Mechanical Hounds

Here are various sketches of the Mechanical Hound from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

The Latter ones were inspired by this version.
Also, I've always thought that there should be a monster with a head modeled after a staple remover, so I incorporated an element of that.

Triops Study

A friend gave me some Triops Longicaudatus eggs and some oil pastels. This happened next!

On Fleek for Jurassic Week

 The Summer camp I work at is finally doing a dinosaur themed week! In my excitement, I started preparing about a month early. Here is the skull of an Elasmosaurus skeleton I plan to hang in a public area.

 Here is a Dilophosaurus. It was my first time using oil pastels, and I was very pleased to discover how versatile and forgiving a medium they are.

It might also be called my first honest-to-goodness life restoration, as I used a reference photo. I got to meet my favorite dinosaur in New York last July. I know an expert like Darren Naish could spend a few minutes picking apart my reconstruction on a few points (like the way I "shrinkwrapped" its skin to its skull), but I am very happy with how this one turned out.

Sophia the Tyrannosaurus

In Summer of 2014, I came across Akiane Kramarik's Website, which astounded me and made me want to take up painting. I decided to start with what I knew, and googled "painting dinosaurs." this led me to discover James Gurney's blog (The author of Dinotopia). I took note of his method of sculpting clay maquettes for reference in his paintings. I decided to make my own maquette, and ended up creating a self-contained work of art. This was my first time sculpting since my teenage years, and I was pleased to see that it turned out a lot better than my previous sculptures.

 And she works as a maquette!

How Dennis Was Made (Warning: Horrifying)

This was my first latex puppet. I decided to do a test puppet based on my original stop-motion puppet, Dennis. I used this video as a tutorial.

Basic Sculpt

Cutting it in half

Detail added, after the halves are separated.

Brushed with Plaster

Plaster Casts forming

Clay dug out, latex skin forming. It took me forever to do this part, with the eyestalks, fingers and mouth posing a challenge.

Wire Skeleton

Yarn Musculature

Renoining the halves.

The tongue.

Sides of mouth fused together.

Painting: stripes

Painting: Little blue dots

Mochi Ice Cream made by balls of clay covered in latex and flour.

Perelandra sketches

I thought I'd just do one more post to get all my Space Trilogy stuff out there. Here are a couple of quick sketches I did based on Perelandra, the second book of the series, where the protagonist is taken to Venus. I drew these as a sort of speculative concept art for a movie that will never be made. I do a lot of drawing of this sort.

Perelandra is a world almost completely covered in water. It's full of diverse animalia, which either live in the sea or on huge floating islands. These islands are like big carpets of moss that roll along on the waves, but they carry whole biomes of plains and forests.

 

My challenge here? Nudity. Perelandra is an Edenic world, untouched by original sin, and the inhabitants dress accordingly. This is all well and good in a book, but a completely accurate film adaptation would either have to make use of a lot of very creative close ups (ruining it), or have a strict R-rating. Thus, I did something I almost never let myself do and strayed from the source material. I immediately rejected the idea of puling a John Carter and giving the characters Avatar-style "loincloths and shell bras." This sort of attire covers nothing except what needs to be hidden, and thus implies that something needs to be hidden. This would be totally contrary to the planet's Edenic nature. Instead, I played around with the idea that Perelandrians might sometimes opt to wear clothes for the sake of expression, but not out of compulsion. This seemed like an idea Lewis might approve of. I was vindicated a few months later when I read The Great Divorce, in which the citizens of Heaven only ever wear clothes to express an inner beauty. Now as to why Ransom would wear clothes to this planet, I'm not sure. Doing so out of a nagging Earthling compulsion seems more in line thematically with the kind of misinformed decision Professor Weston would make... Give me a break though. Judging by the above picture, I probably can't draw naked people worth beans anyway.

More Malacandra sketches and Making Of

My Earliest sketch of a Sorn, circa 2008. I had paid too much attention to the book's mention of the "long drooping mouth," and none at all to its mention of a nose. Nevertheless, the ghoulish "scream mask" design stayed in my brain, and I tried to incorporate it into the model, originally.

Alternate Pfifltrigg concept, with a more alien head.

Meldilorn, Circa 2014

The Sculpture project

One of the pink giraffes herded by the Sorns. I thought about sculpting one. I tried to give its head some mosquito influence.

 

The Sorn was so tall I had to make a special stretcher to fit him in the oven horizontally.

Further sketches