“Bad” Girls Painting: Portrait of Our Cats

This isn’t an art DIY lesson or anything like that. Mainly because I have no idea what I’m doing in regard to artwork and, therefore, don’t really have a whole lot to pass onto anyone teaching-wise. But, I enjoy looking at other people’s artwork and it often fires me up and makes me want to create my own stuff! Hopefully my artwork will have a similar inspirational/motivational effect on you. 🙂

Here are the materials I used (the following are all Amazon affiliate links so, if you buy the products using my links, I’ll get a small monetary kickback at no additional cost to you):

• Liquitex BASICS Acrylic Paint
• Elmer’s Washable Glitter Glue Pens
• Clear Rhinestone Stickers/Bling Gems
• Aurora Bright Green Glow in the Dark Acrylic Paint
• Stretched Cotton Canvas

The Inspiration:

These two kitty cuties were my inspiration:

Also, the song “Bad Girls” by Donna Summer. I was singing it to myself one time (“Toot toot! Beep beep! Ahhhhhh…”) and my husband, being unfamiliar with the song, thought that I’d made up a song about our cats. “Toot toot” being Tina because she has a tendency to get gassy and “Beep beep” being Flex since she makes beeping/chirping sounds instead of traditional meows. Hilarious! Hah!!

So, basically, our cats were lumping around being their adorable selves and I decided to paint them. There’s not really a whole lotta backstory to this one. 😀

The Process:

I started out by sketching Tina and Flex onto my canvas using a pencil. But, I had trouble seeing what I’d sketched so I went over it with a pen. It got smudgy but what’re you gonna do, y’know? I knew I was going to paint over the smudgy bits anyway so it was okay.

Then, I mixed pastel/light-colored versions of what I wanted the final colors to be and applied them as a base/primer. I knew I wanted the final painting to be fluorescent/dayglo but the obnoxiously bright paints tend to be a little thinner and I didn’t want to waste the paints or my time by applying coat after coat after coat to get them thick enough to actually see them. So, I mixed a little red paint into my white paint to make a light pink (that I applied the hot pink over) for Flex and a little light yellow for Tina and I painted the entire background a verrrrrry light blue (that I went over with the fluorescent blue).

Also, I exaggerated Flex’s eyes on purpose. She’s an absolutely gorgeous cat and has the capability to look super majestic — like a large/wild cat in a housecat’s body! However, she also gets very wall-eyed (think Pennywise from IT 2017) when she’s not focused on anything.

Although Flex’s eyes were focused on me/my camera in my reference photo, I thought it would be a more fun painting if I depicted her more relaxed look. (sorry, Flex!).

Once all the colors were on, I outlined the cats again using a fine paintbrush and some black paint.

Then, I dabbed some glow-in-the-dark paint to their eyeballs so that their eyes would still glow, even when the lights were completely out. Glow-in-the-dark paint is a lot of fun but it’s difficult to apply because it’s pretty much invisible until it’s charged up and you turn out the lights. So you’re kind of painting it on “blind.” Normally, to get around this, I use a blacklight while applying it so I can see where I’m putting it. However, for this particular painting (and my other fluorescent paintings!), I didn’t want to do that.

When you shine a blacklight onto fluorescent paint, it gets INTENSELY BRIGHT. Basically, imagine painting glowing green paint on top of a hot pink light bulb. Like… ow! Talk about a migraine trigger! Ugh. I’d rather have some of the glowy bits be a little outside-the-lines than deal with the headache painting it perfectly would’ve caused:

Last, I added on some glitter touches using Elmer’s washable glitter glue (tip: if you apply the glitter over black paint, it shows up better!). And then I glued rhinestones to their pupils for a little extra sparkle.

Final Painting:

Here’s how it turned out!

Have You Painted Your Pets?

Overall, I’m very pleased with how it turned out! It’s bright and sparkly and it has our cat daughters on it. And it was a lot of fun to paint!

Have you ever made an artistic tribute to any of your pets? How’d it turn out?? I’d love to see what you did! (Feel free to share a link to your artwork in the comments’ section! Though, um, please keep it “safe for work!”).

If you haven’t created anything to honor your furry (or scaly!) babies yet… what’re you waiting for?! ♥