Neko-kun

My little brother is one of the most adorable little kids you could ever meet, and I'm not just saying that- multitudes of people outside my family have said that, even some of my friends who despise little kids think he's cute. So when the five year old came up to me asking me to draw him as a cat of course I complied!

I went to an anime convention earlier this year (though that's another story entirely) and got a large bell, seen in the picture on the right, and it makes the most beautiful bell noise~. And he absolutely loves wearing it, more than I do, so he went and put it on for the picture I needed to take of him so I could draw him.

I wanted to make it anime styled since we both really like anime (like big sis, like little bro right?) but I also wanted to keep it somewhat realistic so that even my mom could recognize the facial features as my little brother. Overall it wasn't that difficult drawing and coloring, but since I didn't want to put what was on his shirt, on the one in the finished piece I had to rack my brain for a little while trying to figure out something out there so that it wouldn't look like an empty void.  I finally came up with the idea to simply put "Neko" or cat in Japanese on his shirt.

I let him pick out the colors for his hair, eyes, and shirt, and while he did pick neon green (which is an odd color for hair even in anime) I think he's also got a bit of an artist in him as well since it all turned out well in the end.