I actually finished this a while back but neglected to upload onto tumblr, sorry!
I think it was mostly from disappointment, that I had a grand idea but couldn’t quite bring it into reality. I was trying to capture the scale and awe that I felt when I first watched Neon Genesis Evangelion and the Mass Produced EVA angels.
(I live! hahah, in all seriousness, I took a break from model kits for a bit)
Beast Liger (custom, Zoids Wild)
Ive had a few of the Wild Kits hanging around but hadn’t really built or looked at one just yet. Decided to start with the most recent kit I have, the Beast Liger. And it’s very nice, I really like the ‘modular’ design, where you can have it naked or armoured, depending on what you like best.
(naked Liger looks like a disgruntled Mole Rat, fyi)
The gimmick is pretty cute too, the main claw assembly on its back flips forward and flicks its gold claws. It’s just an easy, pleasant build and an aesthetic thats 100% my jam.
of course I had to paint and detail it, using a mix of metallic underlay colours and then a coat of holographic powder to get that funky dichromatic colour change.
Here she is, the life size humpback I painted for Richnerstutz and Zurich Zoo. For some more info on this monstrous project, see my previous post on the subject. In full view one can appreciate the beautiful colouration that adorns many a humpback on the Southern Hemisphere. Unlike their northern cousins, which tend to be mostly black with white pectoral fins, southern humpbacks often have extensive white markings that stretch up from their belly all along their flanks, as well as white eye patches. In extremely light individuals the eye patch is connected to the shoulder marking, and the white sides may almost meet on their back. Nevertheless the upper side of their pectoral finds tends to be black, while the underside is white.
Added are some close ups at full size, showing part of the rostrum with whiskers atop every tubercle, barnacle scars and dozens of living examples; a close up of the sides dotted with scars of healed cookie-cutter shark bites; and a fluke which bears the marks of not only barnacles and sharks, but the sharp teeth of killer whales too. And lastly, once more the eye and her little black-stained ear opening.
The practice of using cheese for divination is called tyromancy and can be done when making cheese (the shapes formed when separating curds and whey) the marbling on cured blocks or even using the hole shapes of cheese over text or documents.
It’s ridiculous but more entertaining than using an RNG or tossing a coin to decide something.
Next entry in my Bird Omens series, we’ve got the Dukes of Hazard(pay): Hastur, Dagon, and Ligur in the form of a black-backed seagull, an egyptian vulture, and a magnificent frigatebird. When I was talking to Kyu about possible bird options we knew Hastur had to be a gull because He Scream At Own Ass, but they suggested that Dagon had to be a fellow “bin chicken” to go with Beez which I LOVED, and Ligur is just fabulous. Frigatebirds have MONSTER BIG wings its amazing.
I wanted to do another mega constellation for the Dukes of Hell to match their Archangel counterparts, and I chose to go with Draco, for its obvious double-connotation; draco/dragon/drakes being able to breathe fire, but also the regality of Dukes.
All are crowned with infernal pearlescent red halos. I also created something I’ve affectionally named ‘Bastard Ink’ — I had pearlescent shellacs that were almost dead from my model kit paints and I thinned them out (heavily, so I didn’t just eat through the paper) into an ink I could use to make Dagon’s scales pop, and rather like its subtle sheen that is pretty amazing in person.
This piece also was an exercise in effectively utilising alternate greys. Also, man, hell should invest in laser printers look at all that running ink from all the leaks… And mould. And heaven knows what else.
There are three (planned) pieces left to go now for this series of Bird Omens: Adam & the Them, The Horse[birds], and Shadwell & Madame Tracy, all with some very fun birds picked for them!
It’s super fun and rewarding doing this series and I’m incredibly honoured by the comments and tags I’ve seen — I hope you all will enjoy the next ones too! All of these are planned to make a single horizontal pan image with how they flow, and I am also looking into possible metallic print runs for some of the individual characters as I’ve had a few people ask about it 💕
Next entry in my Bird Omens series, we’ve got the Big Guns of the angelic choirs: Michael, Uriel, and Sandalphon. We have a secretary bird, a luzon bleeding heart, and a golden-crowned kinglet respectively. The suggestion to make Sandalphon the absolutely smallest but angriest bird possible came from my dear @kyuofcosmic, and it’s resulted in a lot of tower of babel jokes, along with dustbathing in ashes. He’s also going featherbald and has plated the lining of his beak in silver. No teeth to do a silver cross on, so it’ll do.
I knew I wanted Michael to be a secretary bird as soon as I started the project, given their prowess, but Uriel was a bit harder to match up; Uriel is often given epithets like ‘archangel of salvation’ which made it a conscious choice to use a bird that seemingly looks like its just thriving post stigmata. That and I just love them, they’re a fantastic bird.
As for their constellation(s), I chose Eridanus as a joint constellation instead of individual ones, as it ties into the holy-water aspect rather well, and the archangels do enjoy being quite large and foreboding.
Except for Sandalphon. Sandalphon is 3 ounces of whoop-ass and preens for God.
All are crowned in bronze halos.
(Also please enjoy a bonus shot of my cat deciding she needed to ‘help’ me by stealing pens.)
Adam and the Them, or the mirror piece to this which will feature the Dukes of Hell are up next as both are thumbnailed, just got to do their respective sketches!
Next entry in my Bird Omens series, we’ve got our resident witch and witchfinder — Anathema and Newton.
I knew out the gate I’d want to make Anathema a crow when I started this series, friendly familiars to witches and all, but it also meant I could get this wonderful dichotomy going with Newt being an albino raven. Figured the one poor soul who wants to be a computer programmer but always blows computers up would be a pretty special bird!
Given they’re both non-celestials we’ve got no halos, so I opted to do a starry sky with some nebulae using a technique of spraying ink and layering pigment with copic markers over the top. Even broke out the coloured inks for Newt to soften off his lines given his colouration. Anathema’s feathers were built up like Beelzebub — no black used on her at all, only in the background circle, because colour theory is hella cool.
Lots of new tech in this given I’m still re-learning after a few years and very fun to do.
It’swhatAJCrowleywouldhavewanted (his own spy movie where he saves the world and gets the girl to spend the rest of eternity with his forbidden angel love)
Next entry in my Bird Omens series, and its our resident ol’ nice demon Crowley. I wanted to avoid corvids for him for a few reasons. Firstly, there’s a super lovely Korean artist named eggcatnap who has their own Bird Omens series where Crowley is a corvid and Aziraphale is a dove so I didn’t wish to step on their toes, but secondly, I really wanted Crowley to be a bird that could be so over the top and dramatic.
So a lammergeier/bearded vulture was a very apt pick. Beautiful, beautiful old world birds.
They are actually black and white, but they bathe in red dirts/muds in territorial displays, and I mean it makes him pretty as, heh, hell. Let’s be real he does it to look nice for his owl-husband Aziraphale while also staking claim to Earth.
He has a silver halo (not infernal, he’s his own thing lets be real,) and Corvus as the constellation association.
I suspect Newt and Anathema will be up next! Got a good idea to sketch out for them, along with the rest of our angelic and demonic cohorts.
