WHY ALIENS ALL OF A SUDDEN?

Greetings Earthlings!

I Feel like I need to explain the slight detour from my usual subject matter. Despite the fact it still involves imaginary creatures, aliens might seem a little bit of a change from my usual.

I also want to point you to my first public Mysterious Corner Post about the new book from a few weeks ago HERE.

Us creative types always have a very long list of projects that I want to get stuck into at some point. I will never get to the bottom of this list, which is very frustrating, but such is the lifespan of us human beings, there’s a limited amount of time we have to create things!

Maybe venturing in to the realms of Sci-fi might be a little risky, since those of you who have followed my work over the past few years since I made my first Strangehollow book will likely be big fantasy genre fans. However, for me at least, Sci-fi belongs in that genre too.

WANTED started off having a working title of ‘Mugshots’. I have always loved the really old daguerrotype photos of criminals and gangsters from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Some of them have SUCH swagger and style which I love. I really fancied the idea of creating a collection of mugshots of various criminal alien characters. Matt then made the excellent suggestion that it should instead be called WANTED and show the characters who hadn’t been caught yet. This worked much better with what I had in mind.

Don’t Miss The Launch!

If you haven’t yet signed up to get notified over on Backerkit, then now is your chance. Head over to THIS LINK HERE and make your interest known.

A New Character

I’m introducing another alien this week! I am trying to be careful about when I share these things as I won’t be revealing all the aliens before the book launches and it’s no fun if you get to see it all before it’s finished, right?

Introducing Pardy Durr. Wanted across the galaxy for teaching illegal dance moves! This one was SO much fun. Matt came up with the idea of the name after thinking pas de deux would work as an alien name if it was spelt differently. I’m still not sure about the spelling yet, but it works to let the reader get the right pronunciation I think!

First Pass

The first stages of this painting were to get going on the unitard. Turns out painting spandex is A LOT of fun. I might have to do a whole book of creatures/people wearing spandex? Hmm, not sure, would that even be appealing?

Anyway, red is a pain in the bum for some reason, it lifts REALLY easily and doesn’t seem to stain that well, I mean it DOES stain, but it really likes to bleed and lift if you paint over it. I’ve used a mix of Daniel Smith’s Opera Pink, Deep Scarlet (a favourite) and Permanent Red. Oh and a touch of Holbein’s Mineral Violet (another favourite).

Here I just got into describing his form with the wrinkles and seams in the ridiculous outfit.

Got started on the skin and started building it up to give you the impression that he has bones and a skull!

Describing The Form

More sculpting of the face, wasn’t sure about the mouth at this point, it didn’t convey his personality enough. Began to add colour to the flash on his chest (a nod towards Flash Gordon, probably my favourite Scifi movie of all time).

He looks a little uninvolved in what his body is doing here, have to change that mouth! I also began adding some background (again very simple as with all the others using granulating pigments).

Yes, I am a ridiculous person. But how else was I gonna get the mouth right? I think this works ok, although he is a little creepy due to no nose, but hopefully the rest of him will make it giggle worthy.

Here he is scanned in and finished!

Imagine the dance moves you could do with two extra arms? I realise that this anatomy wouldn’t actually work in real life, but shhhh, this is just for fun 🙂

I hope you enjoyed!

Emily

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