Vladislav as a Cat in Clay

 Ever since the Sculpting Patreon group I was part of dissolved, I had a hard time coming up with ideas for something to do. So I ended up doing nothing. Until "What We Do" showed up on a cable channel.

One of the lesser known movies that I really like to watch over and over is the mock-umentary What We Do In The Shadows. It is the inspiration for the TV series of the same name. 

In the movie however, a film crew follows 4 vampires in New Zealand. The each have their various quirks, and one, Vladislav the Poker, played by Clement Jermaine.  Vlad was very good at transforming, until his difficult breakup with his girlfriend- The Beast.   From then on he could still transform but now he "couldn't get the faces right."  

The camera switches away to show Vlad as a cat but with a human face. 

This had to be brightened a lot to see what was gong on. 

 Now I knew what I wanted to do. While I'm not good at likenesses (and prolly never will be) how badly could I mess this up?  So I got to work and ended up with my version of Vlad Cat. I was thinking about casting a few before painting so he's still Sculpy gray.  Thanks for looking. 

 

Black Heart's Vlad Finished

With the base coat finished and dried, I picked up with the shadowing and highlighting. Here can be seen that I also started on what I took to be pearl's around the cap. With the black base coat, I simply added a white pearlizing paint  - 

The pearls didn't take as long as I imagined, so it was on to some pigments for the dark 5 o'clock shadow and I was done with the bust. 
It was here that I decided I wanted something a little more unique for the base. I'll think of something. Thanks for looking.

 

Black Heart's Vlad

Black Heart Models, know for their 1:1 scale busts, have started a "micro" series of figures. Some of them are even historical in nature. I recently picked up Hannibal and Vlad the Impaler. Today, I'm starting Vlad. Besides what you see in the image it also comes with a pedestal type base  -

First thing was to look for an idea of color. Most of the images I'm familiar with are the woodcut or illustrations based on the woodcut.  Also a lot of the newer images had either a blood red vest or cape. To me that was a little too cliche. I settled on this pic -

As always I start by blackening the eyes and then start base coating -

Base painting well under way -

I did use red for the hat but will be darkening it down with some washes. The vest is Cavalry Brown, which has sort of on the red end of brown. The edge of the cap was smartly done. It looks like the sculptor used beads on a thread, and wrapped it around the band. Cool idea!

Thats it for today. Thanks for looking.

On to PART 2