming off the candle with the number one, and added the Canon logo as well as “capture the moment.” I was wondering if I should have “capture the moment” or not, but when I looked at it without it, it felt a bit confusing to just have a cat’s birthday, even though we all know it’s a camera advertisement. I left it in and made the words smaller so it doesn’t distract from the rest of the painting. I also had the image in 16 x 19 in length at first, but luckily I just trimmed it down to 13 x 19 in and it still fit (though I think the 16 x 19 in one looks better because there’s more space!). This was actually my first time drawing/painting a cat so I had quite a lot of difficulties trying to make it work and I’m still not totally satisfied, but I think it ended up cute!