The Sad Cat: Illustration Design

This cat has a very long story. Begin with the day when my teacher in Graphic design I asked the class to make an illustration of any animal in a shape of either circle, square or triangle. The animal can be anything, but the shape has to be in the form the three basic shapes.

I am a cat people. I like cat and I also have a personal story about cat. When I was a kid -- around 3-4 of age -- I  had a very nice white cat. This cat was so smart and good. He follows me everywhere I go, into the forest -- near the village where I was born. Funny, because normally people bring dog into the wood. But my mother allowed no dog in our house. I like my cat anyway, because he was able to catch bird and brought it alive to me so I can roast it at home. This cat died hit by car. it was so sad.

I also have a dark story about cat. When I was in around 9 or 10, I killed a cat. I didn't mean to, but this cat ate three little bird that I was planning to pet, taken from the wood. The cat ate the birds when I was busy building the cage. I hit the cat with a stick very hard. It wasn't died right away. It ran with hobble. Three days later I found it's dead body not far from my house.

I felt so guilty. Killing a cat is a kind of taboo in our culture. Cat is the prophet's pet, that's what my mom said. I grew up with the guilt. It makes me always threat cat nicely after that, trying to live down my sin. Until I grown up cat become my favorite animal.

So, when my teacher ask me to make a picture of animal in a shape, of course what first came to my mind was cat.
I try not to draw the cat literally, because my drawing suck. I make it a little bit abstract look. It turned up pretty good. I liked it. My teacher did too.
The first version of this image was a black and white image mounted on mat board. I scanned it up and brought to Illustrator, convert it to vector and add some painting look. It ended up like this.

To get a print copy of this artwork, please go to my DeviantArt page: http://manthono.deviantart.com/#/d3f3wij