But Who Will Bell The Cats?

About This Blog

In addition to having written this story, I was also the painter, sculptor, interior decorator, mason, gardener, and plumber of the sets. The rooms were built by hand from wood. The stone walls were formed from plaster. The floors are handmade from inlaid wood, mother-of-pearl, and plaster. The characters were painted in oils on gessoed paper, then cut out and placed in the sets. I photographed the scenes with a Nikon D300.

The book will be out in September 7, 2009, and the official www.butwhowillbellthecats.com website can be viewed by clicking ENTER in the right-hand margin. This working blog gives you a glimpse into the process of how I created the sets and characters. I made this blog for my editor and designer so they could view my progress, but now I have opened it up for all to see. Enjoy! - Cynthia von Buhler

Click on the images to view them larger. This is the surprise cover underneath the paper dust jacket.
Finally, the solution to Aesop’s age-old question:
Who will bell the cats?

Mouse and his friend, Brown Bat, are determined to get out of the basement and into the banquet hall to join the fun and frolicking there. But escape won’t be easy with the cats blocking their efforts . . .

It will take many attempts and a surprising solution for Mouse and Bat to succeed.

Cynthia von Buhler’s enchanted upstairs/downstairs world shows readers the rewards of determination, bravery, and creativity—and reminds them of the uncomplicated power of kindness.

View the rooms by clicking the links below:

The Castle Exterior
The Basement
The Powder Room
The Library
The Ballroom
The Dining Room
The Bedroom
The Kitchen
The Aesop Room
The Characters

The Castle Exterior

Below is the image that was the runner-up for the cover (it came in second place in my online poll). The water is Saran Wrap laid on top of dark blue paper. I made the grass and trees out of real moss. The mouse oar is a popsicle stick from a Fudgecicle that I ate -- yum! The sky was hand-painted with gouache on canvas. Once again, both of the candles and flames are real. The door knockers are drawer pulls. Thanks to my father, the drawbridge really works!

Click on the images to enlarge them.
Here's the final version of the image. I preferred this lilac-colored version of the castle. I put sheets of colored gels over the lights while photographing to tint the overall images. We used this page inside the book instead of on the cover.

Test Shot 2. This shot wasn't used in the book. We felt that it was to busy.

Detail.

The enormous gouache sky painting that was used for my last book was also used as the sky for this book.

Rough collage sketch:

Sketch.

Here I am painting the plaster.

This is what the wood frame looked like after I covered it in Plaster of Paris.

I added plaster by hand. I wore a mask because the plaster dust isn't healthy to breathe. Like my Pac Man shirt?

This is what my father gave me to work with. The drawbridge works.

This is the wood frame before my father cut the windows out.

Bodiam Castle, The Castle That Inspired Me
Stunning, isn't it?

I adore castles. I own a castle-esque house on Staten Island, in New York City. It also inspired me, but there are no mice that live there. All of the mice live with me at my house in Connecticut where my studio is. Fort Hill Castle on Staten Island:

Inspiration. This is cell phone picture of one of the many mice that my cats caught. I rescued it, gave it a hunk of cheese, and placed him outside.

The Castle Courtyard
This is the final version of the full title and dedication page. I made the stone floor with Plaster of Paris. I troweled it on, and as it dried I carved the stone shapes. Afterwards, I painted it with gouache. I enclosed the stone floor with real, little pebbles. The water in the fountain is saran wrap. It looks real, doesn't it? The flowers are silk, but the grass and trees are real moss from my garden. The candles in the chandeliers are real. The peacocks are made from real peacock feathers. Inside, you can see the ballroom floor. The gold-leaf chairs were given to me by my neighbors, Charlotte and Ulrik Poulsen. Ulrich brought the chairs from China, and generously gave them to me for my sets. They were dark wood and I painted them gold. I bought the chandeliers on eBay. Can you find the bird's nest and eggs? How about the red cardinal? Remember to click on the images to enlarge them.

Click on the images to enlarge them.Test Shot 2.

Test Shot 1.

This is what the wood frame my father built for the castle garden looked like when he gave it to me.

Sketch. This was the rough computer sketch I gave my father so he could make the wood frame.

