This unique pet portrait is of a cute tuxedo cat named DeeDee. Her portrait was painted with acrylic paints on a 9×12 inch canvas, and completed in September 2024. In the reference photo which was chosen by her owner, she was wearing a ‘crown’ of leaves on her head, which was actually just a fancy ribbon made out of cloth and thread. The owner wanted me to include the leaf crown on her head, and it makes her look really cute, like a little Roman empress or something. It certainly makes it an unusual and one of a kind portrait; I love it when owners want me to add a little something extra to the painting, whether that is a bow or bow tie, a pet’s favorite toy, or some knick knack that the owner cherishes. It makes it more personal and more than just a painting of a cat or a dog.

For DeeDee’s background, the owner wanted something simple, so that the attention would be on the cat. So, I chose a very simple gradient of blue, teal, and green. This cool color gradient complements the colors in her fur without being too distracting. In general, ‘warm’ colors seem to drift to the foreground, and ‘cool’ colors seem to recess into the background, so using cooler colors like blues and greens for the background will generally make the subject pop.

She is a black and white cat, and that gives me free rein to choose the colors. In general, for black areas on a pet, I tend to stick with a blue or purple as the base color, and layer other adjacent colors on top of it. This is because blue/purple ‘reads’ as black when you have an oversaturated color base. So for her fur, I used a base of medium blue, and layered dioxazine purple on top for the shadows, and teal for the highlights, with some hot pink and magenta for pop. The white areas were left mostly white from the canvas, with purples and blues used for the shadowed areas in the fur. Her eyes were painted their natural yellow color, and the green leaf ribbon was painted with the colors matching the actual ribbon. Her ears are a pink color in the reference photo, so I used a lot of hot pink and magenta for those, to make them match the saturation of the rest of the painting.

This was a very fun and unique portrait! I really love the cat’s expression as well as her cute little head gear. I hope the owner cherishes her painting for years to come!