Penny and Libra

Penny

oils and acrylics on board

8" x 8"

A friend of mine commissioned me to paint portraits of her mom's cats, the one above is Penny and the one below is Libra.  Penny got adopted after Libra passed away.  Their owner loves orchids and I tried to allude to that on the pattern in both sofas. 

Sofa: a cat staple, like tuna.

Libra

oils and acrylics on board

7.5" x  8"

I usually make these by painting the backgrounds first in acrylic over a mask of the animal and whatever else I have in the foreground that I want to paint in oils.  When making these this time, I put a lot of paint coats on the ground to get the images the way I wanted them to look.  I did so especially on Penny, since I had painted colors I did not like at first and decided to change them.  Because of the way I paint these, the backgrounds become flat but thick, and I really like the physical boundary that forms between animal and ground.  As flat as the backgrounds are, the boundary renders them tactile.  I tried to capture that with the following pictures.