The Hand of Glory - Part 2

The hand of Glory is finally finished, looking all pretty in its shadow box, and ready to... hang! (BWAHAHAHAHA! HANG! like, it's already been hung? y'know, hand of a hangman? no? someone?)

If you stumbled here first, I strongly recommend you to read Part 1 of this tutorial, 'cause we're jumping to the finishing touches right after the break!

The Hand of Glory - part One

In the good old days where you could be accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake for the simple act of living past 40 years old (Caveat Lector! I may or may not be making this up.), the european continent was riddled with strange and creepy beliefs.

One of those was the Hand of Glory; the mummified hand of a criminal who died at the gallows. It was believed that lighting a candle, made from the fat of the same man, or each individual finger, depending to whom you ask, would plunge a whole household in a deep sleep, which would last until the flame had been snuffed, either with blood or milk.

This made the Hand of Glory the perfect tool for burglars and other sly folks with crime on their minds.

Following the reading of this post by the good spirit behind Propnomicon (Is it a man? a woman? an unspeakable horror? who knows!), I decided to make myself a mummified hand. Not only that, I was also going to make it with some ghetto-ass materials.

Mounting a bat skeleton

Here's a neat video of the work behind cleaning and mounting for display a bat's skeleton.
Beautiful stuff!


via Shadow Manor

On Taxidermy: Concerning Small Mammals

Or: In which the naturalization and preservation of a specimen of Rattus Norvegicus is undertaken.

Whew. Long time no see! Sorry if it seems I have left you behind, with my job at the shoe store and school, I don't have much time to do some crafting. Oh, by the way, if some of you wants to see my lousy progress as a CG artist at school, feel free to take a look here: it's in french, but it's mostly pictures and videos so you shouldn't have any problem understanding.

http://bartdelinterieur.blogspot.com/

Now that this has been taken care of, let's go back to our subject: the process of skinning, preserving and mounting an adult specimen of Rattus Norvegicus, or domestic rat. the whole process will be described with pictures after the jump, but not before since, y'know, rat guts.

Naturalization of Insects - Bis

Hello again dear friends!

It's my pleasure to present you another insect naturalization and framing project. This one is a bit more ambitious; I have inserted 6 magnificent specimens in one large shadow box.

The way I proceeded was the same as in this earlier tutorial: On Mounting and Naturalization of Insects

However, I decided to use a new kind of frame, which is much larger, and opens from the back, not from the front like the first frame I used.

Thus, here begins my marvelous journey.

The Amazing Feejee Mermaid! (From Borneo.)

Here's a picture of the finished product.
I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

If you ever try to follow my instructions and make your own mermaid, please let me know! I'd love to see what I managed to inspire!

For those who landed directly on this post, here's links to the whole tutorial:

Part 1: In which we discuss the flaying of the fish
Part 2: In which we discuss the mounting of the skin
Part 3: In preparation for the application of skin
Part 4: In which we add flesh to the beast
Part 5: In which we finish the job

Here's also a link to a tutorial on how to make the manuscript you see on the left of the picture

If you enjoyed this, please let me know!

Cheers

Taxidermy: In which we finish the job.

Hello again.

This time we'll deal with the finishing touches; coloration, antiquing and wall mounting.

First of all, it is important to support the dry mermaid for the painting process.
I used a wire coat hanger which I bent out of shape and slid under its arms.

For painting the body, I mixed a small quantity of paint matching the fish's color; I used burnt umber, burnt sienna, sap green, black, and gold paint to give a slight shimmer to the color.

I then mixed 1 part paint to 3 parts latex, and watered down the mix a bit so it goes on more easily.

Don't worry if the resulting paint is pale, it'll dry much darker. The great thing with this paint is that it won't be uniform; since it's translucent, there will be some natural variation in the color. This is a good thing if you want a realistic paint job. Also, cover the whole fish, not just the body.

More pictures & info after the jump.

