Painting a Steampunk Tabby Cat

I had a bit of time to kill on Tuesday morning while waiting for the chimney sweep to come round so I thought I'd start a couple of new Steampunk inspired animals in hats acrylic paintings!

Its been a while since I did a new cat in hat painting so I thought I'd try a tabby cat in a leather flying hat and goggles, I've done a black and white cat and also a tiger in a flying hat and these have proved to be very popular!

Flying Kitty Greeting Card

Flying Tiger Greeting Card

I decided to take a few photos of my step by step painting so you can see behind the scenes of how I paint!

Here is the very start, I manipulate the image in Photoshop and have added a hat to the tabby cat (I don't really force any animals to wear hats, its all done digitally!) Here's my canvas at the very beginning - I hate working on a white canvas/paper so always paint the canvas first. For my cats I find red seems to work the best as a background colour.

I also always start with the eyes as I think if the eyes don't look right the painting will never work.

I try to cover as much of the canvas as I can working on every part blocking in the basic colours. 

I am gradually building up layers and refining areas. Again I like to get the eyes to be very clear and often exaggerate them slightly to make the face look cuter!

He is starting to come together. You can see the cat is a lot more refined than the hat at the moment. The hats and goggles are usually the last things I work on. Also you can spot my palette is an icecream tub lid, it keeps the paint wet for a bit longer and doesn't need cleaning off when I have finished!

Just about finished! I've added touches of gold paint to the goggles and a bit more detail all over. I love painting goggles and adding all the reflections in the metal!

Flying Tabby Acrylic Painting

Here he is all finished and ready to go off on a new adventure!

Clare xx