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
SOLD

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.

Well the excitement of black cat awareness day is over and there were some amazing photos posted on cats protections facebook page! It really has inspired me to look for some more black cat models and do some more paintings.

Cats protection selected a gallery of their favourite photos, you can see them here. And I chose one of those 10 pictures to win the prize painting, Molly by Stephanie Stanesby.

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.

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.

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
SOLD

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.

I’ve been working on this painting of a black panther for quite some time. I went to the Santago Leopard project a while ago and saw this incredibly beautiful black leopard there. I was stunned by the sheer physicality of him! So much more muscular than the other big cats who looked like slender super models . He looked more like a bear! I started off with an idea for the cat to be looking up at a peacock, as both are from India. But it just didn’t look right. So I left the painting for a while and came back to it again recently.

Black Panther
16×12 oil on board

When I looked at it again I realised that the bird had no emotional content. The only thing that had any power was the panther! All along I had been unconsciously exploring my feeling of his size and presence in the painting and the poor bird had become irrelevant. So I cut the painting down to just the panther looking up into the trees and suddenly the painting sprang into life!

It just goes to show that sometimes you think you’re painting one thing, when really you’re painting something else entirely!

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.

What could be nicer than lying in an hammock on top of a radiator? If you’re a cat that’s just about perfect. Heat and comfort, a cats favourite things! All he has to do is defend it from interested parties!

This Siamese cat is Sounion and he’s king of the radiator. This painting is a 10×8 oil on board. Doesn’t he have beautiful eyes?

This painting is going to the Untitled Artists Show at the beginning of June in Chelsea Town Hall. If you want to come along email me and I’ll send you tickets.

I couldn’t resist the challenge of painting this pretty little tabby cat sitting on a hot pink sofa with the light shining in her fur. This is the smallest painting I’ve done, it’s only 5×5 inches and painted in oils.

She was quite a challenge but it was fun to see if I could do it at such a small size!