So, the first actual stone item I've made - done just before the Elder Sign below, since this one didn't actually need the dremel given how soft slate is. Softer than I remembered actually, I knew you could leave white lines on it easily, didn't realise how easy it was to properly carve into it though. Neat. That said the dremel came in useful for the writing/markings on the reverse because the shear number would have taken much longer than the few minutes it did.
I tried to give the look of it being a mere fragment of a much larger piece by having Cthulhu only half on it and having the symbols go across the edge. Not sure how successful I was. I also wanted the symbols on the back to look much simpler, but also more like a possible language - more like cuneiform. So for that I went with lots of little dashes in lines, while the front had larger, more abstract symbols dotted between the lines of Cthulhu himself.
Interestingly (to me) the state feels much more fragile to the touch now. Not in that it's cheaper umbra, more that the thinner bits just give the impression of being ready to snap at any moment. I kinda like it, I was expecting a stone piece to have a solid feeling
So, I finally got a chance to try out the new set of diamond engraving tools for my dremel. Didn't have time to do anything majorly complicated, so here's a pebble engraved with an Elder Sign (Lovecraft version).
This is a nice small piece on its own but I'm considering Melting some solder into it to give the impression of silver inlay. Not sure how well that would as u all work, but still.
No, I haven't suddenly got better at prop making - these are all real things (mostly for of around four or five thousand years ago if I recall correctly, though I'm not sure for the larger stones, and the Polynesian shark tooth blade is recent. The thing that looks like beelzebub's head is an auruoch Skull broken in the right(wrong?) place to look creepy as hell. I'll probably base a few items off these at some point.
So, I've decided to start work on my first time of arrange knowledge. And I'm starting small. :D It's really more of a journal. I got some small moleskine notebooks and I've started filling one out in a font I came up with years ago.
So far it has an introduction, a brief explanation on the differences between the different pantheons, a page on Cthulhu (of course I'd start with him), and a page on the Star Spawn. It will eventually have pages on everything I can find on wikipedia that I can be not here to write out. It may take a whole but there's only 64 pages :)
Everything I'm putting in this journal is perfectly readable if you know how, and generally yield does describe the subject matter. See if you can decipher it. :)
Once I've finished writing it I'll probably try and age it a little - though now that I'm thinking of it it might have been smarter to do that before writing.
A piece of the Yog-Sothoth set I'm putting together, it's a fragment of the journal of the man who found it. It's probably rather complete for a fragment, but it tells the story. I'll do a transcript at some point. I actually haven't taken a flame to it, the paper was already cream so I just painted it with diluted lemon juice and held it in front of a heater. That said I may distress it a bit more.
Now this piece I like. Inspired by a combination of this piece by Jason McKittrick ( http://jasonmckittrick.deviantart.com/art/The-Key-of-Yog-Sothoth-280615915 ) and an Obelisk decoration I have at home that was grey stone with white etched hieroglyphs (and coincidentally has shattered in a similar way though I'd forgotten that at the time). The Obelisk point is made from air drying clay painted in layers of black and and grey which I carved into with a scalpel. I then spent a surprisingly long time filling those etchings with night glow fimo. In person the glow is nicely visible with relatively little direct illumination, though my camera only picked it up properly if I'd held a lamp half an inch away then quickly took a photo.
Most of the symbols are fairly abstract but I tried to include eyes and the string of glowing orbs look.
Ignore the US Flag in the background, my housemates doing a Motorised Patriot cosplay.
I still had a bit of the overmixed fimo left over so I figured I'd make this little thing. It's Carter's (I think) combined version of the sign
A bit of gold and baking has helped make this Not suck entirely compared to what I expected but as said before the overmixed fimo has made it rather bland (and I need to sand off a couple of fingerprints).
Since I like the idea behind this one I'll probably redo it at some point t and see if I can make it better but for the first time using fimo(which is surprisingly plasticy) I'm not TOO disappointed.
