A New Painting - the Egyptian Cat (oils on board)

I have always loved cats (I actually have a cat website http://www.cat-breeds-info.com), and decided to paint one. And of course the thought came up how to combine a cat with Egypt. Well, the first thing that came to my mind was the Gayer-Anderson cat - perhaps the most famous Egyptian cat statue, which is a permanent favorite of people visiting the British Museum.

Then I began to wonder what a live cat would look next to the statue, and decided to paint this. I have Abys myself, but this is not my own cat. Oleg Alexeev of the Abysphere cattery in Russia kindly gave me reference photos of this beautiful cat (Abysphere Runet Blogger). I did a drawing using three of his photos.

Here is the working sketch.

And then the first stage. I am inventing painting methods again as I go along... Trying to figure out how to make the Aby's agouti / ticking look reasonably "true". Each hair of the Aby has four bands of color - the lightest nearest the skin, then a darker band, then a lighter one, and the darkest is at the tip. The effect is like that of a brown hare. Could not find any artist advice about this, so I spent days thinking about how to do this, and today started according to plan. The effect is not ready yet, but here is the start.

This is an amazing stone statue, over 4500 years old... Do you not wonder the skills of the ancient artist... This is my attempt to do justice to this amazing piece. Scratchboard work on Ampersand board. I cannot begin to count those lines and nicks I made with a razor-sharp scalpel to do this artwork...


This work will be exhibited (and is for sale) at the Villa Royal "Egyptian Treasures" exhibition in Finland, opening at 18th February this year.

Tutankhamon's Throne finished

And here it is - finally finished. Tutankhamon's Throne - 70 x 70 cm oil painting on Ampersand Board. This took me 350 hours to finish.

So many people helped me finish this piece - I wish to mention late Bob Partridge of the Ancient Egypt Magazine as one. He kindly gave me permission to use his photo as reference, and I was able to make the detailed drawing for this painting based on his photo.

Another source deserving thanks is the Werner Forman Archives. I was able to finish the finer details of this painting using their photo, which they kindly gave me permission to use.

This painting is for sale at the Villa Royal's "Ancient Egypt" exhibition in Sastamala, Finland, from 18th February onwards.

Tut's Throne - Pectoral above the table

I thought I could paint the pectoral in a day but it took two days. The ancient Egyptian showed the contents of a box or what was on a table by putting the object in question in the "air" above the furniture.

Tutankhamon's Throne - Tut's Sash

Today I spent a few hours on Tutankhamon's sash.

 And a little detail

Tut's Throne - collars

And here I have finished the collars of the royal couple...An amazing amount of details to be sure.
Next I shall work on Tut's belt, I think. That will take a full day of work at least.

Tut's Throne continued

Here I have painted both Tutankhamon's and Ankhesenamun's headdresses, wigs and face, and today I painted the king's body. That is one bright color and it sure took a while to get the right hue mixed...