Mia Copperbelle is a singer and dancer of a traveling cat band, spreading joy all over the land through their music.

Mia and the rest her merry bards are frequently harassed by the despotic Lion Kingdom. The Lions take no pleasure in the peace and love themes of the small cat band, and disperse any of their gatherings by lethal force. Despite the present danger posed by her father, Mia presses forward on her passion to be the greatest dancer of them all!

I had this Cat Dancer piece on the back burner for three years. Drawn traditionally in Brush, Ink and Paper and Later Digitally colored in Procreate and Clip Studio Paint. You can get a 9×12 Print for sale on my Etsy Store!

Originally started back in 2018,Mia tt Galaxy Comic Book and Fantasy Art Expo back in 2018 to fill in my time between selling comics. At the time, I wanted a third cat in this theme of other bard cats I had drawn before as a little band set, as I had prints of the two cats made at the time.

First I started with a cat who was my idea of the fabled Pied Piper, a pipe playing rat-catcher. It made sense, and I still like this idea for a character, and want to keep them around. After that one, I made a traditional marker drawing of a cat playing a lute as one of my earlier forays into learning how to draw with Copic Markers and Colored Pencils. The Lute Cat didn’t have a story or theme, but I did see it as a good companion piece to the Pipe Piper!

As I was working on Mia, I was clueless about what I really wanted to do for the colors, and I was never happy with different results. Despite my original intentions to have the cat set in a short time, I didn’t finish this piece for five years!

Eventually I beat my perfectionism and, with a need to learn about my new iPad, Colored Mia in purple and orange. The colors contrasted the best to her cream fur. Some more pics about my long process of figuring out colors I actually wanted to pick.

The rest of the process was me continuing to second guess what kind of lighting I wanted to add. In the end, I gave up and stuck with a mixture of Cel-shading and Soft-Brush shading because I wanted to get it out the door and out of my drawing pile.

This drawing was among my major pushes to finish more of my artwork and crystallize my ideas. I’m still not as happy with the art I’ve done, but I’m pushing away from my weakness as much as I can. If you like this character, You can get a 9×12 Print for sale on my Etsy Store!

I’m all over the web showing my daily drawings and practice sketches! If you want to follow me around, I’m on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr!

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