Pony of the Sea // Katya Wagner

Illustrator and designer from Cape Town. Pony of the Sea enjoys art, *A E S T H E T I C* and obscurity. This is some of my art. // Please credit if sharing

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🔮 Ouja cats ✨ A motif I can't stay away from is 'cat cultists attempting to pierce the veil between this world and something more peculiar'. What eldritch motivations can these mystic felines hold in their fluffy little hearts? Maybe the mysteries and secrets will unravel as I create more art on the topic 🐱✨ I couldn't decide between two designs for this piece. The version with the ouija lettering might end up as a postcard - I can't bring myself to write it off completely. ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ #occult #occultcats #occultart #witchyart #catart #illustration #ouija #ouijaart #cats #witchaesthetic #southafricanartists #southafricanillustrators #artistsofinstagram https://www.instagram.com/p/ClBiO3SqAkl/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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🌭Cocktail Sausage🌭 This is a commission that I did a little while back featuring a dainty little dachshund. It's a digital painting from start to finish, drawn in Photoshop with a Wacom Intuos tablet. I'm on a mission to improve my fundamental art skills and master colour, light and form and digital painting is a great form of testing out techniques and experimenting. 🍰 🍉 🍉Social media moves pretty fast so I doubt anyone's actually noticed but I have dramatically decreased my rate of posting over the past few months. I thought it was time I started posting again. Basically instagram gave me an account restriction type thing which drastically lowered my reach for 90 days (maybe more). The reason? I shared some funny (in my opinion anyway) obvious-memes featuring news articles that "independent fact-checkers" deemed fake-news. Even though I was sharing literal memes... not news. Has this crippled my humble little art account forever? Seems so. 🍰 Either way I toil away in the background regardless of Big Zuck's whims. 😎 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ #illustration #digitalart #digitalpainting #photoshop #procreate #dachshund #sausagedog #petportraits #dogart #southafrica #southafricanartists #femaleartists #femaleillustrators #capetown #capetownartist #wacom #artcommissions #artoftheday #illustratorsofinstagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CdbC7FyKJxW/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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🌾☘🌿 verdant foliage 🌿☘🌾 When last have I rendered something in ink? My lifedrawing sketchbook has been taking precedence over fully rendered drawings of late. While the practice is definitely welcome, doodling on autopilot is a nice change of pace. Either way, I've done away with pencil sketching and go straight to the ink. As a notoriously indecisive perfectionist this is the only way 🥞 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ #drawwithme #speeddrawing #speeddraw #artpost #drawingoftheday #botanicalart #foilage #plantmom #plantart #penandink #penandpaper #inkdrawing #darkcomics  #southafrica #southafricanartists #capetownartist #blackwork #blackandwhite #lowbrow #sketch #doodle #doodlart https://www.instagram.com/p/CaW9jmiq-XK/?utm_medium=tumblr

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❤Happy Valentines day!💕 One texture I've always enjoyed recreating is lace. Something about the finicky linework and fussy detailing entices me, but ultimately I find it straightforward and laborious in nature. Composition however is never entirely straightforward. Swipe to see my struggles with the background foliage and my initial sketch. ❤❤❤ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ #valentinesday #valentinesart #drawing #illustration #blackandwhiteart #digitalart #procreate #adobe #digitaldrawing #illustratorsofinstagram #valentinescard #catart #lacework https://www.instagram.com/p/CZ-Ob_JKBQi/?utm_medium=tumblr

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🌴This drawing has been decades in the making🌴 When I was very small, my parents had a print in their apartment. At some point it fell victim to the passage of time and probably found its way into a donation box or a trash bag (we'll never know). The art deco-esque image of a black cat jumping off a table in front of a window seared itself into my infantile brain and became my artistic white whale. To this day the original artist remains unknown. 🔮 Fast forward to 2012, where I had emerged from the cocoon of childhood as a fresh faced design student. At this point I had just barely learned to use Adobe Illustrator. Happenstance lead to me unearthing The Print. It was fuzzy and shrouded in shadow, dreamlike in the background of an old photo. I was confident that I could use my newly-acquired Adobe superpowers to recreate it. Chronologically, this was a point in time before I had learned to use curve tool and also before I was told to leave gradients in the 90s where they belonged, along with solar flares. I was pretty pleased with the result at the time and moved on with my life. 👾 Present day: The year is 2022. I have spent the entirety of my 30s living through a pandemic. I come across old photos of The Print while backing up files. The passage of time has conspired to give me ten additional years of illustration experience as well as a retina screen for my aged eyes. I decide to take another crack a recreating the print. 🐈 The fuzziness of the source material meant that in a lot of ways I was recreating my idea of the image more than creating a verbatim copy. 🐱🌈 I'm happy with this iteration. I managed to push it further than I could at 22. Maybe I'll recreate it again in 2032. 💫 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ #drawing #illustration #artpost #artretrospective #artdeco #digitalart #catart #photoshop #procreate #artportfolio #design #lowbrow #southafricanillustrator #blackcats #digitalillustration #sketch #doodle #instaart #graphicdesign #illustratorsoninstagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CZjk_Itq-M2/?utm_medium=tumblr

