Charnel grub
(4 Oct 06)
journal entry -- last night's dreams:
Tunnels again, lit somehow without any visible source, and miles underground. Constant searching for a way up, but without much hope. Something worse lingered below.
Horrible nattering, like cicadas and screams, but just at the edge of hearing. A sense of portent. I'm always unarmed in my dreams.
The worm-beast boiled out from the loose earth ahead of me, and the noise grew shrill and took on a gurgling tone. Saliva dripped from the fangs as the thing threatened with splayed tentacles.
Turned to run, but slipped. A touch from the tentacle burned my skin, left me paralyzed. Creature began eating my leg -- felt no pain. Awoke with a start: whole leg asleep.
The second entry in the Caja project is also completely off the original material. :) It's a Reaper charnel grub, sculpted by Jason Wiebe, who's one of my favorite sculptors. I like nearly everything Jason's done, and I've always been fond of carrion crawlers, whatever they happen to be called. :) They featured prominently in the introductory adventure of the basic D&D boxed set, and that set always brings back warm and fuzzy feelings.
First off, I assembled the tentacles: I lined them up by fit and position, then reamed out the holes a bit and drilled them a little deeper. (I dropped this piece right on its face after I started working on it, and the tentacles just bent -- no breakage. Thank you, Zap-A-Gap!) The only thing the creature didn't have was eyes, so I added them with green stuff. . . .
I started out looking to replicate two things I'd painted previously: the WotC AD&D carrion crawler and the Mordheim mercenary. I wanted grubby earth tones, but an irregular pattern to break up the lumps that make up the creature. I used a yellow-brown that built up to a colder ivory for the brown spots, and a muddy green that built up to a warmer grungy yellow for the green spots. I painted the brown first, then went back and did the green, cleaning up wherever I could.
I've been trying to apply at least rudimentary design and color theory ideas to my miniatures, so I went with a cool but subdued blue for the spines of the creature. I mixed together a dark blue, a cold white, and a neutral gray for the base color, and worked it up to almost pure white.
I wanted the mouth to be disgusting, and pondered other colors before settling on pink. Since the rest of it looked alien, a familiar-looking maw might be still more unsettling. Plus, the colors would be a bright counterpoint to the rest of the miniature. (Throughout the process of painting it, I couldn't help thinking how much it looked like the mouth of my brothers' pug. :) I mixed up a garish pink and a purple, and included just a bit of the base brown from the body to keep things coordinated. I hightlighted it up to pink and washed with a blue/purple a few times before I was satisfied.
Finally, I painted the base in a neutral gray, and did some other touch-up work. I'm quite satisfied with how it turned out, and I think it's a step ahead for my painting skills. The photography is a lot better than my old scanner days, but it leaves a lot to be desired. . . the colors of the miniature are pretty true, but the background is a bright white. Maybe it's my jury-rigged lighting setup. Whatever it is, I'm always happy to hear suggestions: jppatton1@gmail.com.com .
He's also on CMON.
I'm trying to do more commercial miniatures work, so this guy is going up on eBay fairly soon -- keep an eye out, if you're interested.