Muralist Immortalizes Family Cat on Bedroom Wall and It's a Masterpiece
After I lost my darling dog to cancer, I treasured all the photos I had of her. A friend’s mother who had taken up painting offered to make a portrait of my beloved pup, and to this day it remains one of my prized possessions, earning a treasured place on my living room wall. Recently, I was helping my parents pack up their house for a move, and in a storage closet found a similar portrait of my childhood dog that a friend had once made them. I told my mom that if she didn’t have a space to hang it in the new place, I’d be more than happy to take it off her hands and create a Wall of Pets Gone By.
Still, I never imagined anything as elaborate or spectacular as the mural in this house.
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In this video, a muralist goes above and beyond when creating a portrait of the family cat on a client’s wall.
Related: Man Paints Most Touching Graffiti Wall to Honor His Beloved Late Cat
“Jude loves his cat so much he asked me to paint it on his bedroom,” says muralist Daniel Russell-Ahern, who posts his artwork on the social media account MrMurals. To portray the gray tabby, though, he wanted something more than the artist’s usual hyper realistic black and white line work.
And what he got was a gorgeous portrait of the kitty with a wash of rainbow colors swirling around the cat’s expressive, adorable striped face.
“I have only painted one work that was similar to this before, and it was a lion,” explains the muralist. But seeing this work might open up a whole new field for him of pet portraits.
How to Make a Mural
Obviously, when commissioning a painting of your pet (or even of yourself) it’s important to get the right reference photo. Gone are the days when subjects had to sit still for hours to get their portraits painted—a fact which is especially helpful when it comes to painting pictures of animals.
The muralist in this video was even able to project the cat’s picture on the wall and trace right over it with his spray paint, making the entire process that much easier.
Most muralists actually follow a similar methodology, using projections to make sure that their designs are perfectly transferred onto the larger space they are painting.
Picking the Right Portrait Reference Photo
When I got my dog’s portrait painted, the artist was very particular about the type of photo she wanted to see of my pup. She said the best pictures for her work would show the dogs face, from the front—and the more expressive the better.
You want a picture in good lighting, with clear details and no confusing angles that might mess the artist up. Most artists prefer candid shots, that capture a moment in time and definitely display the animals’ personality. Remember—especially with memorial portraits—that the artist is unlikely to have met the actual animal. All they have to go on is what they can see in the picture.
If your dog has a particular mannerism or quirk you want to memorialize, and you have a decent picture of it, this may be the perfect time to showcase it. Otherwise, try to get a good, clear, high-quality photo of the pet’s face, particularly their eyes. After all, eyes are the window of the soul.
The painting this muralist depicts clearly adheres to these standards, being a full-frontal view of the cat with his large, expressive eyes a focal point of the picture.
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