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🖌🖍 Some stills from my side-table makeover. 🖍🖌 if I had the art supplies and the riches, I would probably live in a very colourful house. The smallest bit of attention to detail and creativity can turn something generic into a piece of home. As a self-confessed maximalist, I love having a million interesting things to look at around my home. Perhaps you could call the aesthetic "wunderkamner" (or hoarding, on a bad day haha). 🔮🍰👾 Do you prefer a serene and clean aesthetic or do you need lots of eye candy in your living space? Comment below 📄 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ #diy #makeover #crafting #upcycle #furnitureupcycle #homedecor #furnitureflip #mycolourfulupcycle #colourfulhomevibe #furnituremakeoverartist #vintagerocks #myeclecticmix #homefurnishings #handpainted #handpaintedfurniture #boldinteriors #furnitureart #diyfurniture #memade #drawing #illustration #painting #acrylicpaint #boldfurniture #meubelmakeover #livingspace #maximalist #capetown #southafrica https://www.instagram.com/p/CYYcmz7qT7Y/?utm_medium=tumblr

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Do you have a comfort-subject when you draw? Something that you default to? Mine is cats, and it has been so since I was little 🐱 This year was intense and stressful, so the output of cat drawings went up. 🐈 Nevertheless I felt like my output of beautifully rendered and finished work wasn't as high as I'd like. Pics or it didn't happen, as the saying goes. 🍄 Of course Instagram is curated, as is the Art vs artist challenge submitted for consideration right here in this post. What you don't see is that I've filled up almost a whole sketchbook of unsuspecting (and suspecting) people who unwittingly became my life-drawing subjects. Life drawing has really improved my art like nothing else. I've made necklaces, baked cakes and embroidered. I've also not made anything for long stretches. It gets tedious to try be creative and at the same time capture the photographic "proof". 🍰 As a consolation prize, maybe instead of seeing my illustrations you got targeted with one of the millions of web banners I've pumped out this year at my day job (sorry about that, haha). ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ #drawing #illustration #artvsartist #artvartist  #catillustration #blackandwhite #blackwork #personalwork #digitalart #vectorillustration #fineliner #photoshop #procreate #cats #catstagram #sketch #doodle #petportraits https://www.instagram.com/p/CXQy7wqqfFW/?utm_medium=tumblr

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🐱 Consider this my Inktober/Inkvember contribution. 🐱 Recently I bought a couple of grey copic markers to start rounding out my anatomy practice with some light and shadow application. This portrait of Shark gave me the chance to test out how shadows work on black fur, where the differences in shade are more subtle. After the drawing was finished, I felt that it still needed an art nouveau touch in the form of a delicate floral wreathe to balance out the visual harshness of the markers. 🐱 I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. 🐱 ☆ ✒Copic marker and fineliner on marker paper📓 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ #inktober #inktember #petportraits #copic #copicmarker #copicfineliner #fineliner #pigmamicron #blackink #blackwork #blackandwhite #illustration #sketch #sketchbook #penandink #penandpaper #inkdrawing #drawingoftheday #drawing #traditionalart #artprocess #catstagram #catsofinstagram #blackcats #blackcatsofinstagram #catportrait #anatomy #anatomyart https://www.instagram.com/p/CV0x3lFKdnZ/?utm_medium=tumblr

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🐱 Temple of Love ❤ Yes, the name is a Sisters of Mercy reference, and I fully recommend blasting Temple of Love while viewing this piece 🐴 This year has been surprisingly intense and I haven't managed to catch my breath yet. Thankfully for the recent long-weekend where I could finally return to this drawing. It took a bit of reworking to get it to my desired level of "occult catness" - an unknowable 'x factor' comprising just the right balance of the occult and cats. 🦄 The way I work, I usually end up with something too complex that I then need to edit down and reign in. Illuminated borders, additional patterns and extra architectural elements all failed to make the cut. 🐱 Swipe to see zoom-outs, close-ups and my process sketches! ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ #drawing #illustration #designinspiration #blackwork #blackandwhite #lowbrow #lowbrowart #comicart #darkcomics #catart #occult #occultcats #gothart #templeoflove #thesistersofmercy #southafrica #southafricanartists #femaleartists #femaleillustrators #behance #dribbble #adobe #adobeillustrator #digitalart #personalwork #procreate #catstagram #artprocess #tarotart #artprocess https://www.instagram.com/p/CUXsOH1KyJB/?utm_medium=tumblr

