This is one of the images I used in Scragamuffin, the chapbook I released as October’s exclusive Patreon reward. I thought it might be fun to release the pictures with the photos that inspired them.
I drew this in an early stage of developing this white-on-brown style for cat drawings, and it was one of the pictures that encouraged me to continue because of the shock of recognition I felt when I looked “Pete” in the eye. It just really looks like him. I was also really excited by the way the paws turned out– the pattern of light shows the distribution of his weight in a way I don’t think I would have been able to capture without using a photograph as a template. He’s pondering a jump and his front paws are on the corner of a cabinet. I think getting that right helps the image feel like it’s arrested mid-motion instead of being a stiff pose.
Sweeney is the perfect accompaniment to a tough-on-crime comic. I bet the Judge had invested money in the prison industry.