I have a great time drawing creatures from Lovecraft’s ever expanding Cthulhu Mythos. With one exception. The Great Race of Yith, a species of time traveling entities, is just plain goofy looking.
The creatures in many of Lovecraft’s stories are only described vaguely. He usually only suggests what something looks like and then lets your imagination fill in the details. Two species that he describes in great detail are the Elder Things in At the Mountains of Madness and the Great Race in The Shadow Out of Time. I love the Elder Things. They have a wonderful fivefold invertebrate design that’s fun to work with. The Great Race? Gah. I’ve done illustrations of them that I like but I can’t seem to make them look cool. And scary? That’s beyond my meager talents.
Scary? Maybe not. But cool looking? Yes.
That’s nice to hear. I’ll stop complaining about not being able to get them right then 🙂
I have been grappling with this for months myself… came across this post in a search for answers and ideas. I think I’m going to start looking at goose barnacles and limpets for inspiration at this point.
Adam –
I have to assume that the Great Race are (at least in this form) some sort of mollusk. Beyond that it gets tricky. Are you illustrating them for a specific project? Or just the challenge?
Crudely drawn webcomic. Great Race of Yith shows up in Chapter 7, so sometime near August or thereabouts. I just want to be ready when I get to that chapter, and my protagonist will be getting his hands on a Yithian communicator in later chapters, so I’ll need to have a reusable design.
Cool. Thank you for the link! I look forward to reading this.