My First Printable: The Trouble With Reincats!

I ran into a roadblock with my current sewing project -- the fabric marker that I planned to use turns out to be not quite laundry-safe. I did a test run with the marker on the same fabric that I intended to use it on, heat set it, then washed it in cold water. The black of the marker itself didn't fade, but it did bleed a faint yellow outline around each stroke. Not quite what I intended for my graphic black and white dress! Time to find another brand of fabric marker.

See the yellow around his mouth and paws? (This is not the printable.)

In the meantime, I decided to take a break from sewing and get back into a little drawing. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy doodling until Elaine asked me to draw something for her and her fiance's anniversary. Anyway, I had so much fun with that I decided to do another full-scale illustration, this time Christmas themed! I know, I know, it's still too early for Christmas since Thanksgiving isn't even over yet (although Jo-Ann's and Target don't seem to realize that), but this just popped into my mind this afternoon in the middle of doing laundry and demanded to be drawn. I drew a couple of preliminary sketches on a Post-It, then drew and colored the actual thing in about an hour. I think that's a record for me. I didn't even use pencil first! I used a normal cheapo black pen we had lying around for the line art, then colored it with my precious Copic and Tombow markers. That was a challenge, since those markers are expensive and I only own eight colors total between the two brands. I bought all the Copics back in 2002 when I went through a manga-drawing phase, and it's remarkable that they've lasted this long. But enough blathering on, here it is:

I have no idea what actual sleigh harness is supposed to look like, and I couldn't be bothered to look it up.

It was inspired by Walnut and how my husband is always commenting how useless of a cat he is (facetiously, of course, we don't expect anything out of Walnut other than cuteness). We're always jokingly assigning him chores (not letting any ants into the apartment is his main responsibility), which of course he doesn't do. I don't know how I got from our useless cat to what if Santa's sled was pulled by reincats (like reindeer, but cats), but so goes inspiration, I guess. All the cats' poses are totally based on Walnut's actual lounging positions.

Feel free to use as random Christmas art, on Christmas cards, or as a computer desktop background. Or you can print it out and laugh at my feeble attempt at illustration and pin it up and throw darts at all the cats. And the obvious rule, don't claim it as yours, copy, reproduce, modify, or profit from this in any way. If you post it to your blog or Facebook or whatever, please credit/link back to me...thanks! And now that I've written all that, I feel incredibly silly -- as if anyone would even want this. Do you ever suffer from a simultaneous artist possessiveness and inferiority complex like that?

Download the pdf, the jpeg, or the black & white jpeg here.