I spotted this beautiful cat as I was taking photos of a local gift shop that has a fantastic country garden around it. It's a favorite place for me to shop for gifts, and the garden is beautiful. The cat is one of two that lives there, often inside the shop sleeping by the wood stove. This day it was stalking the garden and me, for some petting. I was happy to do so and was rewarded with some great photos for reference for this painting. This was digitally painted using and electronic drawing tablet, a Wacom w/wireless stylus pen. I used Corel's Painter X software, my favorite art software to paint it. I did not manipulate a photo or use an auto convert a photo to an artistic effect result. I enjoy painting works 99% of the time stroke by stroke, even if it's using a computer art program. I still have to chose the subjects, brushes, sizes textures, colors, medium to mimic, blend, highlight, as I would traditionally. The program does allow me to save as a photo file so I can print them out. It gives me fine art prints of museum quality. I enlarge and constantly scroll the image as I finish it so not to have any pixalation, speckling that you can get with digital images. It's a key to consistent quality for my works. I try to blend any out that may appear in paintings. I often as this work, use multiple mediums and blenders to get the results I have, sometimes appearing extremely realistic as a photo. If you look at the close up image you can see the brush strokes I do, and it's not a photo. The screen image is such a smaller version of the real work, that you can't really see the brush work on it without a close up view. Some of my manipulation works are smooth, but done with different techniques & often a combination of programs. Some are digital paintings combined with photos & effects. I try to always remember to state how I did a work so that you can understand more about my methods. Digital art has various areas of study from 3 D effects to all rendering, to manipulations, designs, fractals, digital photo editing effects, painting, animation, and more, as well as mixes of it all. Something new is always coming out, and it's a fun subject to study. I do pet portraits, and memorial paintings and do take commissions. Prices vary on what is wanted, size, and print materials, paper to art canvas, or material.