Making my dream a reality

 Here in the studio it's grow-your-own-monster time again. Stephen is ready for his next drawing which means digging out all my original reference materials and sourcing any additional bits I might be needing. The first drawing I did of him was my usual side on shot with no background. These are like the studies of animals and plants in journals, giving a clear view of the whole thing.

 From there, it's about bringing him to life so everyone can see him the way I do- moving about, doing his own thing.... 

 Happily, this time I have a scale model of Stephen to help me figure out things like perspective and play with light sources. All of my monsters start out life in my red sketchbook.

 Once I've got an idea of who I'm drawing and what they're up to, I look up all of the bits of anatomy I'm going to need to make sure that what I'm doing is actually possible - one of my main rules is that each creature must function. They may have supernatural aspects such as Stephens' ability to misdirect but that's no excuse for my being sloppy and getting his shoulders in the wrong place :)

With my current drawing, I started by using my original layout for him which is a simple straight line drawing to scale of all the important bits- head, torso, limbs. Using the photo of my model in a similar position, I made adjustments for our imaginary camera angle. Then it's starting with his skeleton to position everything correctly.

That's important because that affects what muscles are working and so the surface appearance. The muscles are noted on an additional layer then the outline of that becomes my blueprint for the final drawing.

It's in the final version that the whole thing is skinned over and things like wrinkles, veins and hair are added to make it real. I'll be posting the progress of that final image as I go so you can watch him come out of my imagination and into our world :)

Shadows

More fun with monsters here this week- I've done the first prints of our model Stephen for me to draw from. Not only have they made life a whole lot easier in terms of getting perspective and lighting right but there have been some unexpected bonuses...

Probably the most fascinating thing I've seen so far is how his shadow changes depending on how I light the model. Sometimes it's very spider-like as with the picture above, other shots have a man shaped shadow like the one below (which I'm sure is sneaking off on its own).

He's not attached to a base because we already have plans for a bigger, more mobile version which is a slightly worrying thought. For now I'm making good use of my paper stubbies by way of props.

Because these pictures are just for reference I also don't have to worry about them being perfectly crisp which means I've been able to play about with my camera and get some interesting shots of him creeping about in the dark - the one above is a test for one of him looking in a window. He does that...

Baubles !

 It may come as a surprise to some but goths do Christmas too - complete with tree (and no, it's not black). We even added some shiny silver baubles, not that they stayed on there for long....
 Those who read our last post know we've made a model Stephen using, amongst other things, some of our tree decorations. But where, you wanted to know, were his baubles ?

To get the range of movement we needed in his shoulders we needed ball and socket joints - we could have bought them online but having come up with the idea of making a Stephen, naturally we wanted to play with it now and couldn't wait that long.

 We had a bag of black plastic beads left over from making bookmarks and some tubing that would fit into that to make our ball- but what to use for the socket? It turned out that the little collar with the hanging loop on top of our baubles was just the right size- and joy of joys, they simply pop off !

 We cut a small section of tubing and glued it into the hole in the bead. Rich cut a hole in the top of the collar and threaded the ball part through post first to complete the set.

 The collar was then glued into a hole cut into the main body, making sure not to get any adhesive on moving parts ...

When that had set, the post was covered in glue and slotted into a hole drilled in each of the limbs. Then we had to wait impatiently for the whole thing to dry before we could play with it :)

The first model was such a success and has already been useful in setting up drawings that we then made a hand to scale for him. Of course, that did mean going to buy another tub of baubles......

Monster in motion

 From an artists' point of view, demons have a lot in common with cats- they don't want to know until it looks like something else is getting all the attention... of course, those of you who know Stephen already will appreciate why, when it comes to elbowing everyone else out of the way, he wins every time.

That's all well and good but he's not the easiest thing to draw straight from my head, it's far too easy to wind up with a bit on backwards/upside down. So over coffee Sunday morning I asked my other half if he thought we could make a model of some kind. That way, I could play with different compositions and get all my lighting right before starting a big piece.

 I'll get into the 'how' properly in my next post but you may be amused to know that our new Christmas decorations didn't last long on the tree before we found an altogether more fun use for them :)

Of course, I'm saying 'we' but you're probably under no illusion that I had anything much to do with the actual construction asides from working out the sizes of various bits, some sanding and the important task of watching what was going on. 

Today the last of the glue had dried and I was able to start playing with him- just some test shots with a lamp of a new pose I was working on but he's amazingly effective - I can even get him stood on his back legs reaching up and adjust his limbs in sequence. Of course, I now want one of each of our resident nightmares done like this - best get some more baubles in !

This last has to be my favourite shot so far, stretching up - that shadow makes me grin every time I look at it :) In my next post I'll get into more detail of how we did it, then in the new year drawing should start in earnest of Stephen in action...

Pointed

 After much faffing about, I've finally picked out the next group of photos to work from. I'm scaling up slightly from the recent insect studies so I can do justice to this set taken by me at Spurn Point a few weeks ago.

 My personal favourite is the one above- looks to me like a small, rather astonished rabbit :) That amusement aside I love the contrasting texture between the weathered wood and smooth pebbles.

 I've ordered in more of my beloved Fabriano Aristico, because there really is no comparison with other papers when you want crisp, fine detail and high contrast. I'll be working in charcoal pencil again and posting updates as the drawing progress.

I'm reckoning on a series of three and the two colour pics here are potentials for the next piece but that might depend on just how crackers I go with all those pebbles.....feel free to remind me that I thought it was a  good idea at the time !

Waspish

 After all the excitement of putting some of my bigger pieces on sale, it was back to the drawing board for my latest wildlife picture. This time it was a wasp that had caught my eye- but no ordinary wasp :)

 She's a netelia producta, or an orange caterpillar parasite wasp to you and me, that we found in our garden in Cornwall. One of those creatures that is so beautiful you feel positively inadequate just looking at her....

 She was also very cooperative and posed for several photos before flying off. I'd sold a  set of three insect studies which left me with, er, none so she got bumped up the queue for my next effort. 

Once again she's done in charcoal pencil on Langton hot press watercolour paper which has a lovely smooth surface. I worked an hour a day and took photos as I went along to share with you. 

Because she has such a dark body and white legs,  had to fill in the background to a greater extent on this one to provide contrast. Normally, I add just enough to give the image context but madame had to be difficult at some point, didn't she :)

Here she is after the final tweaking - and she's now available to buy here :)

Portrait of Stephen

 As promised, a follow up to my last blog post on Stephen - this time, a bit more about his fantastic face. 

One of the reasons he took so long to complete was the difficulty I had getting his head right. In my dreams, he was always coming out of a dark space and it was hard to see clearly because of the angle of his body.

 I also kept trying to make him too human but as you'll know if you read the last post, he only started out that way. It turns out his eyes and mouth had grown over, healed up if you like because he just didn't need them anymore. He moves like a spider so he gained a set of arachnid eyes which are somewhat creepily dotted around his jaw- when he has all eight hands on the floor that means they are looking forward and slightly down so he can see where he's going...or what he's eating. Not that we want to dwell to much on what that might be.

 He now has a soft mouth in his throat so those feeding arms can post things in easily. I've never heard him speak so am guessing he's lost his vocal cords too. In fact, the only sound I associate with him is the soft patting noise of clammy palms on the wall....