Japanese Artists Uses Felted Wool To Create Amazingly Realistic Cat Portraits

You may have seen or heard about the trophy heads of wild animals, such as tigers, elephants, deer and the like that used to be embalmed and mounted on a shield as a display in the living rooms of colonial Britishers. These were real wild animals killed for their heads and much else.

However, what this Japanese artist Wakuneco does is nothing so reprehensible. She creates charming fuzzy cat portraits out of fuzzy fibres of wool and frames them. These hyper-realistic hand-felted cat faces look like the real thing, what with shining eyes, soft fur and serious cat faces. Of course, these cats are not as big as the real ones. 

Wakuneco makes amazing three-dimensional felted felines by painstaking needlework to put layers of wool until the fibres firm up and turn into compact solid shapes. It involves interlocking wool fibres together with a barbed needle. She then puts realistic fur, lifelike glass eyes and real-looking whisker on the palm-sized faces of these cats.

This delicate work takes long in completing but the results are really stunning. Once this is done, Wakuneco shapes the face and ears by trimming them with sharp scissors to achieve a realistic look. On completion, the faces are put into beautiful frames.

Wakuneco takes the photographs of real cats as her reference that may range from striped tabbies to ginger toms. She is so meticulous in the work that she spends hours on her creations, trimming and adding until she gets them absolutely right. Since it is only cat faces she creates, it becomes necessary to put them inside wooden frames, much like the trophy heads.

The final impact is something really awesome and it looks like a real cat is sitting inside the frame! Wakuneco has gone commercial with her creations and sells them via Yahoo! Auctions. However, presently she is only catering to buyers in Japan.

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こちらは三毛猫の柚ちゃんです🐱✨ ・ 動画の前半で、鈴をチリーンと鳴らすシーンがあります。 ・ ですが。 ・ 何度撮っても鈴の音をうまくカメラがひろってくれません笑 ・ 仕方なく、鈴の音はフリー音源の鈴の効果音を重ねています。 ・ けっこう効果的にアクセントになってるんじゃないかなぁ(*゚∀゚*) ・ 是非音ありでどうぞ❤️ ・ ちなみに、動画の1シーンの中間をカットすることで2人の手があるように見せたかったのですが、 ・ もちろん一人二役😂 我が家のアシスタントである3ニャンは邪魔しかしないものー😭

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過去作品とともに動画作成裏話をご紹介しています📽✨ ・ こちらはアメブロよりお声がけいただきましたキジトラのヒロちゃんです🐱✨ ・ ナチュラルな雰囲気にしたかったので、動画では木漏れ日的な、そよ風〜的なイメージで撮影しました。 ・ けれど当然思い通りのそよ風が吹いてくれることはまずありません笑 ・ 動画ではおすまし顔で涼しげに写っているヒロちゃんですが、 一方撮影をしている私は。 ・ 実は汗だくでパネルでそよ風をおこしています😂 ・ 動画撮影現場ってけっこうかっこわる〜な姿ばっかりだったりするんです😅💦笑 ・ 是非音ありでどうぞ❤️

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