Details:

View the rooms by clicking the links below:

The Castle Exterior
The Basement
The Powder Room
The Library
The Ballroom
The Dining Room
The Bedroom
The Kitchen
The Aesop Room
The Characters

The Basement

The Book Cover & Jacket

Here's the final version of the cover image. In it, the mouse is reading a scrap from the original Aesop story upon which my book is based. You can find the full Aesop story inside my book. This is a book within a book. The mouse's candle is real.

Click on the images to enlarge them.
This was my rough collage sketch. It looks blurry because it was created by taking various pages and piecing them together.

I had a brainstorm in the middle of the night. I decided that, with a mouse hole, I could show a cat AND the mouse. So this image became the half-title page inside the book instead of the cover. (Thanks to all of you who voted in this blog cover poll. I hope that you like the new, slightly different cover with the mouse hole.)

This is the final back cover. I bought some of the stamps on eBay, and the others were given to me by the French members of my family.

Mouse scratched a few Aesop quotations on his basement wall that were pertinent to his plight:

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
Slow but steady wins the race.
Persuasion is often more effectual than force.

This is the complete cover design with the front and back flaps. The magenta lines are crop and fold marks for printing and won't show up on the actual book.

This is a visual surprise, with all the cats printed across the front and back of the hardcover. This image is underneath the dust jacket with the mouse-hole wall printed on it, and it's what you would see if you removed the dust jacket. They are all together because cats usually hunt in groups. This is to emphasize the inside/outside and upstairs/downstairs aspect of the book. These cats were painted individually and cut out, but I made them much larger than the cutout characters inside the book.

Mouse Taking A Shower
Click on the images to enlarge them.
I wanted this scene to look cold so it would provide contrast to the warm, cozy feeling of The Powder Room which appears above it on the page. I added some snow and a couple of icicles. The water is saran wrap. The snow is glitter. The icicles are a clear glue. This scene takes place in the Winter. Brrrrrr!

Sketch.

Test Shot 3. Small version:

Test Shot 3. Larger scroll around version:

Test Shot 2. Even older mouse shower photo.

Test Shot 1. The original mouse (much less cute), about to take a shower.

Mouse Reading
Click on the images to enlarge them.
Mouse is reading scraps from the French newspaper Le Monde. Le Monde means "The World" in French. This scene takes place in the Fall, so I added colored leaves on the floor and steps.

Rough collage sketch:

Library layout without the floorboards showing between the floors. See The Library for more information about this room.

Mouse Eating Crumbs Scene
Click on the images to enlarge them.
Mouse is waiting for crumbs to fall through the floor cracks. Poor Mouse! The items on his wall are real French stamps, pictures, and fruit-crate labels. The donkey on the circular paper is a French optical toy. If you pull the strings taut, the paper spins and you see the optical illusion of a person sitting on the donkey's back. His table is a spool of thread. As before, the real candle is lit with a real flame.

Test Shot 1.

Sketch.

Mouse Armor Scene
Click on the images to enlarge them.
Here's the final image:

Rough collage sketch:

Adieu Scene
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In the final image, I made Bat brighter, added a flower behind her ear, and made the princess clearer.

Test Shot 3.

Test Shot 2.

Test Shot 1. The princes is too blurry.

Heading Upstairs Scene
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Mouse and Brown Bat go upstairs to give a fashion show. I added a bit of shadow to make it look more 3-D. I also added a bit more blue to the walls. The bells are real.

Test Shot.

Rough collage sketch.

Revelation Scene
Click on the images to enlarge them.
Here's the final image:

Smelly Sock Scene
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Here are the mouse and bat in the smelly sock scene. Mouse is sleeping in a matchbox. His blanket is a old, ripped, smelly sock. He has a clothespin on his nose.

Test Shot 2

Test shot 1. This shows the sock before I made it "smelly."

Rough collage sketch:

Mouse Bedroom Scene
Click on the images to enlarge them.
In the final image, I added a clothespin to the Mouse's nose; it brings more attention to the smelly sock.

Test Shot 4. I think that the light coming through the floorboards really works well. This isn't the final crop. For this shot, I decided to blur the background and focus on the mouse.

Test Shot 3. The matchbox is now French! I also bought a child's sock and mucked it up for his smelly blanket. It still needs more muck.

Test Shot 2.

Test Shot 1. This isn't the final sock. I'm making a nice ripped, dirty, smelly-looking one. Also, I'm putting a french label on the matchbox.

