My Cats - Paintings, Photography and Drawings by Flynn the Cat

Mowgli, the black and white cat in the painting, was my Gran's cat. he died a year before I painted this. The cat was referenced from one of my photos, which I'd luckily taken the last time I visited (as he died very shortly after). The sunrise and scenery are meant to be the Devon coast - somewhere imaginary and happy. With gulls.

I showed my sister the 'mutual thing' series by =Apofiss

This one has grown on me - I had a LOT of trouble painting the cat and the fish, at the time. And I was experimenting in ArtRage a lot. But now I like it - in part because of the green and glowing face pointed out to me by Himmapaan (the illustrator of The Night Before Christmas )

This took six hours. It was originally meant to be a realsitic painting of my sister (because she insisted on one) but I had a lot of trouble getting her face right. In the end I decided I wanted to upload something, after all that work, and recropped the canvas, and changed the scene to a girl curled up outdoors, among the golden prairie grasses... with a little grey cat curled up on the blanket.

I originally was trying to paint a Mug design for a coworker who leaving - I needed something nice, and sweet. Cute, preferably. I ended up with this. The reference for the cat was Megan, our little Egyptian Mau - I had a (rather bad) photograph of her winding around a table leg. Anyway, I realised halfway through painting Yin Yang that it wasn't appropriate anymore - but I was having too much fun to stop!

Yinyang Art poster by Flynn_the_Cat
Browse Yin Posters

I liked the symbolism of the fish and the cat in balance - water and darkness, land and light. Predator and prey, scales and fur. I added the background colouring - water and bubbles in the dark, and the fire, to enhance that. And the fish and the cat are meant to be the 'spots' in the Yin Yang symbol - the light in the dark, and the dark...ish, in the light. (I did try and make the cat darker, but decided I liked the white sun-tiger look). It was quite a tricky painting, as I had to be very careful about going over the lines - I know now how I could have used ArtRage better (by adding and creating stencils, for example). And at the end, I added the shining reflections, to try and create a bubble effect.

After I'd finished, I wanted to see it in black and white, but just turning it to grayscale didn't work so well. So then I spent another hour carefully repainting it to create the black and white design.

And to my great delight, the very latest upload on Lolcats, when I went to add this painting to DeviantART, was THIS

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

And to my even greater delight, the black and white design won me a Today's Best and Top Ten Bags views on Zazzle! (I only uploaded the coloured version months later, as my internet crashed and burned).

Yinyang Canvas Tote Bag by Flynn_the_Cat
Create a canvas tote bag at zazzle.com

One black cat, sitting watching the sunset, silhouetted against it's golden light. Reflections dance off the stream as it flows quietly past the autumn-bronzed trees, standing strong in the empty landscape.

This was painted while travelling around Europe and the UK. It was the first time I'd been able to use ArtRage in weeks, and I'd been visiting all these amazing art museums in Paris and Munich - including getting to see the Kandinsky and Der Blaue Reiter exhibitions. Specifically, in this case, Franz Marc, with his animals and colour. So I sat down and painted this for three hours. For me, my place inside, is a cat and the sun setting and warmth and the wild, and the moors with the wind and the openness and the wandering and the streams and the trees that only grow in the sheltered hollows...No references. Except maybe a bit of Dartmoor in the stream.
A little bit of Franz Marcism and impressionism here; more the memory of those lovely bleak and sweeping landscapes.

Cat in Autumn - Autumneve by Flynn_the_Cat

Autumneve is one of two paintings - the opposite, and partner, is Wintermorn (Blue Dawn).

This was original painted as part of a request image for Guenhwyvar-Drizzt,

I used them as practice in trying to painting a realistic porttrait and then added the panther behind, for the 'Guenhwyvar' part of their username (Guenhwyvar is a magical black panther summoned by Drizzt Do'Urden, the drow in R.A. Salvatore's novels) (Guenhwyvar is an old verison of the name Guinevere)

Original painting was 3 hours; panther was an hour and half an hour fiddling to add the stars and the tear to the skies where the head was.

This is one my longest picutres, to paint. I worked on it over weeks, but I don't know how long in total. This was painted for the 2009 Youthline Art Competition. This is a New Zealand contest that takes entries from all over the country, and I've taken 3rd place in for the two years before that (although the first year hardly counts, as there were maybe four people in my age category. And my art was so terrible I refuse to show it to anyone. It was a week after I first bought my tablet).

The theme for this year was 'identity'. So, I decided to have fun, and painted all the clutter and colour, threw in the unfinished pictures, added some messy writing, and a painting that was painting herself. (It's female, because that's the association I ahve with artist muses). ArtRage is a major part of my artistic identity, now, so of course I had to use it. I scribbled a bit of old English in the canvas corner, my current essay topic for my postgraduate class (Freezing in Antarctic fish), and a note to feed the cat.

And the cat theme...? Well, apart from the note, there's the messy pawprints :D I had to put a cat in there somewhere!

This was a birthday painting for Bria Silivren. It is... meant to be her sewing room, and this costume:
- the concept costume for the latest Disney version of Rapunzel,

It didn't work too well, because it was ambitious, required more than two hours (which I could not spare, as I have an assignment due) and because once the the creativity is gone, I have no patience with tidying up the details, and because I'm in a general art-low, right now (the last painting was for last week's birthday)

Pile of pink at the front is the skirt
The metal stand is the Dress form
Gold and white and pink threads all over.
Silver beads because I want to
A bolt of cloth.
The yellow stuff is the wig


For some reason she get's quite unreasonable about having a cat near her sewing room. So...

Add one kitten.
Let it stir.
Watch and laugh.

Cat and Mouse White by Flynn_the_Cat
More Cat Cards




Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?
I've been to London to see the Queen.
Pussycat, pussycat, what did you there?
I frightened a little mouse under her chair

Looks lovely against pastel backgrounds - any of the greens, yellows, blues and greys, especially.


For more fine art and photography, visit the RedBubble and DeviantART galleries.
Painted in ArtRage
All "Cat and Mouse" products

Serval (Leptailurus serval)
Did this on my field trip - being a biological science campus the place had a lot of National Geographic magazines, and I used this beautiful photograph as a reference.

Drawn in a Moleskine, across two pages (and now I'm paranoid and have to keep a bit of paper in between which is why I don't normally draw on both sides).

Didn't finish all the spots because they were really boring >.> Just pencils. Also LOVE LOVE LOVE having my artist putty rubber stuff again.

Time was... dunno. An hour? Three hours? I was away a week and would do this in spare, bored, moments...

I've decided that I'm going to try creating some Zazzle designs from some of my nicer Moleskine sketches - the Serval Sketch ones are here. This sketch can be also be found on DeviantART .

You can see more sketches on my Scrapbook Sketches lens.

This was a combination birthday card painting and experiment, after reading about Japanese 'kitten cafes'. Where they give you a kitten. To play with. In the cafe. The front cat is referenced, the other two are artistically stylised (means "I drew what looked interesting")

I liked the cat on the drinking straw, so I'm playing around with a design out of that (I suddenly really want a t-shirt of this. And I need to spend my Squidoo earnings on something!)