Drawing tablet adventures: Cookie

Since I often find myself wondering what to draw, I tried my hand at drawing from a photo of something.

I looked through my phone and realized I have thousands of photos of this cutie, Cookie the cat!

First I tried drawing over the photo to see how "well" it'd turn out. But I felt like a child or like I was cheating by tracing.

So out of guilt, I moved the photo over and tried to draw from looking at it off to the side. This was my progress.

Yeah it's like meh, ok I guess. Still feels a bit childish. Then again, my hands are rusty at holding a pen, so I guess I should expect some childish looking results?

Then I thought the lines didn't feel right, so I tried my hand at coloring again.

I found some cool brushes in Photoshop and learned to use them with the tablet pen. That was fun! I ended up with this:

Oooh "artsy" or something .. aka.. cut a lot of corners to make is stylish so it masks all awkward outlines and proportions I have underneath!

I'm trying to learn about what part of this whole drawing experience I'm most comfortable with. I've been taking untraditional routes of learning to draw, basically dabbling things on my own instead of taking lessons or a class. Am I into comics? Am I into illustration? Do I just want to be a better graphic designer? TBD!