Perhaps you've seen these pictures somewhere on the internet, and you wondered where you can go see these marvelous topiary sculptures of cats. The artist is Richard Saunders, and the internet is where you can see them. These are digital artworks!
Saunders photographed an actual topiary sculpture, that is, a bushy hedge plant trimmed in an artistic shape, and thought it looked vaguely like a resting animal, maybe a sleeping cat. Inspired, he took pictures of his cat Tolly sleeping in various positions, and used them to make a digital mashup of the topiary bush in the shape of Tolly. He made another and another, mostly featuring Tolly but sometimes including his other cat Georgi. Both are Russian blues and made good models.
And so the Topiary Cat was born. The results are quite realistic, showing cats as part of nature, as if they were created by a very talented hedge trimmer. Saunders started posting the images to Flickr more than ten years ago, and people began circulating them, giving the impression that they existed somewhere. Everyone wanted to know where this magical garden was so that they could see it in person.
Read more about the topiary cat at Flashbak. See more of Saunders' topiary cats at Flickr and at Instagram. -Thanks, WTM!
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