Doodle 012- Why the cats?

My drawing hand was acting up today, couldn't quite get a nice line going and it made things slow. I guess it is because I worked on my vinylmation project for quite a while before drawing and that took most of my energy.

What are vinylmations? Well, they are the Disney version of vinyl toys (to see what vinyl toys are, you can visit one of my favorite shops online: myplasticheart.com). I had been collecting vinyl toys for quite sometime before Disney decided to get in on the action. Once they started to roll them out and offer blank versions for anybody to costumize, I started to ponder on a design i would like to paint onto one.

My husband and I go to Disney World a lot. It is just 4 hours away by car, so it is easy to plan long weekends here and there, plus when I get very stressed/sad nothing cheers me up like watching the fireworks show over Cinderella's castle, maybe that's crazy, but I am kinda crazy anyway, so it suits me just fine.

Anyway, not that long ago I picked up several blank vinylmations to try to get back into painting. I ended up doodling an initial design sketch during a very long meeting, and have been chipping away every other weekend.

The project isn't done yet, but it is getting mighty close.

Now, to explain the design itself:
One of my favorite holidays is Halloween, I was born and lived in Mexico City for 7 years and I have very fond memories of the "Day of the Dead" celebration. My family would put up an "ofrenda" (offering), which basically is an altar decorated with flowers, sugar skulls, sculptures, photos of our dearly departed, incense and anything the deceased liked to eat or drink while they were alive.

To celebrate the holiday we would visit the graveyard, clean our families plots, decorate them with flowers and then go home and have a meal while telling each other anecdotes and stories about our grandparents, greatgrandparents and everybody else that wasn't with us any longer. To me, it was a good holiday, I always learned something new about family members that I never got to meet and their memory lives on in mine, which is lovely I think.

I had a black vinylmation so I figured I could turn that into a day of the dead sugar skull.

Initial doodle.

Applying draft work to the actual vinyl toy using prismacolor pencils... they actually draw pretty well on the surface of the black vinylmation.

Front of semi-finished vinyl toy. 9 inches tall, acrylics and plastic scrapbooking jewels.

Left side.

Back.

I need to refine some details, the body is mostly done, the head just has a lot delicate work.

And finally today's doodle, I hit a wall and couldn't figure out what I wanted to draw after spending so much time painting. So I ended up making a doodle of my husband as an Adventure Time character since it is one of his favorite shows at the moment.

He looks slightly puzzled because I am sure his comment when he sees this will be: "Why am I holding the cats?" and I will only be able to reply: "Because."

"Why am I holding the cats?". 15 mins, graphite and mechanical pencil on plain moleskine notebook.