Etching Sketches

So this week in Printmaking, we started copper etchings. As it is the month of Halloween, I mean October, I decided I wanted to do monsters. The first week of school I came up with the idea of doing a pananggalan woodcut, thinking a skinny vertical format would be useful when I finally send work to White Wolf. Now though, I'm doing it as an etching and considering doing a werewolf for the woodcutting.

Keith first told me about the pananggalan, though he didn't know the word at the time, and I've had an interest in them since. He had combined it with an old story about a woman with a (sometimes green) red ribbon that, when removed by her husband, made her head fall off. A pananggalan is a Malaysian vampire that removes its head and entrails, then flies around drinking the blood of pregnant women and children. When it returns in the morning to its body, it needs to soak its guts in vinegar to shrink them back down so they fit.

A couple weeks ago, I bought my very first World of Darkness book (Night Horrors: The Wicked Dead,) and it actually included a pananggalan among some other cool vampiric creatures from around the world. It also had artwork by Michael J. Williams, an alumni of Kendall who has visited a couple times to teach the digital classes about Painter. The book has great info and has been giving me great inspiration.

The first one was a bit too tight and medical-bookish.

For the second one I extended the intestines, as pananggalans use them to grab victims, and it adds more movement to her floating.

This is the version I went with, though it received a few more tweaks so most of the intestines are actually connected. Pananggalans only have the esophagus, stomach, ad intestines connected, so I removed the extra organs.

Some of my previous printmaking work got handed back, so if I remember to bring it home this weekend, I'll scan some of it.


Ref for organs in first sketch: TurboSquid
Ref for face: so-hood-stock