JPF Home Page Forums Creative Arts Forums Visual Arts and Photography Forum The Dream Quest Project: A series of sketches

Hey Everyone, just letting you all know that I am still alive and drawing. This semester I have a lot on my plate with Poly Sci, American Ethnic Studies, Ancient Art History, Advertising and graphic design and Independent Art studies. For that last class I am working on a semester long project that will incorporate 6 to 7 fully rendered/fully developed creature/character concepts in a series of 2 to 3 epic illustrations depicting scenes from H.P. Lovecraft's Dream Quest to Unknown Kadath.

Anyways thought I would share what I have done so far and give everyone some eye candy. Below each set is the passage description that I worked from.


NIGHTGAUNTS, Lesser Servitor Race.
Shocking and uncouth black things with smooth, oily, whale-like surfaces, unpleasant
horns that curved inward toward each other, bat wings whose beating made no sound, ugly prehensile paws, and barbed tails that lashed needlessly and disquietingly. And worst of all, they never spoke or laughed, and never smiled because they had no faces at all to smile with, but only a suggestive blankness where a face ought to be. All they ever did was clutch and fly and tickle; that was the way of nightgaunts.
— H. P. Lovecraft,”The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath’





GHOULS, Lesser Independent Race.
These figures were seldom completely human, but often approached humanity in varying degree. Most of their bodies, while roughly bipedal, had a forward
clumping, and a vaguely canine cast. The texture of the majority was a kind of unpleasant rubberiness.
— H. P. Lovecraft, “Pickman’s Model’



GHASTS, Lesser Independent Race.
Repulsive beings which die in the light. . . and leap on long hind legs . . . a pair of yellowish red eyes. Ghasts have indeed an excellent sense of smell. . . some about the size of a small horse hopped out into the grey twilight, and Carter turned sick at the aspect of that scabrous and unwholesome beast, whose face is so curiously human despite the absence of a nose, afore head, and other particulars.... They spoke in coughing gutturals.




Shantak-bird:

They were not any birds or bats known elsewhere on earth or in dreamland, for they were larger than elephants and had heads like a horse's. Carter knew that they must be the Shantak-birds of ill rumour, and wondered no more what evil guardians and nameless sentinels made men avoid the boreal rock desert. And as he stopped in final resignation he dared at last to look behind him, where indeed was trotting the squat slant-eyed trader of evil legend, grinning astride a lean yak and leading on a noxious horde of leering Shantaks to whose wings still clung the rime and nitre of the nether pits.

Trapped though he was by fabulous and hippocephalic winged nightmares that pressed around in great unholy circles, Randolph Carter did not lose consciousness. Lofty and horrible those titan gargoyles towered above him, while the slant-eyed merchant leaped down from his yak and stood grinning before the captive. Then the man motioned Carter to mount one of the repugnant Shantaks, helping him up as his judgement struggled with his loathing. It was hard work ascending, for the Shantak-bird has scales instead of feathers, and those scales are very slippery.


And they whispered also that the rumoured Shantak-birds are no wholesome things; it being indeed for the best that no man has ever truly seen one (for that fabled father of Shantaks in the king's dome is fed in the dark).

He slipped wholly out of sight before Carter could speak to him, and sailors later said that he had come with a yak caravan from some point not well determined, bearing the colossal and rich-flavoured eggs of the rumoured Shantak-bird to trade for the dextrous jade goblets that merchants brought from Ilarnek.


GUGS, Lesser Independent Race.
It was a paw, fully two feet and a half across, and equipped with formidable talons. After it came another paw, and after that a great black furred arm to which both paws were attached by short forearms. Then two pink eyes shone and the head of the awakened Gug sentry, large as a barrel, wobbled into view. The eyes jutted two inches from each side, shaded by bony protuberances overgrown by coarse hairs. But the head was chiefly terrible because of the mouth. That mouth had great yellow fangs and ran from the top to the bottom of the head, opening vertically instead of horizontally.
— H. P Lovecraft, “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath’


MOON-BEASTS, Lesser Independent Race.
Great greyish-white slippery things which could expand and contract at will, and whose
principle shape—though it often changed—was that of a sort of toad without any eyes, but with a curious vibrating mass of short pink tentacles on the end of its blunt, vague snout.
— H. P. Lovecraft, ‘The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath’

Good Golly Toby,

These are fantastic -- and I am bound to have some fairly detailed nightmares tonight. I can't possibly imagine keeping up that kind of a course load AND working on these things.

The Nightgaunts, the Ghouls and the Ghasts are especially frightening. The arching and squatting positions are the ones which scare me the most.

