Completed on March 6, 2024, this portrait of a grey British Shorthair cat, also known as a British Blue, was created with acrylic paints on a 9×12 inch canvas. This is a breed that I have not painted before, and it was interesting to portray the features of this breed. The appearance of this breed is described as ‘cobby’, and that means a stocky, muscular build. She has a very round face, with broad cheeks and a wide forehead, small ears set low on the head, and overall a very blocky build, characteristic of this breed. She has very prominent cheek bones and upper lip pads which add to the very rounded sturdy appearance. Most of the cat breeds I have painted up to this point have been standard domestic shorthairs, or longhaired cats. It was interesting to paint a breed that has different facial structures than I am used to.

Mia has vibrant copper-orange colored eyes, which are also a signature of this breed and rarely seen in other cat breeds. Dark orange and copper colored eyes are one of the rarest colors seen in cat eyes in general, and the contrast of the warm orange with the cool greys of her fur is very striking. For her eyes I used mostly vivid red-orange and raw sienna, with just a hint of light yellow around her pupils and the outer boundaries of her irises.

In the reference photo provided by her owner, Mia is lying in a grassy field. This is something she commonly enjoyed and the owner wanted her to be in that setting. Her fur is a cool blue-grey color, and I wanted to portray her in her natural colors while also taking advantage of all the hidden colors that can be found in grey fur. She has a very faint hint of dual lighting in her fur; a ‘warm’ side and a ‘cool’ side, which was caused by the direct sunlight on one side and reflected light on the other. I sought to include this in her fur coloration, rather than only shades of grey, since it makes the painting more interesting. So on the ‘warm’ side I used a warmer neutral grey as the base, and added some creamy unbleached titanium and parchment beige for the highlights, along with some titanium white for the brightest highlights. For the cool side, I used blue-grey as the base, and added some light blue and even a touch of violet to her fur there, to give it the appearance of reflected light from the sky.