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🐱 Minnie 🐱 Meet Minerva Minnie Nel, sister to Raj and daughter to @divajosiekate 🐈 This is the third in what is now a series of tabby portraits as I learn the intricacies of drawing complex fur patterns. I tried to bathe this one in a warm golden afternoon light. 🦄 At least 100 Photoshop layers went into this because I'm commitment phobic 🐴 Swipe for process pics and cat photos. ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ #drawing #illustration #designinspiration #design #personalwork #processshot #illustratorsofinstagram #illustrationart #digitalpainting #conceptart #procreate #photoshop #wacom #wacomtablet #behance #dribbble #adobe #catstagram #catsofinstagram #catart #catportrait #petportraits #southafrica #capetown #capetownartist #southafricanartists #artpost #artprocess #drawingoftheday #tabby https://www.instagram.com/p/CRgDmO6pcdo/?utm_medium=tumblr

[ponyoftheseas]

🐱 Minnie 🐱 Meet Minerva Minnie Nel, sister to Raj and daughter to @divajosiekate 🐈 This is the third in what is now a series of tabby portraits as I learn the intricacies of drawing complex fur patterns. I tried to bathe this one in a warm golden afternoon light. 🦄 At least 100 Photoshop layers went into this because I'm commitment phobic 🐴 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ #drawing #illustration #designinspiration #design #personalwork #processshot #illustratorsofinstagram #illustrationart #digitalpainting #conceptart #procreate #photoshop #wacom #wacomtablet #behance #dribbble #adobe #catstagram #catsofinstagram #catart #catportrait #petportraits #southafrica #capetown #capetownartist #southafricanartists #artpost #artprocess #drawingoftheday #tabby https://www.instagram.com/p/CRgDUWepIp1/?utm_medium=tumblr

[ponyoftheseas]

I recently decided to revamp my Pony of the Sea brand illustration for the 2020s. This drawing will live on my website and perhaps on future packaging and branding. 🦄 The inspiration? Old postage stamps, cigarette boxes, match boxes, turn of the century logo design and antique book plates and etchings. 🐎🐙 I've been using the handle 'Pony of the Sea' for about four or five years and I still appreciate the nonsensical and whimsical nature of the moniker. I chose the name because it hints at there being a bigger story behind it. This indeed is the job of illustration - to tease the existence of a fleshed out world beyond the printed page or pixel. 🐚 Ponies don't belong in the sea, it's not their natural habitat. With a few clever adjustments however, like a rubber floatie, the pony in question does their best in the circumstances and does not back down from adventure. Work Smarter, not harder and remember to never say "neigh" 🦄 Swipe to the end to see my initial sketches! ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ #drawing #illustration #etching #pointillism #blackandwhite #blackwork #personalwork #branding #horseart #ponyart #logodesign #adobe #adobeillustrator #vectorart  #vectorillustration #horses #capetown #southafrica #southafricanartists #femaleartists #capetownartist #drawingoftheday #wacom #drawingprocess #digitalart #illustrator #portfolio #artportfolio #whimsicalart https://www.instagram.com/p/CQi5H9LJDHH/?utm_medium=tumblr

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Presenting my first embroidered, sequined and beaded patch 💗🐱 I'm a bit of a hobby hoarder and the stars finally aligned for me to make use of the embroidery hoop I bought two years ago. 🐱 The process of stitching sequins by hand is delightfully time consuming and a perfect alternative for someone who is usually mindlessly doom-scrolling on an assortment of differently-sized screens. 🦄 I was a bit impatient to sit through an embroidery tutorial video. Instead I made it up as I went along. I vaguely remembered that interfacing had something to do with it, and that I had some left over from a previous non-embroidery project. 🐱 The patch of course is a tribute to Wasabi. Serendipitously it ended up being more or less life-sized, and I had the pleasure of seeing his face slowly manifest from a thousand beads and sequins. 💖 I don't know if my stitching will ever get any faster, but all that hard work does make the end result more satisfying. I'm undecided whether I'll frame it or stitch it onto the back of a jacket. ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ #handcrafts #slowart #astitchintime #embroidery #sequins #beading #handstitched #craft #illustration #drawing #cats #catstagram #catsofinstagram #catsoftheworld #handmade #memade #crafty #southafrica #southafricanartists #capetownartist #capetown #fabricpatches #patches #embroideryart #artoftheday #diy #diyfashion https://www.instagram.com/p/CP1bD6cpaDC/?utm_medium=tumblr