You are very talented young man!

Happy Valentine's Day,
Beth

wow !

Man you're the best.

Calvin


http://www.soundclick.com/bands/0/calvinstewart

Beth: Thanks and I hope that you had nice dreams instead of the kind that I often do.

Calvin: Thanks, I don't think I am the best but I do try to be the best. There is always someone out there better than what you can do, so you can either let that produce envy or even jealously in yourself or you can let that raise the bar once more for your goals and thus continue growth in everything that you are.

Tobias, I'm impressed! Great work.

Best, John

Thanks John but this is just the beginning as there will be a lot more coming soon.

Here is another sketch page which is both character and creature.


They leaped as though they had hooves instead of feet, and seemed to wear a sort of wig or headpiece with small horns. Of other clothing they had none, but most of them were quite furry. Behind they had dwarfish tails, and when they glanced upward he saw the excessive width of their mouths. Then he knew what they were, and that they did not wear any wigs or headpieces after all.
— H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath’

Nicely done!

Thanks Mom.


BTW each figure took anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes each which is what my teacher told me to restrict myself to.

Great job... it's really interesting to see stuff in development and it gives us an idea of what goes into something like your finished works. Like music making, it's an ever evolving process of tweaks and adjustments and probably sometimes complete redos. I think some songwriters could learn a bit about editing and rewriting and perhaps we should do a side by side analogy which might be interesting to both songwriters and artists? Might even be a good school project?

Brian

Thanks Brian, you know I think there is something to that. I think if the artist was doing an abstract, surrealistic, or some kind of spontaneous art work then both the artist and musician can do the side by side thing. But illustration and concept work often take a lot of prep time and sketches that don't ever make into the final painting even if they are an important to it. However, I do think that a musician could interpret the progression of an artist's process so that the music evolves with the painting. On the same token though the reverse could also be done with the artist doing the same to the progress of a musician's work in progress if he was doing an abstract type of piece.


Anyways here is a second sheet of my Men of Leng piece. When these creatures go to the city of men they have to disguise themselves so I needed to figure out a good outfit for them.

Another Character concept sketch spread sheet for my Dream Quest project.

Randolf Carter, who is the protagonist of the story is a master dreamer or what he called an old dreamer. Who is well known in the dreamlands, has many allies and know how to survive.

I may do another sheet of Carter so that I can develop him more but I also plan on doing some work on the Crawling Chaos himself.

Well I am sure some of you have noticed my new Avatar. =P don't know if I will keep it yet though just thought I would try something new.

Anyways these next series of drawings are the final drawings of all that brain storm sketching I did. I still have two more final drawings too do and then I am going to start rendering the under paintings for this project.

This is the final drawing for the creatures known as Men of Leng. I only have Randolf Carter to do next I hope to have that done tonight.



By the way been keeping these files sizes real small.

Gosh Toby,

These are great but so scary. I'm going to have nightmares for sure!!

Beth

Thanks, I have nightmares all the time I learned to Lucid Dream though and take charge of them.

Here is one more Final Drawing who is Randolf Carter the protagonist of the story who is also a Master Dreamer.

Uggg I have been running amok just trying to keep up with everything. Last night I spent most of my time just trying to do a video tutorial for a group project at school, then spent time at school doing the underpainting for the Night Gaunt (down below). One of my teacher's at school who has been a fan of my artwork just invited me to join in a one night gallery show in down town Fullerton and he thinks I could probably well sell my work that night. Nothing is set in stone as far as dates but it is suppose to be after this semester so I should have some good stuff for it. Lastly I also have two reports to work on that are due next week plus I need to get the other seven underpainting done soon. I think I will schedule my nervous break down for spring break.

Underpaintings for the Ghouls, Now I have two full papers that I have to get on this weekend.

Excellent work, as always.
You have more talent in one finger than I do in my whole being when it comes to putting images of any kind onto paper, canvas or other similar media.

He gets it from me, Dak!

Here is another Underpainting for the Ghast creatures. More to come soon.

Tobias, your quest for excellence continues to impress me. Your dedication, and development of your skills serves as a positive influence to all of us who get to share and take it in. Do you create to music as well? I am always working on my versatility. As a songwriter I work with co-writers with all different sets of skills. Some are wonderful lyricists but can't write to music, some need the music first. Others are surgeons , best used to fine tune what you've created. I consciously work on being able to write from anywhere in the process. The more i learn, the more i realize there is to learn. There are alot of things i still want to tackle. The creativity you posess i would think can both entertain you and drive you up the wall...ha...anyway, good luck on your projects and thanks for sharing. Might be fun some time to do a little creating in both directions, as an exercise...
Given a sketch/create music ...
given music/create a sketch...
just an idea...between course loads, not on top of them...ha
be well..moker

Thanks, No I don't play music or write it, although I do write Haiku from time to time. I use to have a lot of those little poems somewhere but I think I lost them and I can't remember what I wrote.

