TRIPOD WALKER by Michael Whelan, week 19 in his LEFTOVERS & PALETTE GREMLINS gallery project.

Painted on the back of a misprinted Dark Tower image that we offer in the website shop. The print is on such a fine grade of heavyweight watercolor paper that I’m loathe to throw it away if there’s any hope of my reusing it for some other purpose. In this case, I was employing the paper as a mixing palette of mostly white, yellow ocher, and raw umber.

The shape suggested by a brush mark made me think of creatures described in Stephen King’s THE WASTE LANDS, long beaked, bird-like things that resemble “walking camera tripods”. The image never left my mind after reading the book.

As I worked on the main painting—which at the time was HARBINGER—I tweaked the shapes here and there, added the legs, and covered some of the splashes that did not fit in with the mental picture in my head.

One day perhaps this sketch will lead to an actual illustration of the scene, which I’m sure should be darker and more hellish than what I indicated in this sketch.

Source: michaelwhelan.com

260 Notes/ Hide

  1. pixxystycks reblogged this from boxesofmold
  2. boxesofmold reblogged this from ki-box
  3. d0g-p1ss reblogged this from bowelflies
  4. pulmonary-poultry reblogged this from mmmskulljuice
  5. phalange-crone reblogged this from mmmskulljuice
  6. fattyatomicmutant reblogged this from mmmskulljuice
  7. mmmskulljuice reblogged this from marsworms
  8. cirnineball reblogged this from marsworms
  9. rendragonclaw reblogged this from marsworms
  10. marsworms reblogged this from demi-shoggoth
  11. demi-shoggoth reblogged this from bowelflies
  12. martyrflesh reblogged this from bowelflies
  13. nodjkqr reblogged this from bowelflies
  14. a-whole-lotta-heck reblogged this from bowelflies
  15. toamstess reblogged this from bowelflies
  16. theartofmichaelwhelan posted this