54mm Black cat and violinist diorama mock up

Black cat

The cat of my violinist diorama was up this week.  He is going to be a black cat with white paws and white area on the chest.  I wanted to be very careful with the highlighting so that the black didn’t end up at ugly grey.  I base coated in a mixture of black and VMC Black/Brown.  This way I could shade down the true black.  I used both AP Black (which was a very “black” black) and VMA Black which had a more purple tone to it.  So the first shade was VMA Black, followed by AP Black.

meow

For the highlights I used VMC Leather Brown and VMA Armour Brown initially.  Again these browns had a measure of purple in them.  These highlights were then followed up by adding in some grey highlights created by adding in a small measure of white.  I applied many more layers of the highlight around the face area to pull the face up.  For the eyes I went for yellow (first base coating the eyes in tan brown as yellow over black results in green) with a black pupil.

Now that the three animals are done I’m starting to work on the fence.  Hopefully pictures next week.

Violinist diorama

I also did a full mock up of the diorama to push around where the animals would be sitting.  Originally I was going to put the cat on the fountain but now I’m thinking of putting it behind the two pots.  Note the wood piece under the cat is there just while it is being painted so it’s easier to hold onto.

Finally I’ve started gluing the brick wall onto the wooden support.  After a few days to let the glue fully set I’ll chop it down to size and sand it into shape.  I’m seeing a lot of hand painting bricks up ahead.