This portrait is the second of four paintings for the same customer. This is Lenny, a gray and white long haired cat. His portrait was completed on October 20, 2020. It is painted with acrylic paints on an 8″ x 10″ stretched canvas. The owner requested that I use natural colors for his portrait, with little pops of color here and there, and a green/yellow background to complement his eyes. You can see a larger version of this painting in my pet portraits portfolio.
Lenny photo vs painting
Above you can see a comparison of the painting with the reference photo. Although my style is usually colorful or psychedelic, I found it a nice change of pace to do a portrait with grays and browns instead of the entire rainbow. I can create more subtlety and nuance in the fur details and shadows with realistic colors. I started off with a base of grays, which I created by mixing black and white in various amounts along with some light blue and browns to create undertones. I then layered lighter and darker grays of various tones overtop to create the fur textures. Occasionally I would use some pure colors like purple or blue to add bits if interest to the fur.
Lenny closeup view
Above you can see a close up view of the painting. With my style, I am not aiming at pure realism. I don’t paint every hair, nor do I hyper-focus on fine details. Although my art is somewhat detailed, it falls more towards the impressionistic side of realism. I out the most details into key aspects of the painting, such as the eyes, nose, mouth and ears. For the fur, I establish the over tone (highlights, shadows, colors) but like to keep my brush strokes more loose and bold. It could not be mistaken for a photograph, it is definitely a painting!
The benefit of painting in this style allows me to work with photographic references that are less than ideal. A lot of photos of our pets are snapshots. Some of the older ones may have been taken with the earliest cell phones, point and click digital cameras, or even disposable film cameras (remember those?). These photos are not great, but they may be the only ones we have of our beloved pets. I will work with what I am given.
Since the last two paintings use natural colors, I am now offering “natural colors” as a style option to my clients. You can see more examples of this in this blog article.
If you like this painting of Lenny and want one of your own pet, please visit my Pet Portraits Information Page for more details on sizes and prices.
This artwork is also available in my online print store as a fine art print, and on products such as pillows, tote bags, cell phone cases, t-shirts, fleece blankets, coffee mugs, and much more.
