Sunday, August 28, 2011

Dullahan

Pretty cool prompt I got from a weekly themed drawing club.




Here's the wiki on him: The Irish dullahan (also Gan Ceann, meaning "without a head" in Gaelige) is a type of unseelie fairie. It is headless, usually seen riding a black horse and carrying his head under one arm. The head's eyes are massive and constantly dart about like flies, while the mouth is constantly in a hideous grin that touches both sides of the head. The flesh of the head is said to have the color and consistency of moldy cheese. The dullahan's whip is actually a human corpse's spine, and the wagons they sometimes use are made of similarly funereal objects (e.g. candles in skulls to light the way, the spokes of the wheels made from thigh bones, the wagon's covering made from a worm-chewn pall). When the dullahan stops riding, it is where a person is due to die. The dullahan calls out their name, at which point they immediately perish.

I decided to take a bit of a different crack at him as opposed to just a floating suit of armor or guy riding a horse holding his head.  The point of them was the challenge to draw a randomly drawn monster type that was a combination of things.  Not just a woman, not just a fish, but a mermaid.. or a siren, or harpy or things along those lines.  I loved the theme, and so glad I was able to scrape some time out to work on it.  I feel like I haven't been drawing/painting for my own pleasure nearly enough recently.


It's not the full digital paint that I would really like, but hope to come back to it at some point in the future (:

I'll be updating again shortly to show off my 24 hour manimate film that I did a couple weeks ago :3

3 comments:

Unknown said...

looks great, its a very 'you' theme haha - can't wait to see your 24 hour film!

Amber said...

Haha, well, what can I say, I am always me (:

Ayan Sengupta said...

Awesome as usual. I like the tail...creepy....Waiting for more posts:)