Three Cats Pet Portrait Demonstration Oil Painting

This pet portrait is a 5"x7" oil painting on panel.

In this demonstration, I'll talk a bit about how I use poses to show the cat's personalities.

The person who belongs to these three cats sent in many pictures so I had lots to choose from to do this portrait. You can see some of the pictures I am working with pasted up around the painting.
She likes blue and green, so I start with some of those colors in the background.

Dexter is an orange tabby. He has beautiful orange-gold eyes.

His big eyes always look like he's wondering "What's next? What's next?" So I chose a photo of him to use as reference that shows his wide-eyed look.

Next is Squirrley, a gray tabby. She is "prim, proper and feminine"  so I chose a more demure-looking pose for her.

Squirrley has lovely green-gray eyes and a black nose. She looks so different from Dexter even though they are from the same litter and both are tabbies.

Because of her dark coat, I've lightened the blue in the background so she will stand out better.

When the two tabbies are painted, I begin to work on Echo.

He is a beautiful Siamese cat with blue eyes. I could not see the eye color from the photos, so the pet portrait questionnaire really helped me out here.

Echo is the oldest, "strong-willed and elegant." I put him at the center since he has pride of place in his household. I like this pose for him which balances the composition.

Here are the three sweet kitties.  What do you think  - Do their personalities come through?

To see more of my pet portraits, visit ZehPetPortraits.com