Rough collage sketch:

Dog Costume Scene
Click on the images to enlarge them.
Here's the final image:

Rough collage sketch:

Fashion Show Idea Scene
Click on the images to enlarge them.
Here's the final image:

Mouse Collecting Gems Scene
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Here's the final image. The bowl he is using to collect the gems is half of a walnut shell. This will be beneath the ballroom scene. For more on the ballroom, go to "The Ballroom" page.

Deleted Page
This was going to be the title page, but we changed our minds.:

Mouse Basement After I Added Plaster Walls
Click on the images to enlarge them.
I mixed up dry Plaster of Paris and then, using a trowel, I smoothed it onto the wall like frosting. As it dried I scratched lines into it with an Xacto blade. When it dried, I painted it with gouache, dabbing up some paint with a paper towel to give it a mottled look. The pipes are from a hardware store. I painted them with a special "rusting" paint. I shot light down through the floorboards to get the wonderful "natural" lighting.

Mouse Basement As Built By My Father
Click on the images to enlarge them.
Here's the Mouse Basement wood frame. I gave my father sketches of how I wanted the wooden frames for the rooms to look. This is what the wood frame looked like before I got my hands on it. I asked my father to build it with slats in the ceiling so I could use light to get that light-creeping-through-the-cracks effect.

Details
Mouse's work table and tools.

The wine labels, food labels, etc., are the posters on Mouse's wall.

The Matchbox Bed.

View the rooms by clicking the links below:

The Castle Exterior
The Basement
The Powder Room
The Library
The Ballroom
The Dining Room
The Bedroom
The Kitchen
The Aesop Room
The Characters

The Powder Room

Here is the final image of the powder room with the mouse shower scene below it. I was influenced by the bathroom of Colleen Moore's Dollhouse Castle at the Museum of Science and Industry. In her dollhouse, probably the most beautiful and creative dollhouse in the world, she had artisans use mother of pearl for the floors. I loved the shiny, seashell look, but mother of pearl tiles are amazingly hard to find. I finally tracked them down and ordered them from China. I glued each tile to the wood floor. Moore's dollhouse was a big influence throughout my book. I didn't have teams of artisans or an unlimited bank account to make my castle, but I think that my rooms wouldn't look out of place in her castle.

Click on the images to enlarge them.

This scene is during the wintertime, so I added winter flowers with berries instead of the summery pink flowers.
Small version:

Here's a larger version of the image. Note: The color is lighter here than it is in the same exact picture above for some reason.

Rough collage sketch:

Pencil sketch.

Test Shot 6. This shot has pink flowers and a different reflection in the mirrors.

Test Shot 5. One challenge was making sure that all of the characters were bright enough and in focus. Each scene required many test shots to get things just right. I'm not even showing all of the test shots here. Sometimes I shot a scene 20 times before I got it right. Here you can see that Jacqueline is too dark and Claire is too blurry. I wanted the lighting to come pouring through the windows the way natural light does. I worked very hard at this. I was pleased when a well-known photographer friend of mine asked me if I had shot these with natural light. I did not, but that was the look I wanted to achieve.

This is the kind of lighting I was trying to achieve.

Test Shot 4.

Test Shot 3. I took many test shots of the characters before I photographed the whole scene. This window treatment is a very fragile piece of French lace. I felt that it looked a bit like stained glass. Jacqueline is spraying perfume on her neck. I bought the sink, but it was made of wood so I plastered and painted it to look like it was stone.

Test Shot 2. I found the dried seahorse at the beach. I cut it in half, painted it with gold leaf, and attached it to the tub as a faucet. The tub was an old soap dish. The water is Saran Wrap and the bubbles are cotton batting with glitter. Veronique is having a bit of bubbly after a long day of lolling around.

Test Shot 1. Claire is on the loo. I bought a wooden toilet and plastered it to look like stone. Claire is reading Le Monde.

Sketch.

Click on the images to enlarge them.
Mouse and Bat are given a bath. The sponge was a real piece of sea sponge. The soap was a rubber eraser cut off a pencil.

Rough collage sketch:

Pencil sketch.

The Powder Room In Progress
This is what the powder room looked like before I got my hands on it. My father made me an open wooden box to my size specifications.

Details
This is the mother-of-pearl I bought. I recommend this company if you wish to buy MOP overseas. The language barrier is a bit hard, but Micky was extremely helpful.

I bought many little objects on Ebay. I would scour Ebay for hours looking for the perfect little details for my sets.

