Warlock Staff

During the Easter weekend, Elf Fantasy Fair takes place in Haarzuilen, The Netherlands. I will go dressed as a warlock. I already had a costume that will do fine (a black hooded monk robe I bought for Halloween), but a warlock needs an evil looking staff! I already made a dragon skull a while ago, this will go on top of the staff. The staff itself will have screaming faces embedded in it (captured souls!), eyes and evil runes. Let's get started!

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Coptic sketchbook

A while ago, I made a Necronomicon-style sketchbook. It was a pretty easy project, because I used a store bought blank sketchbook, all I did was modify the cover. Now I'm taking it a step further by creating a sketchbook from scratch! This will be my first attempt at actual bookbinding, all my previous projects focused on custom covers, and not the book itself. My biggest inspiration for this project was "It's a little like magic", wich features lots of cool tutorials and build logs. The technique I used for binding, the so-called Coptic stitch, is explained in detail in this video. I'm not gonna explain it myself in this tutorial, because the video does a much better job than I could ever do.

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Necronomicon Sketchbook

Here's another project I intend to sell. A while ago, I sold my handbound copy of The Whisperer In Darkness on Ebay. For this project, I tried something different. I used a regular, store-bought sketchbook and modified the original cover instead of removing it and making a new one. And I decided to use the Lovecraft-theme again!
It will be a classical Necronomicon-style book: a face protruding from the cover. Could it BE any more cliché (read this in Matthew Perry's voice)? Probably not, but I'm still a complete noob at this and I need simple projects to build up experience. So here we go!

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Creating a dragon skull

A while ago, I stumbled upon this thread on Haunt Forum, on how to make a dragon skull from a plastic bottle. I wanted to make one for Halloween, but I didn't have any time left. In April, there's another edition of Fantasy Fair in Holland, and my costume will include a skull-topped staff. More on the staff later, now I'm gonna make me a dragon skull!

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Creating a shrunken head, part 1

Something I have been planning to try for a long time is creating a shrunken head. When I first heard about these, I assumed it was just an urban legend, but later I found out these things are actually real. In the past, I have tried making them with paper maché and yarn, but these looked plain and simply ridiculous. But when I discovered this tutorial a while ago, I decided to give that a try.

The procedure is quite simple, actually. First, you create a head using oil based clay. Next, you create a plaster mold. The mold is filled with liquid latex and then emptied again, so the inside is covered by a thin skin of latex. This is repeated several times until the skin is thick enough. It is then removed from the mold and painted. This is, in fact, the same method that's also used to create latex masks!

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Pacman's evil twin brother

One of my stupid new years resolutions: draw more this year! I already got started last december, so I thought I would show off the result a bit. I wanted to start with something simple: Pacman's evil twin brother! The idea behind this is a version of Pacman with large fangs, and hooks that pull his lips back. No complicated shapes, and quite symmetrical.
I started out with a 2H mechanical pencil on bristol paper. I chose this kind of paper because I wanted to ink the drawing, and it's very smooth, perfect for pens. After the first sketch, I drew the final shapes with a 2B pencil. Here's what it looked like at that stage:

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The whisperer in darkness re-cover

After my first attempts at bookbinding, documented in this and this post, I decided it was time for another attempt! My first book didn't turn out so great. I made the hinge all wrong, and the book is almost impossible to open without tearing something. It would still make a fine prop for Halloween displays, so I'm not throwing it away.

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