Visual distortion

I made a couple of quick sketches of one of my cats... meet emmy aka loulou..

Not my finest...how about..

still not great, and I managed to cut off her crowning glory, her tail. In my defence the photo was a bit iffy.
I now set about recreating the image in 5 lines..

...and an effort on the iPad..

although the remit is quite flexible, I could in effect draw an outline with one line.. it is interesting to see whether you can capture the essence of the cats character etc using 5 quickly drawn lines.
Now to think about the surreal montage version of the image. On the face of it a random selection of images taken from a few pages in a single magazine could render a sufficiently surreal image.

The best that can be said, is that it has the shape of the original sketch and definitely bends reality, but it is random and looks it.
Reappraisal time...
Thinking along the lines of a fur replacement texture and having included some rock formations already, I expanded on this theme for my next go..

A water fall seemed an obvious alternative to the area of white fur under the chin.
Searching for more inspiration. A picture in a magazine gave me the idea of using hair as fur; not a great leap of imagination I admit.
Searching through newspapers and supplements for a range of colour hair and useable images; I spied a picture of Liza Minnelli in Caberet. I decided I could use at least her eyes, nose and possibly lips.

This worked well with a piece of hair I had already selected for the crown of the head and ears. I also found a picture of a shoulder and back that had the shape of the cats back. A pair of crossed arms took my eye and with the addition of a wrist watch make a good front legs and paws. I experimented with the facial elements covering and uncovering, framing with the surrounding bits.
Already thinking about the end piece in respect of any possible narative. I had an idea for the Owl and the pussy cat divorce. I could see my surreal cat creature surrounded by feathers with a green boat somewhere. Looking for images of feathers I came across an illustrated article about Tawny owls.

I couldn't resist the face on one of the included photographs and decided to modify my montage by changing an eye for the owls and use the breast feathers for the cats chest. I had already added the back leg, I liked the added dimension but I ended up removing the foot whilst contemplating siting the final image in a boat.

My montage now looked like this. It was put through a filter in the Aviary App to make the colouration more uniform. I then prepared my first sketch of the montage.

My final sketch refined and edited with extra elements added.

I made the cat more feline looking around the mouth and added whiskers. I lost the visible part of the arm that was shown as part of the back. As the creature had become part owl she is the owl and the pussy cat. The quill was originally intended to be from the owl and be used to write the divorce document. I kept these to create the narative, although I am not sure what it is now.