Detective Noir et La Chatte by Ryan Licata
He had dimmed the lamps, lowered the Venetian blinds, closed for business, but she’d come up the fire escape and in through the window; the way his cat did. Seeing her there, standing over him, wearing a slender, black dress, a white patch, an orchard pinned, upon her breast, he saw that she was like his cat in other ways too. He tried to stand up from his swivel chair, but she pushed him down. The chair held them both, pawing and purring, as she curled up on his lap. Yes, curiously, she was like his cat in many ways.
Notes
There’s a couple of interesting stories around this illustration. The first one is about the story. At one point Ryan told me he had this image in his mind of a noir detective and that noir detective had my face. So I tried to draw myself as that character. I see this as a first try, probably other versions will follow. The other thing is, that when I started drawing this, the ink cartridge of my Pentel Pocket Brush ran dry and the strokes became rough and dirty. Usually I would have stopped and replaced the cartridge, but I liked the effect so I just kept on drawing. And somehow the image turned to to be someting really unusual for me, but also something I really like. I will have to work on this style some more…
And since I really liked the original drawing here it is, unplugged and unphotoshopped.
