Commission: More Cats in Spaaaaaaace

It’s funny. I consider myself more of a dog person than a cat person, and yet I have ended up drawing more cats and dogs in my career as an illustrator.

The reason behind that is Mark Brady, one of my oldest patrons, who is always seeking to immortalize his beloved tuxedo cats Yin and Yang in all sorts of imaginative ways (you can find previous illustrations of them here, here and here).

Yin

Yang

For this occasion, Mark wanted me to portray the dynamic duo as astronauts on the Moon. I have never shied away from a challenging commission, and I wasn’t going to start now!

I asked Mark if he wanted the cats to be wearing the classic Apollo lunar suits, or if we should go for the more modern prototypes that are being currently developed for the future Artemis missions. He said he wanted me to go with the more modern concept adding my own touch to them. Notice how I ended up adding ‘cat ears’ to the helmets, which I envisioned to work as sensitive antennae.

After looking at dozens of lunar surface images (real and virtual) I decided to use this one as a reference for my background. It is part of an artistic installation designed by Sir Antony Gormley. I liked it because of the cool contrast between the front and the back, which suited my composition.

First sketch concept: Mark wanted to have the cats to be looking directly to the viewer, so I imagined a sort of alien egg with a bird-like footprint trail leading outside the image. Mark also wanted a spaceship included in the concept, so I searched for interesting examples derived from the now-defunct space shuttle.

Revised sketch concept: Mark wanted me to replace the spaceship for something more futuristic, so I used an iStock image as reference (the final image has a cool Easter egg BTW). Instead of an egg Mark wanted a different “MacGuffin” so he proposed a sort of Pandora’s box.

I used this Apollo 11 photo (I think that is Buzz Aldrin pictured next to the US flag) as my main lighting reference. I wanted to capture the ‘overexposed’ quality of real lunar photographs, with white sunlit surfaces looking as if they’re glowing, in contrast with the superblack shadows cast on the powdery surface. The photo was also useful to determine the creases and folds on the spacesuits.

Above are zoomed-in screengrabs of the final image that show the level of detail this commission took. For better or worse, I never cut corners when it comes to details if I feel they will add value to the composition, even if they are not consciously noticed by the viewer —it’s enough if I know they are there.

In case you are wondering, the final image I sent to my patron is HUUUGE: 6,600 X 5,100 pixels, which is what allowed me to add such minute details to the illustration, like the texts in the spacesuits of my “catstronauts.”

As always, this was both a daunting and fun commission to complete (I lost count of how many layers I ended up using. Thanks CSP for not letting me down!) and Mark was pretty happy with it —he’s currently using it as his profile image on his social media.

Remember that you too can immortalize your beloved pet in any way you want by contacting me (absurdbydesign@gmail.com). Your imagination is the only limit 🙂