Bad Attitude - Big Cat Painting by Diane Irvine Armitage

Despite a power outage and battening down the hatches for a big rainstorm coming our way, I still managed to finish the latest BIG black cat painting.  This black cat has an attitude!  This is the biggest yet at 24 x 48 inches.  Original oil painting on canvas.

You can see this painting and all my other cat paintings on my Pinterest Gallery Page HERE.

New HUGE Black Cat Painting by Diane Irvine Armitage

Today I started work on a very large new black cat painting.  This one is 24 x 48 inches.  I am about halfway finished and will continue working on it tomorrow.  Keeping it loose and sketchy, even the eyes.

 Stay tuned for more ...

Large Black Cat Painting Closeup with Whiskers by Diane Irvine Armitage

Today I painted a big version of the Whiskers painting I did awhile back.  Originally I painted this 6 x 6 inches.  Today's large version is 30 x 30 inches.

You can find this painting and all my other cat paintings on my Pinterest Gallery page HERE.

Large Size Black Cat Original Oil Painting by Diane Irvine Armitage

I'm working on a project for October - several very large paintings of black cats for a show at a friend's store in Laguna Beach.  I figure I have until the end of March to get them all painted and then I should be able to have them varnished before the beginning of October.  So here is another large black cat painting.  This one is 18 x 24 and I love the shifty look in this cat's eyes.  Same cat as the last post.  I will be doing smaller studies for these large paintings and then painting the larger paintings from the studies.  I'm happy with how loose and sketchy this turned out.

You can see all of my cat paintings on my Pinterest Gallery page HERE.

Sketchy Loose Black Cat Original Oil Painting by Diane Irvine Armitage

Another loose, sketchy cat painting.  I painted this from a photo found on Petfinder of a shelter cat.  The photo was pretty vague and I figured that could either work good for me being as there is less detail to noodle with, or could really mess up my day.  Luckily it worked in my favor - sort of like squinting down to see the basic shapes, well this photo only had basic shapes.

I will be posting this painting to my ebay auctions HERE.  And you can find this painting and all of my other cat paintings on Pinterest HERE.

BIG Black Cat Oil Painting - Big Tish by Diane Irvine Armitage

I finally got some time to work on the BIG version of my Tish painting.  I painted this on an 18 x 36 inch canvas that my nephew gave me (thanks Mark!).  I thought it might take a few days to paint, but it only took a half a day.  I'm really pleased with this one and want to continue painting large paintings of cats.  Check out the previous post to see the 11 x 14 study for this painting.

Here are a couple of shots to show the scale of this painting.

You can find this painting on my Daily Paintworks Gallery Page HERE.

Cat Oil Painting - Tish by Diane Irvine Armitage

I really enjoyed working on today's painting.  This was painted from a picture I took of my little Tishy one day when she was curious about a display I was photographing and had to get in the middle of the shot.  I like how her eyes are very close to the background color which is the color of my back bedroom where I took the picture.  The golden eyes and background are wonderful with the overall black of the Morticia : : - )

I have been very inspired lately by several really great artists.  I am a big fan of Daniel Gerhartz's work and I bought several of his painting DVDs, which are excellent.  I highly recommend them!  I found a DVD of him and another artist painting a portrait at the same time and through that video I discovered Scott Burdick, whose work I really admire as well.  And through Scott Burdick, I discovered his wife, Susan Lyon.  I purchased her book and it is a really good book because she shows a lot of closeups of her brushwork which is to die for - very sketchy and wonderful.  Today I watched one of Susan's videos on Painting Dolls so I could see how she goes about getting that lovely loose, sketchy quality to her work.   Her video is excellent!

With today's painting of Tishy, I really loosened up and went for the sketchy approach, using some of Susan Lyon's suggestions in her video.  Especially about how to hold the brush.  It really made a big difference in my work.  Original oil painting on archival gessoboard, 11 by 14 inches.  I'm going to paint this same pose of Tish REALLY BIG.  That is this weekend's project.

You can find this painting on my Daily Paintworks Gallery Page HERE.