Bengals Illustrated has an article on me in their November December issue and they’ve used Maya in The Bell Ringer for the front cover. They’ve done a wonderful job of the reproduction and it’s an excellent magazine. A very enjoyable read.

This is Smug Mug. You might recognize her, I used Smug Mug as the basis of this year’s new Christmas card ‘Snowflake Kisses’.

This is a small, mixed media painting on watercolour paper. Its 6×6 inches in an 8×8 frame. 

I thought you might enjoy this photo of the boys. Ming and Charlie are having a discussion about who gets to sit in the sun on the chair. Needles to say, by the time they’d finished fighting for it, Cassie had taken the spot for herself!

This is an oil painting of Stan. Stan lived with Sandra and her family and he was quite a little character. Sandra wanted a 16×12 oil painting of Stan.

I started with a sketch of him lying on the floor, looking playfully up at us from an upside down position. A typical mischievous kitten and a real sweetie!

Stan is coming along nicely and as you can see from the photo, I’ve got him onto the canvas board and all the main shapes are there. Now it’s a slow process of building him up and adding colour and detail. This is the fun part of the painting, but slow because it means waiting for each layer of oil to dry before the next one can go on.

And here is the finished painting of Stan on the easel, complete with his frame.

And this is a close up detail of the painting.

This is a portrait of Alice, a gorgeous Bengal cat who lives with Fiona and Andy. She has a wonderful expression as she stares out through the grasses. I wonder what she is looking at?

Alice is sketched onto a 20×16 inch canvas and the under painting is started with light washes of colour. 

Then the blues of the sky and the greens on the grasses are developed. I used several different blues for the sky, Cobalt Blue, Ultramarine and Prussian Blue.  

 Finally I start work on Alice herself.

 Finishing touches are her whiskers and details in the seed heads in the grass. This is the finished painting.

A close up detail of the canvas.