I was fortunate to get a unique commission in a very unusual way. I found pictures of Chiyo on Reddit earlier this year, and thought she looked so cool! She is a one-of-a-kind domestic shorthair with unusual markings. She is a brown tabby and white, but with a very unusual piebald marking that is in random blotches all over her body, rather than being in the typical places where piebald markings occur in cats. This gives her a ‘cookies and cream’ appearance, with a mostly white body with brown tabby patches all over. She is very pretty and her owner is very fortunate to have adopted her.

When I saw her photos on Reddit, I checked the owner’s profile to see if she had an instagram (@chiyopurrs), and was delighted that she had just set one up! I immediately followed and liked her photos, and left a few comments about the unusual kitty. It was not long before Chiyo went viral and her account boomed in popularity, soaring to over 100K followers in a short time. However, I was one of the earlier followers, and her owner took a liking to my colorful artwork and wanted to commission me to paint her unique cat in my colorful style.

This portrait was completed on August 6, 2024, and was painted with acrylics on an 8×10 inch canvas. The owner left the coloring up to me. Since Chiyo is mostly white, I decided to make the background coloring darker than usual, and used purple, violet and magenta to give a darker yet colorful foundation. The surface that she is sitting on was painted with pale yellow and hot pink mixed into an almost salmon color. The tabby areas of her fur were painted with a whole rainbow of colors, everything except green. The lighter areas were painted with yellows, oranges, reds, magenta, and hot pink, and the darker tabby markings were painted with purples and blues. The white areas were left lighter and the shading in the fur was achieved with pale purple and blue colors. Her eyes were left her natural amber color.

I had a lot of fun creating this unusual portrait. This is a stellar example of my ‘colorful realism’ style, where I use the pet’s own markings and coloration as a foundation for my color choices, making it colorful while retaining their characteristics.