If you’re a cat person, you know what it’s like to be wearing cat hair. So when I noticed a painting of a woman with literal cat hair, I knew I was in the right place! And, as the author says in her introduction, “Cats are the perfect example of how to live fully in the moment without caring how things will turn out.” Being a pre-novice (fancy talk for total noob) artist, that was reassuring. A few pages later, I was advised to ’embrace unpredictability’. I’ve been doing that my entire adult life, so this was reassuring. Maybe I could paint cats after all!

As I paged through the book, I noticed that Terry Runyan’s cats are very simple in shape, with expressions that seemed like something I could master. She’d bent and curved those simple shapes into poses every cat lover will instantly recognize. You know the one where they lift their back leg up in the air, and then forget it’s up there? She painted that. They way they roll over on their backs and let all four paws dangle limply over their bellies? She’s nailed it. And it’s all expressed in just a couple of strokes of a paintbrush.

As the book progresses, we not only learn about color, techniques, how to work with watercolors, and what supplies we should have, we’re reminded to stay in the moment, take risks, be playful, make blob cats! Chives, my own Russian Blue, just so happens to be a blob cat. I’ll be creating lots of little paintings of him as my journey progresses.

If you’ve ever thought about learning to paint but have felt intimidated and confused about where to begin, you would be doing yourself a favor by starting with Painting Cats.