[ponyoftheseas]

🐱 Madonna and Child 🐱 I'm trying to bring my artwork back to a place that isn't running on social media's schedule. I've missed doing highly detailed and painstaking work. This piece took me a long time and I enjoyed every second. ☕ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ #drawing #illustration #etching #pointillism #blackandwhite #stippling #monochromepalette #monochromeart #cats #catstagram #catsofinstagram #catsoftheworld #catportraits #caturday #blackcatstagram #blackcats #blackcatsofinsta #artpost #illustratorsofinstagram #illustrationnow #femaleillustrators #madonnaandchild #southafrica #capetown #capetownartist #southafricanartist #vectorillustration #digitalart #procreate #adobeillustrator https://www.instagram.com/p/CO_IKUXp9Bv/?igshid=7auqkxtwx1g7

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Just over a week ago, someone very special to me passed away very suddenly. Wasabi came to me around the time I was finishing off college and getting ready to enter the workforce. A scraggly little ruffian hailing from a factory somewhere in Elsie's River, he was warm, friendly and a quite a bit of a character. 💔 Through the past almost-decade he has been by my side through my entire adult life, filling the role of artistic muse, emotional support and giant bunny rabbit. 🐱 He soon became a regular fixture in my artwork and is probably the main reason I have a sizable  collection of white porcelain bunnies. 🐰 This is a collection of my Wasabi-inspired artwork over the years. 🐇 Since Wawa died it's been hard to interact with social media. Instead, I've been distracting myself heavily with series, games, art and learning. I still feel it's important to acknowledge the role he played both in my art and as an important part of my life. ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ #inlovingmemory #belovedpets #muse #cats #catstagram #catsofinstagram #catsoftheworld #catportraits #caturday #crafts #whitecat #whitecatsofinsta #illustration #drawing #digitalart #vectorillustration #painting #jewelrymaking #wrappingpaper #airdryclay #tribute #petmemorial #acrylicpainting #paintoncanvas #penandink #illustrationart #artretrospective #artportfolio https://www.instagram.com/p/CO8DkM8J0ew/?igshid=wsqj6s46p9cq

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🐱🏰 I did a little photoshoot with my cats a few weeks ago and decided to make Wasabi the "king of his castle" with a few strategically-placed doodles. 🏰🐱 Wasabi was found in a factory, so I always got the sense that he relishes having a house of his own. // digital photo and vector// ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ #drawing #illustration #illustrationgram #illustratorsofinstagram #illustrationnow #illustrationart #mixedmedia #doodle #doodlart #digitalart #vectorillustration #vectorart #adobeillustrator #catstagram #catsofinstagram #catsoftheworld #catportraits #caturday #whitecats #southafrica #capetown #capetownartist #capetownillustrator #architecture #fantasyarchitecture #fantasyart #pastelcolours #adoptdontshop https://www.instagram.com/p/CNR3NKjJPUM/?igshid=dl1bbo7ygbzl

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🚺A follow-up to my last post 🚺 Growing up as a girl, it is often implied to us that wearing certain clothes or wearing too much make up will attract the "wrong sort of attention". Wearing a skirt that is a little too short will drive some poor man into a lustful frenzy. News stories bring tales of young girls being chastised for showing their bare arms at school and distracting all males present. 🚻 This thought pattern puts all blame on the (femxle in this case at least) victims of sexual harrassment and crime, and removes accountability from the perpetrators. By definition, nobody asks to be raped. 🌙 Let's ask ourselves what an 89 year old woman or a small child was wearing to incite such behaviour? Or a womxn asleep in her own home? Or walking home from work? There's no situation where sexual violence is ok. ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ #drawing #illustration #gbv #genderbasedviolence #gbvsouthafrica #keeptheenergy #keeptheconversationgoing #womxn #womensrights #feministart #feminism #comicart #darkcomics #comics #southafrica #capetown #comicoftheday #pointillism #etching #dotwork #figuredrawing #digitalart #vectorillustration #vectorart #adobeillustrator #blackwork #lowbrowart https://www.instagram.com/p/CMbo_OupwuB/?igshid=y7a3rm7ieacu