“Moggy May(hem)”

Well May has rolled around again (is it just me or does this year seem to be flying by?) and that means it’s “Monster May(hem)” once again, now I love this challenge run by Keith (the Angry Piper), and if I get the chance (and energy) I do hope to whip up another scratch build like last year, but that very much depends of time restraints. So just to get a “banker” in the pot I thought I’d start with something a little simpler, and quite frankly it’s about time I got some paint of these two models anyway. Now these two prehistoric cats (sorry I should know the correct name for them but I don’t, Dave might give it in the comments), were sculpted by the great Dave Stone and back when I was looking for base models for my Battle Cat and Panthor conversions Dave suggested these as possible candidates. Well as you know in the end I went with something different, but it would be a shame not to complete these wonderful cats and add them to my prehistoric and “HG Wells” collections, plus of course they fit the “brief” for this challenge rather well too.

First job was to give them a quick clean up with the scalpel, though to be honest the castings were pretty flash free as was, I then glued the head and lower jaw to the leaping one and “hid” the joints with a bit of the old greenstuff, I thickened out the cheeks on the leaping one a bit to try and make them look more male and female, I also replaced one of the “sabre” teeth on the (now) female one as I’d broken it off at some point. I them took a couple of my 40x60mm MDF (Hott) bases and rounded the corners off using a “tuppence” as a guide before snapping the front of the male cats resin base off and gluing them down. Tetrion filler was smeared around their feet/big rock and the odd piece of “kitty litter” was stuck into this (ironic that!) here and there for interest. A “blow over” with some matt black and I could set to with the painting.

Both “pussies” were painted in the same way, so I’ll just refer to them in the singular from this point on, This I began by slapping some chocolate brown over the top of the figure leaving the under belly and lower jaw unpainted for the moment, next I painted in the as yet unpainted areas with some coffee, and once both of these were dry I used more of the same run along the edges where they joined before blending them into each other. Then taking a big brush I dry-brushed chestnut over the brown. This was followed by two more dry-brushes, one with a mix of chestnut and orange, and then another of the same with the ratio of orange increased. After this I touched up the coffee, as well as adding some “flashes” above the eyes, and upper muzzle, this was followed by the mouths being undercoated in dark red with bright red highlights. Cream highlights were then added to the coffee areas and once dry I added stripes of black across their backs and down their legs. That just left the eyes to be added with an undercoat of deep turquoise, a dot of olive and a slash of black, and their teeth and claws in coffee, with cream highlights on the teeth.

As usual this was followed by a coat of “Quickshade!” and once dry basing was done in my usual way, with chocolate brown dry-brushed with khaki and coffee, “splodged” with scenic green and some hairy flocking. Not my finest work I have to say, but at least they are now “table ready” and if I don’t get chance to finish my other entry for “Monster May(hem), at least I have something to show. I added my “Tin Man” cavegirl “Raquel” to the photo’s to give a sense of scale, I think she might be in a little trouble here, that’ll teach her to carry catnip in her pocket!

Well that will do for now, I suppose I’d better break out the “greenstuff” and have a bash at my second entry now.

So till next time, stay safe and cheers Roger.