project tentacles

For our Visual Arts project this week, we had to design a monster that had four or more tentacles. Whilst it wasn't the first time I'd designed a creature that fit this description, I still wanted to start from the very basics of researching and studying the individual aspects of what I thought I would want to include in my final design. Therefore, I started by collecting a few images with which to study primarily the anatomy of tentacles, but also to draw inspiration from other artist's work.

Here you can see that I have primarily focussed on close-ups of tentacles, as I knew that a firm understanding of how they worked in real life would really help to make my creature seem more believable. I did however explore other artist's work, both which I already admired (such as with the kaiju designs in Pacific Rim) and that which caught my eye whilst browsing the web. I also chose to incorporate in this mood board a couple of the images I found of caterpillars which most affected my final design, and which I will discuss in more depth in a moment.

After collecting my images, I chose to do a few quick colour studies of the photos that most caught my eye, to get used to replicating tentacles in drawings as well as to generally improve my digital painting skills. Here are the two studies I finished, drawn with reference from two of the images I have in my mood board.

After completing these, I now felt confident enough to begin thinking about the way I would approach my own creature design. From the very start I knew that I wanted to step away from my tendency to create very cute and friendly designs, and instead come up with something that was genuinely frightening and monstrous. Eventually I decided to incorporate some bug-like qualities to my creature, as I felt that these kinds of features would evoke a very widespread feeling of repulsion with my audience. After thinking through various different options, I eventually came up with the idea of having a caterpillar-like creature with tentacles for legs, leading me to begin research into the anatomy of caterpillars as well. Very quickly I discovered that lots of species of caterpillar already looked like monsters!

Here are some of the quick studies I did from reference, followed by the initial designs for my creature.

(some features didn't make it into the final design, as I wanted to keep it relatively simple)

After finalising my design, I was finally able to create my final piece. I wanted to really push the fearsome nature of my creature, so I decided to present it attacking a dolphin, as this would also give more life to it and give my audience a bit of a greater insight into how it functions. With this in mind, Here are a few thumbnails I created whilst planning my final piece, followed by the final piece itself:

Ultimately I had mixed reactions about my final piece. On the one hand I was pleased to finish it at all, and am glad that I managed to stretch out of my comfort zone in almost every aspect of the piece (I have very little experience drawing animals, as well as environments, particularly underwater). However, without this context, I don't feel that it's a particularly successful piece. I wanted it to be much more dynamic and display more of a struggle between the two creatures, and to show off more of my monster's long underbelly mouth which is probably my favourite aspect of its design. As such, I intend to focus a lot more on composition in my next project when and where it is needed, so I can really push the emotions and message I am trying to convey with my art.