Hey, palicos! We’re pleased to announce the second annual Buddy Portrait Contest, a prime opportunity for artists around the world to show off their talents with illustrations of Buddy.
Let’s look at last year’s winners for inspiration!
3rd place:
This one’s a bit too manga for our particular tastes, but the artist deserves credit for getting Buddy’s musculature right. This sketch takes a naturalistic approach, eschewing exaggeration in favor of stark realism.
2nd place:
The judges absolutely fell in love with this pencil illustration, which renders Buddy’s hulking frame in dramatic greyscale tones. Buddy’s visage is fierce and his shaggy tail suggests virility and power. The drawing is centered by his considerable biceps and his fourteen-pack. Bravo!
1st place:
This is the Buddy we all know and love: Regal, majestic and powerful. In this awe-inspiring piece, Buddy looks toward an unseen horizon, his whiskers and tail alert and broadcasting unshakable confidence. His symmetric handsomeness is reproduced faithfully by the clearly inspired artist, and his broad shoulders are framed by jagged stripes in homage to Buddy’s heritage as a terrifying tiger. Superlatives fail us. This is the very picture of feline grace and power.
Honorable mention:
We think this is an attempt to portray Buddy as a Pokémon, shrinking him and his muscles down to a kawaii style more popular with children.
How to enter this year’s contest:
Submit a high-resolution illustration or portrait of Buddy no later than Nov. 30, 2019, with “Buddy the Handsome Cat” in the subject line. Portraits that don’t adequately capture how ripped Buddy is will be disqualified.
Pain In The Bud 
Hysterical! But seriously, kudos to the artists!!
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This was very early in PITB’s life, and a reader emailed me to ask about entering the contest. I felt bad that I had to tell her it’s just a joke lol.
But I guess that’s better than the disappointed and in some cases very upset emails I received when I wrote an April Fool’s post about selling Buddy. You’d think a post about selling Bud to Somali pirates, on that day in particular, would need no explanation, but the internet never disappoints.
On the positive side, I got to write a follow-up from Buddy’s perspective in which he took enthusiastically to the pirate life and was having fun raiding land-lubbers.
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