This is Zowie! Described by her mom as having a fiery and spicy personality, so I thought having a background with a lot of flaming red would be fitting. She is a black cat with medium-long fur and a cute round squishy face. Her reference photo was backlit, which I decided to keep in the painting for dramatic effect. Her portrait is painted with acrylics on a 16″ x 16″ stretched canvas, finished on June 7, 2022.

The progress for Zowie’s portrait follows in much the same fashion as most of my portraits. However this one had a snag that I was able to correct and I like the way it turned out better this way. So, my original plan for the background was to have the sunset colors on the base, and overlay brush strokes of complementary colors over the top (for example, green and teal over the red, blue over the orange, etc). In theory, and in my head, this sounded like a great idea! However, once I actually painted it, I was not happy with it. Fortunately, the base layer was painted one day prior and had dried really well, so I was able to wash off the new layers easily in the sink with the sprayer. I then went over the middle of the background with magenta, hot pink, and light purple to blend the horizon line, and added some more brush strokes on the bottom of teal and green to complete the rainbow effect. Originally I was also going to have her laying on a blanket, but I scrapped that idea for just having a light shadow to give the impression of a floor or ground of some sort.

In the next photo, you can see the underpainting. I actually painted her eyes first, then went over the painting with some dioxazine purple and medium blue to establish general tones in the fur. The reference photo had a wonderful backlighting effect which made the edges of her fur glow, so I decided to keep that in the painting. I used a large flat brush to do the underpainting, which resulted in the cool sweeping fur textures. The final layers involved lots of other colors to add depth and interest. I darkened the shadowed areas with a very small amount of black for contrast, and used some heavy body titanium white to build up the highlights.

Zowie’s portrait is hanging in her owner’s home among the other cat portraits I have painted for this owner (and will be painting several more over the next few years!) If you really like this unique portrait of Zowie and would like one of your own cat (or dog, bird, fish, reptile, hamster, horse or anything else!) please visit my Pet Portraits Information Page to learn more about the process.

This unique and vibrant artwork is available for purchase in my Online Fine Art Print Store. There you can choose from dozens of different options for wall art, home decor, and gifts. Wall art options include prints on paper, canvas, metal, acrylic, and wood. Each option is available in multiple sizes, ranging from 8×8 inches to 48×48 inches. You can also choose to have the image cropped to standard sizes including horizontal and vertical shapes if you prefer. There are hundreds of options for frame and mat color and styles as well. Canvas prints have several wrap options, including mirror and solid colored sides. In addition to prints, choose from various other products such as: greeting cards, phone cases, throw pillows, duvet covers, shower curtains, tote bags, carry-all pouches, beach towels, shirts, coffee mugs, spiral notebooks, fleece blankets, tapestries, face masks, jigsaw puzzles, stickers, and ornaments.

For other unique gifts, check out my RedBubble Store. In this store are products similar to my Fine Art store, with other products not found in that store. There are dozens of unique apparel options, including chiffon tops, classic shirts, caps, scarves, graphic shirts, and sweatshirts. There are also other cool items, like desk mats and mouse pads, vinyl stickers, magnets, phone cases and skins, laptop sleeves and skins, ipad cases and skins, lots of wall art options, acrylic blocks, bath mats and shower curtains, wall clocks, coasters, comforters, throw and floor pillows, throw blankets, totes, mugs, pin-back buttons, water bottles and travel mugs, hardcover journals, puzzles, and aprons.