View the rooms by clicking the links below:

The Castle Exterior
The Basement
The Powder Room
The Library
The Ballroom
The Dining Room
The Bedroom
The Kitchen
The Aesop Room
The Characters

The Library

Here is the final image of the Library with the mouse reading scene below it as it appears in the book. This is one of my favorite scenes from the book. Everyone is reading French books, magazines, and newspapers (except for Jacqueline who is looking at a picture book about Colonial Williamsburg). Claire is playing Cat's Cradle while Jacqueline, sitting next to her, reads how to do it. Hughes is learning card tricks. The princess sits on the floor so her spoiled cats can have the chairs. This scene was inspired by one of the rooms in my house. My cats are always sitting on the chairs and couches. I end up sitting on the floor, but I don't mind.

Click on the images to enlarge them.

On the walls, you'll see details from some of my fine art paintings. I stained the wood panel squares and glued them to the wall. The statuary on the bookshelves are from my husband's trips to Asia when he was a little boy. The plaster fireplace, doorway pediment, and columns were all painted with gouache. The rug was hard to find. They don't make such large dollhouse rugs. I found it in Canada. The candles are all real. In fact, they lit up the scenes so much I didn't need to use too much strobe light. It is Fall during this scene, so the flowers are autumn arrangements. Through the door, you can see the billiard room with an ornate pool table.

Test Shot 4.

Rough collage sketch:

Test Shot 3. Click on this one (candles lit) to see it enlarged without having to move your mouse around:

Test Shot 2. Click on this one (candles are not lit) to see it enlarged in detail:

Test Shot 1. Here is a shot with Claire (from her bathroom pose) in the library. I placed her in there to see how the characters will look. This is a quickie photo.

The Library In Progress
The bookshelves all had to be cut and resized to fit together. My father did that. He is the math and measuring expert, not I.

Test Shot.

Library details:

The Billiard Room
Click on the images to enlarge them.
Mouse has escaped once again, thanks to Bat. I added some shadows and made the bat bigger. I wanted a few of the scenes to have unusual compositions. Here, we are looking down on the scene from above.

Test Shot.

Cat reference. Here is my cat Little Bear posing for the ping-pong scene.

Rough collage sketch:

Pencil sketch.

Here is the ping-pong table in process. I made the paddles out of balsa wood and colored foam. My mother sewed the net for me. I painted the white lines on the foam with enamel paint.

View the rooms by clicking the links below:

The Castle Exterior
The Basement
The Powder Room
The Library
The Ballroom
The Dining Room
The Bedroom
The Kitchen
The Aesop Room
The Characters

The Ballroom

In the final image from this scene, we are looking through the ballroom to the courtyard. It is Spring, so there are pink and white flower arrangements. The French lion and unicorn tapestries were cut from one large tapestry. I painted the dollhouse piano and harp with gold leaf. The feathers on the cats' masks are real. As always, the candles are real with lit flames. The cats' party guests are a deer and an owl. This scene was so wide, it needed to be shot as two photographs with a wide-angle lens. I then edited the two photographs together to get one wide spread.

Click on the images to enlarge them.
The black area indicates where the mouse basement will be.

Test Shot 2.

Test Shot 1.

Sketches:

The Ballroom In Progress
Click on the images to enlarge them.
Here is the ballroom without the characters. I added the plaster walls and stained the floors. I went crazy with gold-leaf paint in this set: the stairs, the columns, the piano, and the harp are all gold now. I decided to crop the balcony so the staircase looks like it goes up even higher.

Click on this one to see it without the lit candles. This shows how much light these tiny candles give off.

The Wood Frame For The Ballroom
This is the wood frame that my father gave to me based upon our sketches. The columns were coiled with twine to get a more interesting shape before they were to be plastered.

My father laid an actual parquet floor, and I stained it.

We made window shapes out of black construction paper so we could figure out where to cut the openings.

My father spent more time on the curved, floating staircases than on anything else. He cut all of the the wood, wet it, shaped it, and then let it dry with the right curve. It was delicate and time consuming work.

Details
The tapestry was cut up to make smaller panels.

I painted the piano gold.

The Dog Costume Scene, The Hall
Click on the images to see them enlarged.
The costume is based upon my dog, Miss Jenny Poodles. You can see Bat's ears being used as feet. This is a winter-time scene. The icicles are a clear glue. I used clear blue gels over the lights to get the cool, blue color outside.

