But Who Will Bell The Cats?: 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.