Cat Breed Studies: Silver Tabby

A silver/grey tabby this time, I love their markings and golden eyes. More info on this feline breed series can be found in the previous post here. 

More cats:

Maine Coon

Russian Blue

Ginger Tabby

Silver Tabby

Siamese

Cat Breed Studies: Russian Blue

The first of more cats! With this series I have been aiming to improve on the more detailed kind of pet studies from the cat food packaging and the Urban Pup dog apparel illustrations.


I find drawing/exploring a few different breeds/types of an animal or subject is a good way to notice their distinct and unique forms; in the hope of noting differences like hair/fur textures and variations in body shapes and sizes will hopefully make the subject a little more accurate.

Hey, do you think this rather regal-looking Russian Blue bares a resemblance to the "Sheba" cat?

These "cat breed studies" are a little more detailed to how I usually illustrate (and seem to be in the league of almost realistic portraits) ..

I feel I definitely need to get back to my own looser and much livelier style of illustrating - I hope it will loosen me up again after all this detailed work!

More cats:

Maine Coon

Russian Blue

Ginger Tabby

Silver Tabby

Siamese

Urban Pup: Mock Advertisement illustrations

This is a follow-up from my last post about my personal, pretend "UrbanPup.com" advertisement illustrations. The reason for choosing such a modern, fresh brand was so I could set myself the challenge of creating something a bit more contemporary and bold than my usual style. With these I aimed to step out of my comfort zone a little and I really aimed to be more bold, brash and strong with the brush strokes and colour.

 

I experimented with creating mock advertisements such as the full-page ones seen in magazines. The "bold" brush strokes are a subtle nod to very urgently done graffiti tags, showing how creative you can get when you personalise your own pet hoody/t-shirt/accessory. I also included some real paw-prints which I scanned in and layered onto my paintings digitally.

(I used a different/new kind of paper for these, which has appeared to make the paint appear more smooth in some areas - something I am not happy with, as fur NEEDS texture!! However it has given me more to think about for future paintings)

These are still a bit of a work in progress, but this is what I have so far. 

Comments/opinions/feedback are very much welcome! I would love to hear your thoughts.

All images are (C) Amy Holliday and are not to be used without permission.

Pet Portraits - gerbil babies, budgies and fancy goldfish

These are some pet portrait commissions I have completed recently.

This little series was a commission for a5-sized paintings of three gerbil portraits and one budgie. I worked from photo references but the client had some requests for little extras which I added in too.

 The rainbow was an unexpected request, and it called for some practice and experimenting with various techniques before I painted the final piece.

This handsome boy's name is Merlin, so he needed a bit of extra magic! 

Another recent pet portait was of this playful chappy named Bartholomew (the best name for a fish I have ever heard)

Wild Scarlet Macaw Appeared!

The first to be completed in my series of macaws. I had a bit of a paper experiment with this one and actually printed the drawing onto better quality paper before painting it. Let me know what you think! More macaws to come soon!

Poodle Portraits!

My Mum suggested it might be a nice idea to surprise my Dad with a portrait of Rosie our miniature poodle,  as part of his 50th Birthday gifts. I'm not sure which one I'm going to give him yet, I think my Mum can choose since it was all her idea! When its decided, I'll frame it and wrap it up. I can't wait to surprise him!

 

The Goldfinches and the Lovebird

I was recently asked to contribute to a school's auction in the form of a commission (yay! my first proper commission!!)  to produce an illustration similar to my previous fish and budgie studies. To make sure the outcome would be similar, I decided to illustrate a lively and colourful bird.

I produced a number of goldfinch studies; the idea being the most successful would be the commissioned piece.

However after doing these, I was very unsure about their duller colours! And so I did one more, this time a lovebird, which i'd recently seen at the pet shop where I did my budgie studies.

In the end, I chose the lovebird to submit as the commissioned piece. As a form of self-promotion, I included a small plaque featuring information about me, as well as a stack of business cards for anyone at the auction who may be interested in my work. As this was my first attempt at a business card, I feel they could be improved upon in the future. I plan to re-do them and one change I will make is making my contact details larger!