Rough collage sketch:

Sketch:

The Floor Hockey Scene, The Hall
Click on the images to see them enlarged.
Here is the final hockey photo with snow added.

Here is the same hockey scene before I put in the falling snow.

Rough collage sketch:

Sketch:

Older pencil sketches.

View the rooms by clicking the links below:

The Castle Exterior
The Basement
The Powder Room
The Library
The Ballroom
The Dining Room
The Bedroom
The Kitchen
The Aesop Room
The Characters

The Dining Room

Here is the final spread with the mouse basement scene attached the way it is printed in the book.

Click on the images to enlarge them.
My sister Veronica made the fish out of clay. The punch bowl is actually a little salt serving bowl I found in an antique store. I thought it looked like a punch bowl, so I bought it for the book. The punch is water colored with paint. The painting on the wall is one of my own creations. I wanted the cats to look animated, as though they were having conversations and sharing food.

Test Shot 2. In this shot, the garden was too dark to see through the windows, and I figured out that the table would have to be moved so its angle would match that of the bedroom in the facing page.

Test Shot 1.

Inspiration.

Sketch.

These are a few character test shots. Claire is wearing an Alice In Wonderland-inspired outfit.

Angle Test Shots.

The Final Scene
Click on the images to see them enlarged.
Test Shot 2.

Test Shot 1. Mouse and Brown Bat have stuffed themselves with cake and punch.

The Birthday Party Scene
Click on the images to see them enlarged.
Here's the final version of the two-page birthday party spread. The page is cut between Catherine and Julien.
Larger scroll around version:

Smaller version:

The Dining Room In Progress
Click on the images to see them enlarged.
My sister Veronica made the cake out of clay. There is a piece for each cat. These are blurry picture that she sent me, but I think that she did a fantastic job.

Molding.

Chandelier.

Shrimp cocktail.

The chandelier.

The tapestry.

The fireplace.

The molding.

I bought these gothic windows on ebay.

View the rooms by clicking the links below:

The Castle Exterior
The Basement
The Powder Room
The Library
The Ballroom
The Dining Room
The Bedroom
The Kitchen
The Aesop Room
The Characters

The Bedroom

Here is the final bedroom scene with the mouse sleeping below it as printed in the book.

Click on the images to enlarge them.
Test Shot 6. This is similar to the final image, but I added the fire and fixed some of the details through the windows.

Rough collage sketch:

This shows the two pages that will be facing each other. When working on a book you have to think about how the facing pages will look together.

Test Shot 5. This is a lilac-toned version. My editor and I really liked the lilac colored room, but in the end we felt that the golden tones was a better match for the facing page. The colors are achieved by placing colored gels in front of my lights.

This lilac version didn't look as good as a facing page.

Test Shot 4. I had two matching beds, but the vertical lines made the composition too busy, so I exchanged one canopy bed for a single bed. I also experimented with tree branch shadows on the walls, but this also made the scene too busy so I scrapped them. I moved the cats around until they felt right. This is the beauty of working 3-D, you can easily move things around until they look right.

Test Shot 3.

Test Shot 2.

Test Shot 1.

Character Test Shots
Click on the images to enlarge them.

The Bed Linens
I bought some antique French embroidered lace and gave it to my mother so she could sew it into coverlets. My mother also cut up an old silky blouse from the 1970s for the bed curtains and linens. The bedroom wasn't done yet so I did these bed tests photos in the powder room.

The Bedroom In Progress
These are the bedroom walls with the windows cut out. This is how the walls looked before I plastered and carved them to look like stone. The molding was glued on before plastering.

The wood frame.

The Bedroom Details

View the rooms by clicking the links below:

The Castle Exterior
The Basement
The Powder Room
The Library
The Ballroom
The Dining Room
The Bedroom
The Kitchen
The Aesop Room
The Characters

The Kitchen

Here's the final image of the kitchen scene. The white flour is actually some of the plaster dust I use to make the walls. The cats are messy chefs. My sister Veronica made the pies out of clay.

Click on the images to enlarge them.Rough collage sketch:

View the rooms by clicking the links below:

The Castle Exterior
The Basement
The Powder Room
The Library
The Ballroom
The Dining Room
The Bedroom
The Kitchen
The Aesop Room
The Characters

The Aesop Room

This the final image of the opening prologue scene. It is set long ago in ancient Greece, so the mice are wearing togas. I plastered the whole wooden frame, then painted the cat fresco on the back wall using gouache. After I finished painting the fresco, I sanded certain areas and dripped water onto the whole thing so it would look aged. The floor is also plaster that has been carved into stone shapes and painted. I shot light through an arched door opening on the right so it would look like natural lighting.

