Turn your cat into a painting

How your cat becomes a painting

Your photo is shrunk on your phone or computer, then sent to an AI image model with a short brief: keep this cat’s coat, markings, eye colour and face, and paint it in the style you picked. The model looks at your photo as a reference rather than tracing it, so the pose changes to suit the scene but the cat should still look like yours.

There are four styles: a pastel portrait of your cat gazing upwards on a plain background in the colour you pick, a grainy retro print with a pyramid of pop-art tins, a four-panel pop-art print of its face and cat life, where your cat gets a random everyday scene like a spa night or a spaghetti dinner. All four are deliberately simple. Bold shapes and a small set of colours suit cats well: a tabby’s stripes become a few confident bands, a tuxedo cat’s bib becomes a clean white shape, and odd markings like a white sock or a ginger patch tend to survive. Fine detail does not, so a cat whose look depends on subtle shading may come out more generic. If the first painting misses, try a different photo rather than the same one again; a clear, front-on picture in daylight makes the most difference.

Paint by numbers from any painting

The paint by numbers maker runs on your device. It reduces the painting to 8, 12 or 16 colours, merges specks too small to paint and numbers each remaining area with its colour. Fewer colours give larger areas that suit children and beginners; 16 keeps more of the character for patient painters. Print the sheet on A4, mix the colours in the key or match them to a set of acrylics, and paint the numbers.

A new painting every day

Every morning a new cat painting goes up: a different cat, either a pastel portrait in a new colour or a cat life scene, with the tin can print every few days. Each one can be downloaded or turned into a paint by numbers sheet, so there is always something new to paint.