Posted by bzedan on Oct 01, 2021
[Image description for main post image: A slightly down-angle shot of a messy workspace with a printout of several angles of the deer-like skull head of Nowhere King from Centaurworld taped to the wall, in the foreground is a cleaned-up paper pattern for his head.]
As October begins to roll up and I start seeing neat batches of prompt lists for various daily drawing challenges I start favouriting them, planning this year I'll pick it back up again. I loved doing a month of daily drawing challenges in 2018, 2017, 2016 and earlier (that I didn't collect in one place well), but life and other things have kept me from drawing so regularly.
What has caught me this year and last year is the sudden autumn urge to build something big and useless, I guess how other folks desire scarves and crunchy leaves this time of year. Last year I built an Owlbear puppet for a friend and also did a small Harrowhawk cosplay (short sell for the Locked Tomb books: necromancer space lesbians). There was no time for drawing because I was sewing individual feathers by hand to a puppet body, or taking apart a (fake) skeleton to harvest the bones.
This year is looking like a no-draw year as well as I've been monofocusing on Centaurworld on Netflix (animated portal fantasy where a warhorse ends up in a weird silly land, but make it a stage musical). I love the character design, the creator, Megan Nicole Dong, is a pip and you may remember her merpeople comics on Tumblr like eight years ago. When I saw The Nowhere King and his Miyazaki-feeling existential ichor of a body with a stylised deer head I felt compelled to make it.
I don't like purchasing things when I have so much craft stuff of so many kinds on hand so the base is papier mâché and several kinds of homemade clay. I've been working with papier mâché on a sculptural level for ah, over two decades at this point and it's my favourite thing ever (my flour glue recipe is the acme). Making my first moving jaw was exciting and the upcoming big ol' antlers will be as well. Plus!! I am making the eyes light up! Here is a video on Twitter of it! It's a very exclamation mark thing for me. It's the one thing I've purchased so far, even though my partner does lights. I wanted baby's first mask eye light kit since I am 100% awful with electric stuff.
The process photos of something papier mâché are either super interesting or deeply boring so I'm going to skip those here and just end with where it sits now, at the end of September, with lots more but not that much, in the scheme of things, to come.
