Your Kitty — New Year

Merry Christmas, kittens!

Let me tell you the story of my fastest paint job ever, hehe. At the end of November, I found myself staring at Chilmiru's new kitty on Twitter, and dear Dina ponnie suggested painting her over the holidays as a New Year's challenge. Considering my usual painting speed (several months per kit), it was a risky undertaking, but I agreed. The kit was ordered and arrived very quickly—by mid-December it was already sitting on my desk, and... it sat on my desk :') Business trips, work, studying, meetings and get-togethers, anything at all except the kit; and then, at the very end of December, I unexpectedly ended up having laser eye surgery—quite successfully, too (well, as far as one can judge the results at this point)—which limited what I could do for a while. The first evening I couldn't manage anything except playing a little Love Live, and for about a week after that my eyes would get very tired after a few hours of intensive work and had trouble focusing—painting under those conditions isn't much fun.

This is the cute little package that arrived, along with a lovely magnet from the sculptor as a gift (someday I'll paint it by hand, ho ho ho).

Very good casting, perfect joins with a nice fit, but for some unknown reason I decided to pin it. So: sanding and pins—Evening 1, about 3–4 hours of actual work.

Evening 2. Primer, base colors, pointless messing around with masks—I should have painted it by hand from the start and not even tried. Examining the tragic result the next day made the scale of the mistake clear, but I decided to fix it in place (this goes for the hat, ribbons, and the semblance of clothing on the upper half-body) instead of repainting it. Time was running very short if I still wanted to have the spoon ready for dinner—or rather, a New Year's kitty ready for New Year; well, at least during the holidays! A day later we flew off on vacation until January 14 (greetings from the south).

I decided to give the stockings stripes, and missed the mark with the very top stripe here too... it came out a bit odd for specifically striped stockings, and so did the very bottom one . But the lovely pink-purple glow comes from Mr. Crystal Color Amethyst Purple :3 The bow has Turquoise Metallic with Premium Pearl Glass over it. I mixed it with Gaia's thinner for metallics, which supposedly makes the grain less visible—and it really did turn out very cool (the photo below is still without the pearl; you can see it in the final shots).

Evening 3, the last one before we left—maximum speed. I fix the masking mistakes, all with solvent paints and retarder because I'm painting at the dacha and brought a limited arsenal of paints; add a little wash to the hair and tail; then paint the eyes practically blind, with enamels over gloss, but in a single try because I can barely see by then anyway (stupidity and courage, yep).

And now, assembly!

The next part is harder—taking the photos!

For a size comparison:

And, when I was already practically standing in the doorway on my way out—the photos this kitty was made for

And that's all: challenge completed. It was interesting to test my mettle, but things like this should be attempted in very measured doses. Still, in the end I'm more pleased with the result than not

Thank you to everyone who stopped by, and enjoy the rest of the holidays :3