"Dewey"

8 x 10"

Oil on canvas (NFS)

A quick apology first of all to my blog subscribers. For some reason the subscription service I use decided to resend some old posts over the past couple of days. It seemed completely random, and I've no idea what triggered it, but it appears to have sorted itself now.

The gremlins also got to my contact form as well, which I suspect hasn't been working properly. If you've tried to get in touch please do so again, as there's a good chance I never received your message. I've replaced the form with my email address so you can use that to contact me instead from now on.

Ok, enough about the gremlins. Back to the painting...

I was asked recently if I ever painted cats. Well, the answer was no, I hadn't. I'd done pencil sketches but never any paintings, which is odd I suppose since I am a big cat lover and have had them as pets for many years. So, I decided to put that right with my next painting. This is Dewey, our 7-month old kitten and one of two cats who bring a lot of joy to our household (our other cat also bring us assorted dead prey from time to time...)

I enjoyed painting him a great deal. The fur was a challenge because it is so dark and I had to really look hard to find the highlights. I mixed varying amounts of magenta into the black paint to make the colour a bit more interesting and avoided the temptation to go too dark. I think it worked quite well.

I'll be working on some commissions next, so the blog might not get updated for a wee while, but I'm looking forward to posting up those paintings when they're done.