Well, what's the point?
So, I've asked you to draw a cat, hopefully you've done so, and then had a peek through the gallery, and now you're curious as to what this is for.
I'm rather vague on the front page of this subsite, and that's for good reason, I want to put as little of my own influence into the reader's head as I possibly can. I could list all the different ways I could imagine someone might visualise e a cat to be, I could give examples, I could decorate the page with graphics of cats or have the gallery on there, but then people wouldn't be drawing from memory, they'd be drawing from what I showed them, following guidelines that their mind made up from patterns noticed in what I've shown them.
The point of this exercise, and in drawing a cat from personal experience and visuals, is to show how there is so much variety in how we individually think of any seemingly universal idea. Everyone has their own unique view of the world, influenced by the things they've seen, the things they care about, and the things they've been taught. There's variety between cultures, between age groups, between everyone. And that's what I find interesting.
This idea was initially born from a conversation I had with my boyfriend about how sometimes people fear creating something because they don't want to be viewed as "uncreative", they don't want to be seen as copying anyone else, and that true creativity means complete individuality. We'd both seen this before, people not doing what was true to them because they were trying to avoid the crime of being inspired by other things that already exist. But the reality of it is, that for all the similarities between how we perceive things (you'll find most every drawing in here has two pointy ears, a little curved mouth and a tail of some kind), there's just as much different, if not moreso.
Every single image in here is recognisably itself, they're all unique! We recognise each and every one as a cat in some form, yet it's not a wall of identical images.
I chose cats specifically because cats have been considered the animal mascots of the internet for more time than I've been alive, and have been companion animals to humans for thousands of years, they live in every continent on Earth besides Antarctica. They are a universal part of almost certainly every single person who could possibly read this page. And despite that, or perhaps because of it, there's a huge variety of recognisable ways that people visualise them.
Perception isn't an absolute, just because we might agree on the language used to describe something, or the measurements used to build something, doesn't mean we are all seeing the same thing.
That is the point I wish to make with this, that no matter what your skill level may be, or what it is you wish to create, if it comes from the heart, and from personal experience and interest, it will be recognisably yours. There's no need to fear a lack of originality, because as much as nothing is original, everything is.
In my opinion this goes for any and all creative endeavours, your unique personal touch affects everything, from music, to writing, to programming, to the way you might decorate your home or dress yourself, and everything in between. You are an individual entirely naturally, there's no need to try and force it.
So, go out there, create! And perhaps draw another cat...
