Out of the Depths

Tóbal returns to our pages with this collection of South Seas specimens. The juvenile Fiji mermaid gaff is great, but once again it's the accessories that make the whole set.

Faux Turquoise Tutorial

Lucy at CraftBerryBush brings us this great little tutorial for making faux turquoise. It's hard to imagine two groups of fandom more dissimilar than Lovecraftian propmakers and polymer clay jewelry makers, but they've developed some amazing techniques for reproducing the look of semi-precious stones. Just the kind of thing that's ideal for all manner of amulets and occult artifacts.

Cthulhu Fhtagn! Broers Edition.

The prolific Joe Broers brings us this miniature Cthulhu idol based directly off of Lovecraft's original sketches. It's a smaller version of one he's been offering for a while.

The Necronomicon

Mille Cuirs brings us this outstanding take on the Necronomicon. Most of the "Evil Dead" influenced tomes that try to depict a face on the cover look silly, but this is at a whole other level. The cover is hand set leather with a glass eye.

Cthulhu Fhtagn! Cryptdidical Edition.

Cryptdidical brings us this highly stylized Cthulhu idol.

In his comments about the sculpt he's pretty harsh on himself, rather unnecessarily so. He's assuming that clean lines and a smooth finish equates with simple, when it's anything but. As I've mentioned before, the use of heavy surface textures can cover up a multitude of sins in the base sculpt. It's one of the reasons I like using so much texture in my own work. I'm not good enough at capturing foundational anatomy, so I fall back on imparting an impression of greater detail with surface treatments.

Conversely, a clean sculpt like this is very, very hard. There's nothing to distract the eye from small flaws in the figure's symmetry and proportions.  No, it's not perfect, but it manages to capture the identifiable form of Cthulhu with flowing forms and a few inscribed lines.  That's no small achievement.

Making a Quick and Dirty Fiji Mermaid

The talented Allen Hopps brings us this tutorial on creating a Fiji Mermaid gaff using an off the shelf skeleton and the plastic wrap corpsing technique we've discussed before.

The Innsmouth Taint

Joel Harlow is an incredible artist who has done makeup and design work for a variety of blockbuster movies. Earlier this month he was part of the 20th anniversary celebration for the Cinema Makeup School in Hollywood. As part of the commemoration he designed and executed a special project- a Deep One from H. P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth".