Sketches & Scribbles

Scott sat me down and demanded that I draw something last night, so I did. And I came up with some pretty nice stuff. Above is a cute lil' diplodocid. It might not be the most accurate dinosaur, but that wasn't the point. I was just trying to give the animal some character.


And here's a cute little stegosaur, with massive parascapular spines. Maybe it's Gigantspinosaurus (awful name). I really like this drawing, especially the legs. Notice that the hands are like a sauropod--a new paper by Phil Senter suggests that stegosaurs and ankylosaurs had tubular feets.


And here's another version of Cthulhu. I'll get there eventually. I gave it too many appendages here.

I'm gonna keep up with this cartoony dinosaur thing. I like 'em.

Opposing Views

There are those who might suggest that the American Constitution was divinely inspired by Jesus, who is The Christ.


But then, there is the alternative viewpoint...

Old Castro Got it Wrong...

My ongoing attempts to sculpt a reasonable likeness of Great Lord Cthulhu...um...go on. Here now, I present to you the "final version," which is not, in fact, the final version. This is merely one of two things: 1) The latest version I'm reasonably happy with; or 2) The base by which a true final draft will spring from. After the elephantine horror that came before, I borrowed a few Wayne Douglas Barlowe books from Scott, and became...what's the word? Oh yes, inspired. Barlowe's Expedition may be the best, if not the only illustrative tome to build a convincing alien world up from the ground up. These are not Earthen animals wedged into an awkward alien mold. The critters on Darwin IV would not evolve on Earth, and you have no idea have much I appreciate that. The only other alien monsters I've felt that about are the titular xenomorphs from Aliens, and even they were portrayed by guys in suits (most of the time).

Anyway, I took much from Barlowe's work, but Scott's wager demanded that my starspawn conform to the description put forth by Lovecraft through Old Castro in The Call of Cthulhu. Thus, a vaguely anthropoid outline, a head filled with writhing tentacles, and horrible demon wings were the order of the day. What's an artist to do?

After reading the story a few more times, I realized that Old Castro is, in fact, recalling heresay. He did witness the master of R'lyeh himself, but heard the story from the survivors of that terrible meeting. Additionally, these were terrified men telling the story, their psyches flumoxed by what they were seeing. In my humble opinion, the only concrete physical details of Cthulhu offered by the story are contained in the description of the soapstone relief. Those details are fairly good, but there's another problem to consider: Humanizing our gods. People tend to give their dieties human features, probably so we feel close to them. Geisha, for instance, may have an elephant's head, but it's got a human body...albeit one with too many arms. Finally, Cthulhu's followers were commanded to its will through psychic transmissions given off by the great traveler. Cthulhu may have implanted a false image of itself to calm his chosen. A more humanoid vistage would help to prevent insanity. Or perhaps Cthulhu's followers really did see the beast above but rationalized their god's horrible shape to fit more traditional Earthen imagery.

The underlying reason here is that I'm not doing this shit. Cthulhu is alien, not terran, dammit. I am also operating under the condition that Cthulhu is a real animal, and so must adhere to basic principles of life: it has to eat, sense its surroundings, and generally make a living without relying on magical powers. Cthulhu evolved somewhere.

So here's what Cthulhu is going to have:

1) A large central "trunk" tentacle for manipulating objects;
2) A pair of tentacles with olfactory sensors on their tips (the bulbous ones);
3) A pair of tentacles which are constantly moving, ending in a mass of feathery organs. These feathery organs sense vibration, temperature, and electromagnetic signals. Very handy for a blind creature.
4) A pair of modified feelers just behind the "head" which constantly stretch and retract, moving in all directions at all times, feeling the ground in front of, below, and around Cthulhu;
5) Two large, elephantine legs (the ankle spines will probably go away);
6) A massively fat tail that, from above, looks rather like a devil's tail. The tail is flat (and bright red) across its dorsal surface. Cthulhu stores fat in its tail, which is mobile at its base;
7) Two impressive "wings" which slide open and closed as a Poker player would flare his cards. The wingtips are basically gills, constantly fluttering as oxygen (or whatever Cthulhu breathes) is passed over the fine filaments extending from hundreds of slits on each tip's surface. Cthulhu isn't trying to take flight--he's just breathing;
8) A massive, bulbous "octopus head," which houses a large brain. The large brains size is not exclusively for the production of psychic phenomena testified to by his followers, but rather the mass of sensory information gathered by his armada of feelers and tentacles.

Expect a nicely Photoshopped final version later on, complete with...gasp...a background!

Happy New Year!

