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The corpse gods

Those of you who like to read the Mythos fiction by HP Lovecraft and especially the Necronomicon cycle then you might like this gory pair I'm working on: the corpse gods Humwawa (vulture head) and Pazuzu ('smiling" corpse):
here's a size and art-fuel picture:
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I've never done any gore stuff before I hope I'll be able to make it look horrible enough once I start the the cleanup and detailing stage.

Thanks for looking!
 
That is really cool! The detail is really amazing. Thanks for sharing...and great job promoting Mountain Dew! Big contract is coming for you... I better throw this horoscope away.
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Great sculptures
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What is Mythos fiction?
 
A good word for Mr. Lovecraft- Macabre
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]A good word for Mr. Lovecraft- Macabre
Another good word.... GRIM!
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~no comment~
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And SEASONS GREETINGS to you to0 Swords, mahahahahahaha!  I bet your place is a hoot on Halloween!

H.P. Lovecraft was a strange pulp fantasy writer back in the 40's, a reclusive master of the short horror fiction story.  He created an entire mythology, based on the concept that Earth and Mankind was once ruled by the horrible and Evil Elder Gods (who by the way were responsible for Barry Rice's choices for his Utricularia Cultivars!).   According to the mythos the remmanents of their religion are still to be found today in isolated, closed  Southern communities, fragments of literature in various imaginary museums, notably Arkham Museum.  The Mythos Lovecraft created had its own Rites, geography, history and literature.  One such was the Necromicon, reputedly containing the Rituals used to summon the Elder Gods from the Outer Darkness.   A translation was actually published, and it sits on my shelf next to The King In Yellow and The Greater Key of Solomon (the latter is actually taken from transcripts in the British Museum, but the former is a spin off of the Lovecraft Mythos).

Lovecraft wrote and published over a goodly number of years, and the short stories were all collected and published in various anthologies in the 70's by Ballentine Books.  The man himself died under mysterious conditions I believe - (as did Charles Fort, who collected and kept on file thousands of reported stories of impossible events....hmmm)

These short stories went on to influence a new generation of horror story writers (and a stray PhD or 2), and they in turn took up writing stories in the "Lovercraft Mythos", long after old H.P. died.  There were a number of movies put out in the 70's with the Mythos as their focus.  I liked the scene where the skeptical University professor was telling the class how bogus these incantations were and began reading one as a joke.  Then, he gets caught up in it all, and his face transforms into this twisted mask and his voice is all raspy and glutteral.  The room gets dark and the sky gets funky.....good stuff in an unsophisticated B movie way, but that is appropriate: Lovecraft was not a sophisticated writer.

By todays standards, the creep factor wasn't all that high, but Lovecraft could make it march: he didn't have a lot of space to dilly dally, and he wrote to an intelligent audience so he could be very subtle in the way he communicated his weirdness, pointedly not explaining and relying on the readers imagination to paint in the colors (or should I say, round out the curves?)

If you are into the Lovecraft Mythos, you MUST read the book "The Mind Parasites" by Colin Wilson!

I think you should try a female subject....how about a nice harpy, or better yet...............CAT WOMAN!
 
Thanks folks hopefully I'll have them done being detailed, baked & painted by halloween... but we'll see!

Hi Tam, great quick intro/biography of the mythos and Lovecraft! Does The Mind Parasites fit into any of the "cycles"? (i.e necronomicon, shub niggurath, innsmouth, etc..). The brief & evocative tales from lovecraft and the other "mythos" writers are perfect for me because other fiction puts me to sleep!

Yeah, he he, no girlies yet, however, a pal of mine has just sent me a female skeleton porportional schematic for making armatures so maybe some lovely franken babes soon!
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wow... that sounds interesting. I must read some of those books. (I REALLy hope it's not like w/ sherlock holmes that the first story I wrote totally disappointed me... and it was one of the best ones... supposedly. "the speckled band" or something like that. I mean oh please! training a snake with sound??? PLEASE! I'm SO disappointed! he's supposed to be good...)
anyway, speaking of mind parasites (he he he)
did you know that there are actually a couple of parasites (real life) that make zombees out of their hosts?
there's one worm thingy:
a bird poops and eggs are on the poop--> snail eats poop and eggs --> parasite grows and then hijacks snail's brain--> you can actually see the parasite (brightly colored) moving inside the snail's tentacles --> it makes the snail go to the highest and most exposed place it can (something the snail would never do) --> a bird eats the snail/stail tentacles and the parasite invades the bird.
I'm gonna post a topic about haloween stories :p I'll post the other parasite I know about that makes zombees... but I'm tired now and I STILL have homework to do. UGH! (that's the most horrible of stories)
 
  • #10
One cool thing about Lovecraft mythos is that the stories are most often written as "accounts" or news releases from investigators, geologists, mountaineers, botanists, etc. who come upon the weird cults, icons and creatures from the "Cthulhu Mythos" in different expeditions to the far reaches of the world. This gives the reader a chance to imagine and interperet the things as your mind sees fit. I like the creative combination of science, mythology and horror.

There is a book called the Necronomicon which is thought by some youngsters to be a "real magic grimore for $5.99". It's actually a fabrication by Lovecraft due to an outcry for the mysterious and "cursed" book so often mentioned in his Mythos tales which is the guide to summoning and controlling his ancient Cthulhu gods. The book is designed like an kabbalist ceremonial magic book. But it is simply his attempt at fusing icons of Assyrian, Babylonian,  Chaladean and Zorastarian mythology to his fantasy Cthulhu Mythos to put a more "realistic" face on it. Not unlike JR Tolkiens invention of whole elvish language dictionaries, and encyclopaedias which were imagined out of his love for european & celtic mythology.

