Cat in a Hat Painting

How to turn a photo of my cat Morpheus into a finished painting! 

Its been a while since I've done a cat in hat acrylic painting so heres a little step by step behind the scenes on how I create my paintings.

After a bit of photo manipulating in Photoshop I was ready to start! I hate working on a white canvas so always paint over the white first, for my cats in hats paintings red is usually my favourite colour to use for the background as it is a good contrast for the black cat. You can just see a very rough sketch on the canvas.

 The first layer of paint. I usually start with the white and then work my way over the rest of the painting blocking in all the basic colours and covering the canvas.

A few more layers and some details are starting to emerge,

A bit more white added to the fur and to give it a bit of texture. I never worry about brush marks as I like to see them in the finished painting. Also a bit more detail in the goggles and top hat. The top hat is painted prussian blue to stand out from the black of the cat and also as I love using prussian blue!

Again more details.

Almost finished. A few highlights picked out and of course the whiskers!

My very gunky takeaway paint tray palette which keeps my paint wet and my lovely new paintbrushes which I got for Christmas!

Topper Kitty

The finished acrylic painting!

A Few Other Cats in Hats Paintings!

Clare xx