So the intent behind this was to make a faux jade tablet book - I figured I'd try mixing translucent green and leaf green (as well as a little night glow). Unfortunately, since it's my first time working with fimo, I over mixed it and instead have a perfectly uniform plasticy green. It looked a little better after baking and giving it a gold wash to bring out the inscription, though unfortunately it's also highlighted a couple of fingerprints I hadn't sanded as much as I thought I had. I should I'll have more of the mixed stuff so I may finish the second half in it anyway just so they match, but hopefully next time I can get it to work better.
So I ordered fimo in a couple of colours with various plans on what to make, mainly trying to get a faux jade effect, and possibly mixing in glow in the dark. It has arrived and it turns out fimo comes in much, much smaller packages than I expected! :-D
As an aside, I'd quite like to learn to carve soapstone, either by hand or with a deemed, but it's annoyingly expensive to get a block of the stuff over here
My second Idol, made with more of the leftover air drying clay, it's based off this picture ( http://www.blueworldaquariums.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/deep-sea-hatchetfish-argyropelecus.jpg ) but with teeth added and some other details to make it seem more fearsome and less scared. The three pronged top bit is a detail nicked from depictions of the Historical Dagon who sometimes seems to have had a fleur de lis esque crown on his head.
It makes it look a bit like a pineapple.
It was drybrushed in silver, Rub N buffed gold, then washed black (after an original black wash) and given a gloss varnish - though as with the coins I've noticed a couple of tiny spots flaking off.
Like the others I'm going to produce documents and such and sell it as a collection box
Naturally I had to try this as soon as possible. My first clay statue, basically a blob of air drying clay that I attacked with a scalpel (though the wings were somewhat sloppily added on to cover up the messy back). I painted it in various layers of red black and white (though that's not really visible) which had given it a nice mottled effect that instantly disappears on camera.
Not the best thing ever made but for my first Idol I quite like it :-)
So, I've been meaning of to get into the mythos prop making scene (is that what it's called? A scene?) for a while and having started watching True Detective because of its references to the King In Yellow I was a) reminded that I haven't finished reading it and b) through an indirect chain of thought inspired to make some Yellow Sign Mythos* stuff, so here's some silver coins and a gold medallion from Lost Carcosa.
I bought some Das air drying terracotta clay and after a few miss starts made a simple mold out of some leftover foam and printed out the coins, and made the larger medallion. The coins were drybrushed silver while the medallion was done with rub n buff. Oddly I had no problem with the finish at first but immediately after varnishing I've found its started to chip off in a couple of places, so I'll have to fix that up.
I plan on making accessory docments for this lot and they'll be packed up in a wooden boxband sold as a collection from Miskatonic University
*The King in Yellow was written by Robert Chambers using a couple of names from another guy who's name I forget, it was then referenced by Lovecraft and much later on it was folded into the Cthulhu Mythos entirely by Derleth as Hastur the Unspeakable. However it still exists as a separate series of short stories and some fans are less happy about it being adapted into the Cthulhu Mythos. So the Yellow Sign Mythos is sometimes part of the Cthulhu Mythos but the Cthulhu Mythos isn't part of the Yellow Sign Mythos. It makes Faction Paradox and Doctor Who seem simple.
The Yellow Sign I've used on the coins was made by Kevin Ross for Chaosium role play system. Why would it be on both sides of the country s used in Carcosa? Well it may or may not leave you susceptible to mind control by the Tattered King, so what better way to rule a city?
I really like the tone of the setting, it seems like a more subtle form of horror than the Cthulhu mythos, and it isn't jam packed with grubby monsters that won't to kill you and/or will kill you as a side effect of their unknowable antics. That said, the original book? I've only read a little of it but I'm not quite seeing the hype - perhaps it's an issue of being written for an audience a hundred years ago. However I have just got A Season in Carcosa, which is a modern collection of short stories in the Yellow Sign Mythos, which I find much more readable. Perhaps it's just that I never got the the second act of the play...
