The Stump Tortoise

Having finished my Cthulhu idol and a majorly crazy ink drawing I was mulling over ideas for my next sculpture. I have pages and pages of sketches documenting ideas for sculptures, some of which are in relatively great detail. However, it's always the random scribbles that seem to  jump out at me and demand to be made RIGHT NOW.

I found this while cleaning off a pile of doodles, junk mail, and old grocery receipts from the kitchen table.

It immediately demanded to be made. RIGHT NOW. So, not wanting to piss off whatever Art God or Muse that makes these demands, I set to work on on the armature. I started off with the legs and head.

At first I wasn't quite sure how to approach doing a solid chunk like the tree stump shell. So I just started throwing on wire.

Holy crap that's a lot of wire!

And then I just crunched it full of foil.  And more wire. 

Holy crap that's a lot of foil!

This is probably one of the sturdiest armatures I've built to date, mostly because I sat back and enjoyed building it as a part of the creative process (as opposed to "Blar! Friggin armatures, I just want to get this done with so I can push clay!"). It's also so dense I could probably lob it through a window. 

Of course, with every armature comes the inevitable "Oh god, termites have chewed up my hands!" feeling, which you get from three hours of wrestling wire and foil and accidentally supergluing yourself to every surface in the vicinity. It gets worse the instant you head to the sink to wash off all the metal bits when suddenly you discover "HOLY SH---TINY CUTS EVERYWHERE! IT STINGS!" But it's all good, because the carpal-tunnel syndrome takes care of that, at least for the moment. I'm typing up this post by bludgeoning the keyboard with my half-numb fingers. 

Next up: clay pushing. Hooray!

Borfus

Meet Borfus the Dragon. 

Borfus, along with the Desbok, is part of a bestiary of creature designs I have been compiling. Borfus started out as an entry for a creature design competition held back in November by the Shiflett Brothers, in which the only premise was "monster rider." Because I like to keep a sense of fun about things, I went for a huge, unruly dragon.
And I mean FRIGGIN' HUGE.

Borfus, all told, is two feet long with a nearly two foot wingspan.

I don't think I intended to make him quite so enormous, but as I built the armature, that's what happened. So I went with it.

Unfortunately, due to a bout with the flu (and the fact that I grossly underestimated the size and therefore the amount of time necessary) I didn't end up getting him finished before the contest deadline.

 

I did, however, enter him in 2010's Spectrum Annual, but didn't get accepted in. Better luck next year I guess.

Borfus ended up being my take on the classic dragon and rider motif. Usually depicted as a wonderful, magic bond between the dragon and its rider, something that is coveted and desired by whatever human race occupies that particular fantasy realm, I went a different route. In Borfus's native homeland, his species have been domesticated for generations by skilled and extremely patient trainers; they are the quickest and most effective mode of transportation over dangerous terrain such as marshland or mountain passes. However, they are none too intelligent, difficult to control even when dragon and rider have been bonded since hatching, and are prone to veering off mid-flight whenever they spot an appealing morsel, leaving their frustrated riders clinging desperately while attempting to get them under control.

Dragonriders would in fact much prefer to be riding something else, but being as large flying animals capable of being domesticated and trained to carry riders and cargo are few and far between, they are stuck with these guys. The neighboring continent is occupied by a civilized, intelligent race of dragons who hold Borfus's kind in deep scorn, and would rather not have to claim them as distant cousins.

Computer Woes, Cthulhu Idols, and Sick Crabs

I went and started this blog thinking I'd update once a week, but I've been spending the past four months with a crippled, zombie laptop that I'm almost afraid to turn on lest it burst into flames. The hard drive crashed and we managed to salvage all my files and revive it so it's usable...but it's making noises now if I leave it on too long so my computer time has been limited (read: almost non-existant) However, I've started up the Build A New Computer Fund, and once I have that in place, I will actually be able to run Photoshop without my crippled zombie dinosaur computer crapping out on me. Not to mention being able to use the computer without fear that it will crash in the middle of something important. But I think we've all been there. Hooray!

I also find myself tending to one of my studio pets, who has developed a bit of shell rot. He hates being bothered. In fact, he hates being looked at sometimes, and will glare angrily at me the entire time I'm working. He especially hates being rudely picked up and stuck in a bucket while I clean his tank.

Those claws are almost comically, disproportionately huge. Also, they hurt like hell.

Sick crawdads aside, my latest sculpting project has been an obligatory Cthulhu idol, which is now nearing completion. He will begin collection souls shortly.

Stay tuned for more rambling whenever I find the courage to turn on my computer again. As it is, it's making some buzzing noises at the moment, so I should probably turn it off....