Chi, my wonderful tabby cat is a dreadful thief! He’s one of those cats who just has to share your food. We tried to stop him begging for food only to find that he’d taken a more creative approach. He’d wait until you sat on the sofa with a snack and he’d sneak up behind you and wait. Just as you raised a nice piece of cheese or ham to your lips a paw would shoot out and take it from your fingers! Leaving you staring at your empty hand in amazement.

He soon had us trained. We quickly learned that it was easier to give him a small morsel from our meal than to be constantly turning around wondering where the next ambush would come from.

So when I had an idea for a painting for the annual Society Of Feline Artists show I instantly thought of Chi as the model. And here he is performing brilliantly.

In the close up detail below you can see his typical expression of bliss.

We had a wonderful weekend opening Lois studio to visitors. It was wonderful to meet you all! I hope we’ll meet more of you next weekend too.

I had a brain wave and created a banner for the front of the house so people could find us. I used Lois’s painting Chnicken and my painting Charlie as they both stand out well.

Lois and I had decorated one of the stables to make a new gallery space to hang the paintings, so we had both the studio and the gallery to show our work in. Took a fair bit of work but I think it was worth it. The stable is a nice space to sip a glass of wine and look at pictures.

This proved to be popular with visitors.

This is the path from the stable to the studio past the house. It’s almost a painting in its own right! Lois has a lovely home.

And this is the studio were we had more paintings and drawings on show.

I have many more photos on Flickr if you’d like to see a few more, follow this link… South East Open Studios photos on Flickr.

Hemi, a brown spotted boy, Shelby, a snow marble girl and Rally, a brown marble boy, belong to Amy and Tyler Cross. How lucky they are to have three such beautiful and yet such different Bengals.  

I started with sketches of them together and once we had one we liked I moved on to the canvas. The painting will be 22×16 inches when it’s finished.

The three of them are sketched loosely onto the canvas.

The under painting is developing, the cats have a bit more form and the background is starting to go on.

Now the background is laid in and I’m starting to develop the cats themselves, especially their eyes.

I’m really enjoying painting these three beauties, I love the pose, I love the contrast between their different coats and especially the three sets of beautiful Bengal eyes, gold, green and blue. This photo shows their eyes well.

 And here is the finished painting. It’s many layers later and I’ve been gradually building up the colour in each of the cats, developing their fur and adding the shine on their coats.

Then there’s a period of fine tuning, emphasizing the shadows and tweaking the colour across the painting. Then I finished the red cushions, although they don’t come out well in digital photos. Then the final touch, whiskers!

Shelby

Rally

Hemi

And here’s a close up detail of the canvas….

   
Hemi’s beautiful green eyes. 

This is Chloe. She’s laying on the step enjoying a hot summers day and the feel of the heat in her fur. The sun lights up her beautiful coat and fills it with rich reds and gold’s that set off her tortoiseshell markings so well.

She’s painted in acrylics on Fabriano Pittura paper. 

The first coat was a coat of iridescent gold medium and that shows through the subsequent layers of paint making her fur glow with the gold of the sun. This only shows from certain angles and is quite subtle but the photo gives an idea of how it looks.

Do you, your friends or family have a problem cat with behavioural issues? Would you like free advice from Britain’s leading cat expert?

If so, please call Jane on 020 7907 3437 or email contact@silverriver.tv