Quernus Crafts: Timmie, Oscar and Hamish (b.3 February 2010)

That lovely lady from Harrogate, Carey, also wanted to have a reminder of her much-loved cats. Here we have Wee Timmie Tiptoes, Wee Oscar (who is sadly no longer with us) and Wee Hamish McTavish.

Working from photographs, Wee Oscar was the easiest to make as he was a black cat with no markings. He was a little bigger than Hamish McTavish, but a little smaller than Timmie Tiptoes, so it was important to get the relative sizes right.

Wee Hamish was a little more involved as I had to mix up just the right colours of clay. Although he is ostensibly grey/blue, if you look closely, there is also a suggestion of brown in there. I started with the blue/grey mixture, which I made by mixing black and white with a hint of blue, and then made a separate mixture of copper with brown and beige. By mixing these two batches together, I arrived at a subtle blend of slate grey/blue with hints of brown (you can just about make it out in the last photo). His chops and paws are a little paler than his body.

Timmie Tiptoes is a luxurious ginger cat with a beautiful white tummy. I mixed up a number of colours to achieve the ginger stripes (suprisingly, there is no orange in this ginger cat), and then rolled out a very thin sheet of white clay for the belly fur. I cut out a rough triangular shape and then carefully blended this to Wee Timmie's body, smoothing out the edges to make them blend more with the body fur. I love this picture of him stretching out in the sun!

Thanks again to Carey for the chance to get to know these beautiful cats!