The Horror in Clay

—Part I—

As part of an on-going effort to find an artistic medium I feel comfortable in, I have recently started sculpting, and it occurred to me tonight that it would make a good blog topic to show my progression as I go.

Beginnings...

As a frequent browser of DeviantArt, I had come across various sculptures before, and so looking back on some I found that the most common medium was a product called Super Sculpey. My first instinct was to buy some off Amazon, but as it turned out, they cannot ship it to Australia. I'm not sure why, but nevertheless, I had to find another supplier. I found it at my local art supply, though it was $39 ($33US) for 454g (1 lb)—much more than the $25US it would have cost from Amazon!

Anyway, one night after work, with Muse's Absolution playing on my iPhone, I sat down and just started playing with a piece. By the time the album had finished (roughly an hour), I had created this:

Though obviously no masterpiece, I was quite happy with the result of this first ever sculpting attempt, and was inspired to continue.

The Next Step...

Due to my Lovecraftian proclivities, it did not take a mind-reader to know that I would be wanting to create one of his beasties as soon as possible. As shown in my previous post, I have seen many renditions before, yet one I found very few images of was the Haunter of the Dark (aka the Three-lobed Burning Eye). Coincidentally, there had been talk of this very creature on the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast forums only recently, which only fuelled my desire to create its image. So I set about drawing a few sketches...

First was a rough isometric:

Then I did some slightly more detailed plans:

As can (hopefully) be seen, I had the creature simply "perched" on the ground. However, after a few days to stew over the idea, I realised that this pose was really very boring, and even though this is to be my first ever full sculpt, so should be fairly simple, I still felt it needed a bit more... character.

Through most of the related story, the narrator only knows of the creature due to its motions in a small room above his head, so it came to me that I should try and make it kind of low, as if stalking or listening through the floor-boards, and so I came up with this modified front-on sketch:

From this, I then drew the armature "skeleton" pose design:

It might appear slightly confusing, but they are actually the isometric, side, and top-down views of how I wanted the armature wire to look.

Which then brings me to tonight, when I got home from work and actually made the armature:

You can see in this photo that I have made one wing out in front, low to the ground, while the other is upright, supporting the weight. At the back is the arch of the body/tail, that will continue to snake along the ground (the foil is there to bulk out the body a bit as well as hold the wire together a bit tighter).

And so there you have the lead up to what will eventually become a clay sculpture of Nyarlathotep/The Haunter of the Dark/The Three-lobed Burning Eye. I hope someone out there has found this interesting and that you will keep an eye on my progress and the sculpture takes form.

See you in Part 2!