It's a whole new year! 2009, baby! Didn't think humanity would make it this far, did'ja? A few notes: First, I never make any resolutions, as I then feel bad when I break them. However, there are a few things I hope to accomplish this year. Among those things:

1) Hit 180 pounds and stay there for more than, like, three days;

2) At the very least, start work on a new art show;

3) Make significant headway in my gaming backlog (even Dreamcast stuff);

4) Publish something. Something that isn't a coloring book.

Above, for the curious, is a Cthulhu design I've been toying with. Overall, I think the head is too big, but you can definately tell what kind of animal provided the inspiration. I kind of like the elephantine look--it gets away from the octopus/squid vistage that the beast has been stuck with since Call of Cthulhu was published, but work will continue...Oh, by the way, that's the first picture I drew with my Wacom. It's not as bad as I thought it would be! One a final design is imagined, I shall make Cthulhu my first piece of digital art! Wish me luck!

Meanwhile, back at R'lyeh...

A long, long time ago, I promised my own artisitic interpretation of Great Lord Cthulhu, the best-known of H. P. Lovecraft's morbious Great Old Ones. That promise was not made in vain--in fact, I have been tirelessly attempting a reconstruction ever since. Cthulhu is terribly difficult to draw. The goal is always to capture the raw horror of Lovecraftian lore, while avoiding Earthly analogues as much as possible. Now, granted, Cthulhu is described as having various anthropomorphic features, but it was my goal to steer away from that. You see far too many bat-winged, claw-handed squidy demigods in Lovecraft art. But alas, those pieces have their grounding in the literature. From the titular Call of Cthulhu:


"...simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature.... A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings. Another, recovered by police from a raid on a murderous cult, "represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind."

In all of Lovecraft's descriptions of the beast, the octopus head and narrow wings persist. As for the anthropoid outline, perhaps this is a case where man sees himself in all things. Merely having a head and two arms might give Cthulhu his hominoid characters according to the madmen describing him in the literature. Claws on the hind and fore feet? How about claws instead of hind and fore feet? The octopus head is more suggestive of a boneless, muscular body. Perhaps Cthulhu is more mollusc than tetrapod? Perhaps Great Lord Cthulhu looked something like this:



Here, the arms end in horrible tentacles, the lower body is a sort of hellish caterpiller, and the wings are not wings at all, but elongate spineous processes. Bear in mind this is only a DRAFT. It's the first Cthulhu drawing I've done that I didn't absolutely hate. Let me know what you think! Lovecraftian beasties are terribly hard to get "right." And remember, I've drawn one other: Dagon, from the story of the same name.

Dagon

Dagon, from the appropriately titled Lovecraftian short story Dagon (1917).

Dagon is a unique short story in Lovecraft's significant body of work. It is not considered Cthulhu Mythos canon, but it is an obvious forebearer. The story is told in flashback form by a madman, driven insane by nightmares of some unspeakable terror sighted in the distant past. Shipwrecked on a "slimy expanse of hellish black mire," our hero wonders the coast for days, hoping for rescue. Eventually he journeys inward, finding a stone relief with bizarre hieroglyphs depicting sea-dwelling humanoids and various normal sea creatures. While he looks on, a massive beast rises from the depths behind him and heads immediately for the stone tower, wrapping its arms around it and uttering strange noises in what appears to be a prayer.

The name "Dagon" is not the beast's name, but rather a Philistine fish-god. The story's protagonist wonders if "Dagon" might be real in some form, and perhaps he just saw it. "Dagon" appears in Lovecraft's more popular canonical Shadow Over Innsmouth, in which the Deep Ones are said to worship said deity. In that story, however, the name "Dagon" is applied to Cthulhu, most likely an attempt by the Innsmouth residents to apply an existing name to their undersea god. Thusly, the Dagon of Innsmouth is not the Dagon of Dagon.

I rather prefer to think of Dagon as kind of an outgroup to the Cthulhu Mythos, seeing as it shares so many commonalities with the latter body of work. Indeed, the fish-people of the stone tower may well represent the Deep Ones with whom the citizens of Innsmouth made their infernal pact.

My take on Dagon is still evolving, but the final draft will look similar to this. Keeping with my interpretation that Dagon has some connection to the Deep Ones (and Cthulhu), I tried to make it a tetrapod that would exist somewhere in the depths, but one corrupted by the Deep Ones. If humans turn into fish-people, what would a whale turn into? Or a crocodile? I don't know if I'll keep the arthropod legs, but I do like how they give the back half something to do. Let me know what you folks think! I am open to suggestions on how to improve this design.