Pssst BTW: High elf archer in armor with bow coming soon....!
 
  • #11
Yup, I have that Necronomicon, I just forgot the spelling. Not sure that Lovecraft actually authored it tho, I think probably not. It is a pretty good mock up of the old Grimore style of ceremonial ritual.

The Mind Parasites revolves around the notion that Lovecraft was not just imagining this mythology, and it is a very thought proviking book (although slightly dated now), I grooved on it, and I think anyone into H.P. would take a shine to it.

I loved the way he blended a little truth into his writings, just enough to make you wonder.....

Ummmm, if you didn't like the Sherlock Holmes stories, you might find H>P> a letdown: his works never won any big awards or anything, and he is not regarded with the same esteem as the Author of the Sherlock stories by any means. Still, the books are still in print 60 some years after they first appeared. Not too shabby!

Swords, bring on the babes, but lets not have them decomposing, or with worms or other worse things, y'know?
 
  • #13
In his house in R'lyeh, dead Cthulu lies dreaming.....

Sweet man, shades of "Eddy" in there, somewheres, and a bit of beetlejuice thrown in, it seems... nice work, the exposed viscera looks real nice....

After speaking with ya a few times, Josh, I'm totally going to start out sculpting with none other than Cthulu himself, I've always wanted a figure of him/it but never seen one that looked the way I wanted... I made a great drawing of Yog-Sothoth many years ago that would also make a good subject, sorta of like irridescent bubble gum with claws and fur....
Man, your work is good enought to have lit the fire under my butt, that's powerful man, thanks for sharing...

Oh, and Tamlin... yer a Lovecraft fan too, eh??? Very interesting (you only have to look at Barry's site for a few seconds to see his allegiance, I was most impressed to see the liberal smattering of references...)
H.P. Lovecraft died under terrifically mudane circumstances, actually, he was a super clean living teetotaller who wrote the stuff he did to deal with rather nasty dreams he had since childhood; ironically, he found his work hilarious and "over the top", not really scary at all....
He had cataracts in his eyes and had undergone voluntary surgery to have them removed (in 1937, I believe).... pennecillin not being as prevalent, the great author suffered an infection after the procedure and promptly succumbed.....

Although I've heard many more "mysterious" versions, that is the truth...
And "the necronomicon" (referred to as having been written by "abdul al-hazred", a name Lovecraft used as a child whilst playing with his brother, IIRC) was written after Lovecraft's death, I'm pretty sure.... his strength was in referring to all this weird, dreadful books which didn't exist (Vermis mysteries, Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Cultes des ghoules) and letting the reader sweat the details..... he was truly a funny guy, "The shadow out of time", "whisperer in darkness" and "The Call of Cthulu" and the novel "At the mountains of madness" are my personal faves, soooooo sweet.....


man, I gotta get some sculpey today
 
  • #15
Mabudon, thanks for the kind words! The whole process of learning as I go is fun and I'll share any tips I can to help you get started off right.

Before you even get the  Sculpey make sure you also get Super Sculpey. It is translucent pink and is sold in 1 lb blocks packaged in green and white carboard boxes. Open the flip top box in the store and pinch it, if it's reasonably firm but can be squished it's fresh, if it's really hard and you need to use a fingernail to make a dent in it then it's old stock and will likely crumble while you use it. Unless you buy a tiny bottle of stuff they sell next to the sculpey called "Sculpey Dilutent". This is the plasticiser that sculpey's polymer clay particles are suspended in, it's not water. In old sculpey this liquid has evaporated over time and that makes it very hard and crumbly when you work with it. Just add a few drops of this and kneaded into hard stuff will soften it like new again. Your hands however, will need the rest of the night off! I'll pinch every box of sculpey in the store before I settle for a hard box. You can use a pasta machine or an old meat grinder to help you grind up the hard stuff but don't ever put food in those machines again.

Regular sculpey is very soft and squishy and sold in a variety of colors in 3 oz cubes wrapped in cellophane. It doesn't hold details very well due to it's softness. Super sculpey is firm and will allow you to sculpt and retain the finest of details (including fingerprints) but Super sculpy alone is translucent (and pink) so it's hard to see fine details or misssed fingerprints. Use 1/4 of a black 3 oz cube of sculpey to give you the fleshy sort of color you see above, a whole 3 oz cube gives you a dark grey - too dark for my taste. Any color works the same - just as something to eliminate the translucent quality of super sculpey. Mix it by hand until it's a uniform color and then you've got some groovy sculpting stuff!
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  • #16
Nooooo! Another myth bites the dust. Ahhh, what a way for the master of maddness to end.......

I don't know about being a Lovecraft "fan" per se. I was and am an addictive reader. I read everything to keep from going insane in the Viet Nam era: if I stopped long enough to think I broke out into a cold sweat, so I was either active, asleep, or reading. I read H.P. then. I even read the old "Doc Savage" series by Kenneth Robeson, another mag series turned into paperback form, each one of which was nearly identical to every other.....

Anyways, the topic is really Swords remarkable sculpting talent, so I'll quit rambling.
 
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