Sweatpea is an eight year old brown Burmese and she’s clearly quite a character! Her owner has commissioned a painting of her and I’m painting her in acrylics on William Turner watercolour paper.

We decided that she looked wonderful belly up on the soft cream fur throws.

I started the painting with a loose wash of colour as the under painting and then started building layers of colour and tone to gradually create her form.

Even though she’s a brown cat, there are lots of colours in her fur; reds, browns, golds, greens and violets. And the cream throw she’s lying on has shades of gold and rose and violet in it too.

She looks so inviting doesn’t she? I just want to reach out and tickle her belly.

This is a large acrylic commissioned painting of Ozzy, a Snow Bengal. He’s standing in a field of bluebells and forget-me-nots.

The canvas is pinned to a large board and the first underpainting is done. Then I start on building Ozzy’s form.

As Ozzy takes shape I move over to the background and start on the layers of colour that make up the bluebells and forget-me-nots. I want to keep the background very loose and soft. Then back to Ozzy for the final development. It’s nearly finished.

Here’s the finished painting stretched over 20 x16 stretcher bars and varnished. Click the image to see a close up of the canvas.

Goldie is a beautiful Balinese cat with a strong personality and striking eyes who lives in Guernsey with one of my favourite humans, Myra. This is a watercolour and gouache painting on William Turner paper.