Click on the images to enlarge them.
We considered making this image the cover.

The frame for this page is a Greek key pattern to differentiate from the rest of the story which takes place in a different time period.

Test Shot 3. This was shot before I had painted the additional mice.

Larger scroll around version.

Test Shot 2.

Test shot 1.

The Greek Mice In Progress
The characters were painted with oils on gessoed paper before they are cut out. These photos are from when I was still working on them.

Pencil sketches.

The Aesop Room In Progress
Click on the images to enlarge them.
The side walls of the room.

View the rooms by clicking the links below:

The Castle Exterior
The Basement
The Powder Room
The Library
The Ballroom
The Dining Room
The Bedroom
The Kitchen
The Aesop Room
The Characters

The Characters

Here are the final hanging portraits of the cats and the princess. I painted one of these per day for nine days. They are very tiny oil paintings (5 inches tall by 3 inches high), small enough to hang on the castle walls. The frames are made of plaster. The wallpaper was painted with old, thick house paint and then wiped away in areas to make it look aged. This is the same paint I used for the victorian house in my last book, The Cat Who Wouldn't Come Inside.

Click on the images to enlarge them.
Princess Gabrielle. We refer to her as "the princess" in the book, but her full name is actually Princess Gabrielle. She is named after my niece who also happens to be a princess. Did you notice that her crown has cat ears?

Sketch:

Here's a test shot of the princess reading in the library. I didn't use this picture in the book, but I like it so I included it here.

The Cats
Click on the images to enlarge them.
Claire is modeled after my other niece and godchild, Claire Beaulieu. The real life Claire is a little girl and not a cat. She is an artist with blue-green eyes. Her favorite color is blue. This book is dedicated to Claire.

The real life Claire:

This is Veronique. One of my three sisters is named Veronica. Veronique is the French version of Veronica. My sister Veronica doesn't look anything like this cat version, but isn't it a pretty name? Take a look at the birthday cake, fish dinner, cheese, and bread; my talented sister made them out of clay for this book. She is lawyer by profession, however I refer to her as The Royal Chef.

Test Shot. The tub spout is made form a dried seahorse. I cut it in half, mounted it on the tub, and painted it gold. The water is made from saran wrap. The bubbles are made from cotton batting and glitter. See "The Powder Room" for more pictures.

Zozo. Zozo is my editor Kate O'Sullivan's beautiful tuxedo cat. She asked me to include him in the book and how could I resist such a handsome little fellow? He wears a bowler hat. Zozo is British, not French like all of the other cats.

The real Zozo:

Julien is named after my nephew. Julien reminds me a of a Dr. Suess character.

Test Shot.

Here's Catherine reading in the library. Catherine is named after my sister and also my designer's wife.

Hughes (pronounced in French as "oog") is named after my brother-in-law, Claire's father. He was born and raised in France. He is a sommelier, which means: "a trained and knowledgeable wine professional, commonly working in fine restaurants, who specializes in all aspects of wine service." This is a scene from the library where he is reading a book about card tricks.

Here, Jacqueline reading an instruction book on playing Cats Cradle (with Claire). Jacqueline is named after Hughes's mother. She lives in France.

Here's a picture of Louis. The French pronounce this name "Loo-E". My father, my brother, my brother's son, and my husband's grandfather are all named Louis. The youngest Louis has red hair.

Rough collage sketch. I revised the cats so they would look more like children. Some of the names were changed. I wanted them all to be French.

Details:

The Cat's Outfits
The cats have many different outfits: Claire wears blue, Veronique wears pink, Jacqueline wears purple, Catherine wears red, Hughes wears red, Zozo wears black and white, Julien wears blue, and Louis wears green. I made about 60 of these paper cutouts to test sizes for the room and to see which outfits looked best for various scenes. They are computer collages mixed with paintings and sketches.

Mouse & Bat
Click on the images to enlarge them.
Here are two Mouse and Bat wall portraits. I wanted them to look like old, tattered photographs to contrast with the fine oil paintings of the cats. Mouse scratched secret notes into the plaster wall. Can you find them?