Feel like painting something truly messy and scruffy today? Here is my Ronald Searle inspired cat painting tutorial to help you explore the real essence of cat with watercolor, ink and dip pen!

Today’s painting emerged from a week of exploring cats and their characters with paint, pencil, pen and paper. Come along and see what you can do to create your own Scruffy Cats!

For this painting the paper requirements are very flexible. Any paper will work, and I used a piece of Bockingford 140lb cold press paper, about 7 x 9 inches in size. I would also recommend papers such as Strathmore, Baohong, Etchr, Bee and Etival for beginners and in fact for anyone who paints a lot of small works.

If you wanted to make this design into a greetings card, use a piece of paper that you can fold in half to the size you want. I think it would be a lovely couples card, don’t you?

Choosing your colors

For this kind of painting you can select whatever color appeals to you most on any particular day! There is no right or wrong in painting whimsy, as it is just a reflection of your imagination and has little to do with reality.

I used paints from A Gallo for this painting and I chose shades of brown and pink, plus I used Naples Yellow for one of the cat’s bodies.

Watch the video on YouTube here:

My Materials

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