This is one of my favourite paintings. I just love these two Bengals. They are so gorgeous and the position they’re curled up really makes me smile. It was such a joy to paint! I just wish I could have kept it.

Toffee and Thistle
14×11 acrylic on board
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This is a 14×11 inch acrylic painting on board. The background is made up of several layers of paint, the base colour was a warm pink with cooler lilacs over the top. As a result the background changes colour as the lighting changes, going from warm pinks to cool lilacs. Looks amazing but is very hard to photograph!

Here are a couple of close ups of the painting.

This is one of my favourite paintings! This lovely lad is Mirsku and as you can see, he’s quite a character. Very lively, full of fun and a great looking cat too. He lives in Finland with The King of Finland and his other feline subjects.

Spring Cleaning
10×8 inch acrylic on board
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I had lots of photos to choose from when I came to paint Mirsku but this pose, with him laying upside down casually washing a paw with his legs akimbo, really made me laugh. So I just couldn’t resist it. I wanted to capture that fun loving personality.

I used a board coated in Liquitex ceramic stucco to give it a rougher texture. You can see the texture in the detail photo above. He’s a grey and white cat but his fur is so full of colour, lilacs and blues with warm patches of naples yellow. A joy to paint!

During Black Cat Awareness Day, on October the 27th, Cats Protection are asking  cat lovers to share photos of their black cats on their flickr site, facebook page or their flickr page or tweet mentioning @CatsProtection and #CPBlackCats . They will select some of their favourite photos and create a gallery of them.

The Prize

I am going to select a winner from the gallery and paint a 10×8 inch portrait of the winning cat! :-)

So if you fancy a portrait of your beautiful black puss upload your photo to http://www.facebook.com/catsprotection and tell people how wonderful our black cats are and maybe you could win a painting of your cat.

Why

Black Cat Awareness Day from Cats Protection aims to help around 1,300 unwanted black cats who are being overlooked by potential owners. Black cats make up one fifth of the total number of cats being looked after by Cats Protection, and each black cat is waiting a week longer to find a home compared to the average cat.

To adopt a black cat, please log on to www.cats.org.uk for details of your local Cats Protection branch or centre.

To see some of my paintings of black cats including my rescue boy Harry take a look at the Fascinating Felines Gallery.

I love carrying a notebook with me in my bag, useful for notes, sketching phone numbers, all sorts. So when I found out you could make your own notebooks through blurb I was keen to try it.

The first one had to be a Bengal notebook! Well it has arrived and I’m very pleased with the result.

I’ve never tried anything like this before so I wasn’t sure what to expect. The paper for the notebook is white uncoated paper and light weight, 90gsm, so I did wonder how well the images would print. Would they be too flat on uncoated paper or bleed through the pages?

But no! They’ve printed surprisingly well. :-) Maybe a bit lighter than you’d expect on a fine art print but they look pretty good and they don’t come through the thin paper either.

Here’s a photo of Cassie with her painting ‘The Boss’ in the book.

I’ve added some photos to flickr to show some of the pages in the notebook.

Or have a look or have a look at the notebook on blurb you can preview the book and even buy one.

The Bengal Notebook by Denise Laurent | Make Your Own Book

On Thursday 27 October, Cats Protection will be holding a Black Cat Awareness Day. They say….

It seems that black cats get over looked when people are choosing cats! How sad is that? Cats Protection say that around 20 per cent of cats in their care are black cats and, for whatever reason, often take longer to find new homes while their would-be adopters plump for torties, tabbies and gingers.

Cats Protection  will be running a social media campaign on that day, but need our help to make it a success. Follow them on Facebook and Twitter – to keep in touch with what they’re doing.

I certainly will, our most recent cat is a black cat and a rescue. The fabulous Harry. Huge, soppy and a great cuddle. I can highly recommend black cats! :-)

Harry is really becoming a muse! Here he is crammed into a box. What is it with cats and boxes? They certainly have a thing for them and it seems, the smaller the better. A good box should be a tight fit or it’s not comfortable.

Harry likes the boxes my printer paper comes in. Sadly my paper is still in it! But I thought I’d paint him rather than turf him out as he just looked so good. I loved the paw just peaking over the edge. :-)

This painting is available, just follow the link or email me if you’d like it. It is a 10×8 inch oil painting on board of Harry in his favourite squashed box!

Here’s a close up of the painting.

In this little painting I wanted to capture those gorgeous blue eyes as this pretty cat gazes out of the window.

Blue Eyed Girl
8×6 inch acrylic on board.
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Isn’t he gorgeous? This is Punapippuri, a beautiful ginger and white cat and, more importantly, Kitty King of Finland! I had the privilege of painting him recently.

Punapippuri
10×8 inch acrylic on board
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I fell for that expression, lying in the sun with his eyes half closed, paws tucked up. He looks so sweet. :-) And he has his own blog too. Take a look at Pikku Punapippuri and see what he and his subjects get up to.

What could be nicer than sitting in a sunny window enjoying the heat of the sun? This is Kali, a beautiful Siamese cat, looking inscrutable, basking in the warmth of the window.

This is a 6×6 inch oil on board.

This is Sally gorgeous ginger cat. What a yawn! I so loved painting her. Her coat is full of sunshine and she is such a character. Thank you Sally for volunteering her as a model! I do have a weakness for red cats.

This is a 10×8 inch oil painting on board.

I love the way Ming, my snow Bengal cat, sleeps with a paw over his nose. It’s a pose I love painting. Here he is fast asleep on blue cushions, paw in place. :-)

Snooze is a 10×8 inch oil painting on board.

A sunny day and Princess couldn’t resist a roll in the grass. She had a lot of fun rolling in the daisies and disturbing the butterflies. I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity of a great pose either!

She’s a cat with very yellow eyes and a pink nose so she looks like one of the flowers herself!

This is a 10×8 inch oil on board. I’ll be showing this one at the Untitled Artists show in June in Chelsea.