Good morning Reader! 🌿

Hope you’re having a fantastic day so far! I’m writing to you from my balcony; the weather has been beautiful recently! I just had a 3-day weekend and I feel super relaxed :)

Last week was a bit techie with the release of my gallery manager Sortie, so today we are going back to more art! I have some to show you, including my future illustration and another personal project underway 😌

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Now let’s dive into today’s subject!

Cats in love!

When I do art, it’s always on my own, but this week I changed that and started making an illustration with my partner :)

I won’t tell you yet what it is for exactly (that will come!), but I can definitely show you how it looks and how we are doing it!

First off, we worked on the idea together and decided to draw two kitties lying in the grass together.

Working with someone here is actually a big relief for me, because (as I joke often) drawing cats is a serious struggle of mine 😄

My fiancée drew the basic sketch and color block, and I was responsible for adding my lineart on top of it.

Maybe you’d agree, but I think my way of making lines is one of the most recognizable things about my art, and I’m happy with how it turned out! :)

Want to see something cool? The grass shape is not something I did randomly at all: I actually used a Voronoi shape in order to give it both an organic and structured look!

This might sound strange, but when you want to draw a “scatter” (meaning a few elements scattered across a surface and meant to look chaotic), putting them at random positions would make it look very unnatural: the eyes wouldn’t have anything to hang onto, and it would just read as white noise.

Therefore, when I draw things meant to feel random, I explicitly make sure to have a structure for the eye to follow, and hide it well enough so that you don’t realize unless I point it out!

I think I first used it a few months ago for my illustration “Bliss,” where it was very challenging to find this balance with the grass rhythm :)

Can you see the shapes now that I told you? :D

Now that the ink is done, I’m not the one in charge anymore, but I’m looking forward to sharing the final result with you once it’s done!

Working on my next illustration

In the meantime, of course, I’m working on my own illustration as well!

Last week I finally concluded the second redraw of my 2025 Inktober project, and now I’m starting to work on a new version of the aquarium – one of my favorite locations from this project!

Here is what the original looked like, so that you have a reference:

In order to warm up, I started drawing some details from some of my own aquarium pictures and references from the web (and yes, I used my own gallery to filter my pictures and it was pretty handy!)

Here’s how my sketching looked! I did it with a mechanical pencil this time, which I haven’t done in a while even though it’s probably my favorite way to sketch:

Having that, I was also hesitant on the composition I should go for. The original was nice, but I did it on a whim and I was wondering how I could do better; especially to show off the details I just studied.

I started with something completely different: a simpler shot, flatter and closer to the subjects, in order to bring all the elements forward.

And I did one that was very close to the original, but more balanced:

I’m curious now: which one do you prefer? And why? :)

I think for now that I’ll go for the second one; it’s closer to my usual style and I’m not scared of a bit of perspective. But I’m genuinely curious about your opinion!

Cool links of the week!

Yamauchi No.10 Family Office is an investment/venture capital firm from Japan, and for some reason they have one of the coolest websites ever. Some of it is translated to English, I recommend having a read if you can; the animation is great! 😄

(once you've click, you can learn more about how this website was made here!)

This week I read a very cool article about Utopian Scholastic, the iconic edutainment aesthetic of the early 2000s. Super interesting and nostalgic! :)