The Horror in Clay

—Part II—

As part of an on-going effort to find an artistic medium I feel comfortable in, I have recently started sculpting, and I'm writing this series to track my progress...

And A Shape Takes Form...

So the next step from the wire armature seen in Part I was to simply encase the frame in clay. As you can see below, doing this makes it much easier to visual the end product:

From here it's time to start adding some details. I decided to start at the torso and work my way out. I don't have a very good understanding of anatomy, but I figured that working on a fantasy creature such as this, it would not matter too much if the physique was slightly off. So in this picture you can see that I've added back, neck, and shoulder muscles, as well as a spine:

I also detailed the under-side with pectoralis muscles (a.k.a. "pecs") and a rib-cage. You can also faintly see abdominals as well:

Once I was satisfied with the torso, I moved out to the arms. These turned out to be quite difficult as the clay kept twisting around the smooth wire inside it, so I'll have to find a way to counter this in the future. After the arms were as good as I could get them, I started on the head...

Because the creature is simply called The Three-Lobed Burning Eye, I wanted to make sure that I put as much detail into the head as I could, so I started with the Lovecraft-obligatory tentacles:

As you can see, I also whipped up some claws just so I had them made in advance.

And Time Goes On By...

All of the above happened in the space of 4 days back in June, but due to my re-found love of comics and writing (thanks, in part, to Thoughtballoons), my sculpting activities were put on hold...

So here I am, 6 weeks later, on holidays, and I've just decided to start back on it. I felt I at least needed to get the head finished, so in the time it took for Muse's Absolution to once again play through, I had finished off the beast's head, which now includes the titular three-lobed eye:

So now all that's left are the wings and tail...

See you in Part 3!