Nyan Means No

Goodness, this thing took like 5 hours to finish (though, sadly, that's pretty average for me)

First of all, Everything I've done up to this point (and including this) is PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE. That being said, the vast majority of what I do is taken from a source image. What does that mean? Basically I look at a screencap/other such image and draw freehand from that.

Soo, here is the original source image that I looked at to get this: [link]

And here is the rough sketch I made of it: [link]

Obviously it's not the most ideal way to do things, but even the best artists need sources every once in a while. I'm hoping that the more I practice poses/shading, the more I won't have to do that anymore. Not that it's as awful as tracing, but it still feels cheater-ish. Also, airbrush shading seems to be my friend

Anyway, one day I was thinking about the huge fetish a *lot* of people seem to have for cat girls, and then this phrase popped into my head... "nyan means no!" So this is another one of the ideas that has been in my head for a drawing.

Also, in my search for the source... man, there is a disturbing amount of TMM hentai. Dude, they're like 12... so the image makes even more sense now!

Poor, poor Ichigo

(as I've said before, if it's a magical girl show, I've most likely seen it, and yes, Tokyo Mew Mew is pretty much a wholesale rip-off of Sailor Moon)

EDIT: It's not that I didn't like TMM, it's a very cute show. I just think it wouldn't exist without SM, though that could be said for a lot of magical girl shows that came after it. There are a *lot* of similarities is all I'm saying...