Easy, drugless hallucinations! yay!

These are a series of easy ways to experiment basic hallucinations. I'll try a couple of these in the next days to see how it works out!

via cracked

Taxidermy: In which we add flesh to the beast

Greetings, one and all! We are getting close, dangerously close, to completing the amazing feejee mermaid. This time, we'll see how one can apply a realistic, strong skin to the upper body to make it look like the dessicated flesh of a mummified corpse.

This part is my favorite. It's fun and messy, and doesn't require much talent nor concentration; it's impossible to make it look bad.

To add flesh and skin to some bone or armature, I like to use a combination of materials to achieve maximum strength and realism. For large areas, it's simply a matter of layering. For highly detailed zones, such as the hands or face, it's almost like sculpting with papier mâché.

Read the full tutorial with pictures after the jump.

Steampunk skull - Deuxième partie

Hey there, lovely little bilge rats!

I thought I'd show you the progress on my skull.

Nothing very complicated, I just played a bit with its finish, and removed the crappy ol' single piece teeth and installed brand new, shiny, strong, acrylic choppers.

Here's the teeth before I started:





As you can see, they are the same color and same texture as the skull, they're short, they're cheap, they're made in one piece and our friend mr. skull has a nasty underbite.

This shall be fixed!

To start, I simply dremeled out the original teeth. I used a sanding disk attachement, but some kind of router bit would probably do a great job too.


As you can see, it now looks quite geriatric. I honestly like this; I'll probably by a plastic skull some day and make it look edentate like that.

Once clean and sanded, I was ready to attach the new teeth.

Acrylic teeth, the kind used to make dentures, come in little plastic trays, separating the top, bottom, front and back teeth. Very pratical; you don't have to guess which tooth goes where (although mouth anatomy is fairly simple).

I bought mine on ebay; it cost about 20$ including shipping from china, and I have 6 complete sets of teeth.



I started out with the lower incisors, and gradually covered the whole lower and top mandible by gluing the teeth one by one from behind with drops of hot glue. It's not the strongest bond, but it's quick and easy to use. We'll strenghten the teeth later.



As you can see, it doesn,t look good from behind; In my case, though, it's not a problem, since the skull won't be manipulated much.


Upper teeth done

All glued!

As you can see, I corrected my buddy's underbite. I even gave him a slight overbite, for more realism!


Once this was done, I added 5 minute epoxy between and behind the teeth to hold them strongly in place. Although not necessary, this will add some durability to the skull.

Of course, I couldn't let these teeth all clean and shiny and white looking freshly flossed, when the rest of the skull looked freshly dug up! So I brought out the walnut stain again, mixed it with a bit of yellow ochre paint to tone down the red tones, and got this mix in every nook and cranny of the teeth. I wiped the front clean so they still had a bit of shine, and did a little trick that also gave a smooth, old and dusty look to the skull.

I rolled the whole thing in ashes while still tacky. I then dusted the excess off, and fixed it with matte spray varnish. This step really brings the whole thing together, and can save a poorly done stain job.

Voilà, mes amis! beau comme un sou neuf.


Link to part 1

Framed Spiderwebs

Cobweb from the Art of Darkness posted a very interesting little tutorial on how to frame spider webs.

"A friend sent me a link to Whirled Wide Webs, which sells mounted spider webs. They’re lovely, but a tad pricey for what amounts to a glorified science fair project. With a little practice, you can easily make similar mounted webs for next to nothing.

If at all possible, make sure that the spider is done with the web before you collect it; even though they can rebuild a web pretty quickly it still takes them time and energy to do so. If you come across a really lovely web that’s still occupied it’s probably okay to collect it as long as you don’t keep bothering the same spider over and over again.

Materials:
Spray paint
Stiff paper in contrasting color
Spray adhesive (hairspray will work in a pinch)
Spray varnish or craft sealer
Scrap cardboard
Frame"

Go watch the rest of the instructions at The Art of Darkness!