One of my classes has now ended and I have gotten through my Mid Terms now, hopefully I have passed, but now this has freed up some more time for me to work on this project so the work should start coming in more frequently. Here is another underpainting.

I am a very happy person right now. First off it looks like my illustration teacher had always intended to enter in my Wonderland piece to the student art show and I have good reason to suspect he is one of the judges who determines what gets accepted. I am going to enter in other pieces and the good news is that I am in good with a lot of the art teachers so they will get passed Politics and look more at my artwork.

My second good news is that one of my teachers is holding a one night art gallery out front on "The Cellar", which is a expensive restaurant and he invited me to participate in the Gallery and said it would be a good way to get some exposure as possible selling some of my work. This is really the first time I have ever been in a Gallery like that.

My Third piece of good news is that I have found my old list of Haiku poems which I thought I had lost like over five years ago. I had thought I lost the only hard copy I ever had and I was desperately looking though all my backup disks to see if I had archived them. I didn't find the archived list but by some great amount of luck I had in fact the hard copy. So stay tuned for about 36 poems, but never fear I won't submit them all at once. Some are a lot of deep thought and some are just silly or humorous.

Fourth, my Advertising and Graphic design class has ended so now I have more time freed up and have less to worry about and more time to focus on my other classes not to mention my Dream Quest project.

Lastly, I am proud to announce that I have been accepted for transfer to Cal State Fullerton so now all I have to do is go to orientation, register my classes, and go to their Financial Aid office for the proper forms. I am really looking forward to go because since most of my general education is taken care of plus some of the boring classes I will be able to focus on mostly art classes. The idea of being totally immersed in art, whoops sorry let me clean up this drool, is very tantalizing since I have to wait till this all goes down in the Fall.

Yes the stress is starting to fall away like fat from a burger at a BBQ. Imagine how :bounce: I will be after this semester. =P

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! I am happy as a Jay for this very fortunate day.

Here is the next underpainting for the Gug. only 3 more to go before I can start color comps.

I know you have probably mentioned it before, but what school do you go to?

Fullerton College, the community college not the university.

BTW here is the Moonbeast underpainting

Men of Leng, Only one more underpainting to go and then some quick color comps and then coloring these paintings.

The last underpainting. Randolf Carter the protagonist of the story. Will be doing some color comps now then head off to colorize these pieces plus add the finishing touches.

With the feedback from my teacher today I went and changed the layout for my creature/character design.

First coloring, So far I like what I have here and I am not sure if I want to push it any further so this might be the final for this creature.

First coloring for the ghouls

Coloring for the Ghasts. These things are not suppose to be able to survive sunlight so I though an albino look would be good. They are also suppose to be the size of a pony or a small horse.

fantastic process here. It's nice to see the progression from pencil sketch to further developments. I'll be watching as often as possible.

Thanks, four more underpaintings to color after which will be followed up by either alternate colorings and then final touch ups.

First coloring for the Gugs

These are impressive, Toby. I applaud (among other things) your ability to sleep at night with these images in your head.

Joe

Thanks Joe, I sleep OK I learn to accept they are nothing but dreams and that gives me power over them.

Sorry for the late reply but we have been having ISP problems, DEATH TO EARTHLINK

Here are the Moonbeasts.

You are amazing Toby ! ! and SCARY ! ! !

Thanks Herbie, it should get more scary once I start the compositions, hopefully.

First coloring for the Men of Leng. Only have Randolf Carter to do now and then final touch ups on all 8 before stage one is complete.

Almost done with stage one. I am now going to do the finishing touches on these character/creature painting concepts. Hopefully I will have this done by Friday.

Randolf Carter

Finished Concepts.

Night-Gaunt

Ghouls

Ghasts


Shantak-Bird

These last images I just put up are the final renderings for the characters and creatures I am now working on the the illustrations that will be featuring these guys.

Love how these are turning out, Toby. Those gugs are really scary and give me the creeps.

Thanks.

Now it is on to stage two of my project and that is working on the illustrations that will incorporate these designs. I wanted to do up to three but looks like I may only have time for one. Down below are some environmental thumbnails that I have worked out with a new technique I learned.