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M0AI — Yog-Sothoth Wizard
Published: 2010-04-11 21:05:45 +0000 UTC; Views: 19875; Favourites: 393; Downloads: 1147
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Description
Here is a character I did for my last freelance job. They appear in Kobold Quarterly 13, which is out now! They are members of the cults of various gods from the Lovecraft mythos, but they must also function as possible player characters, so they couldn't be totally nasty and occult.This is a female wizard of Yog-Sothoth. Yog-Sothoth is a pretty epic and strange being, both embodying and separate from the universe. He (it?) wants to break back into the universe, and its cultists try to help it with that. Not all of its cultists know who they are serving, however, since Yog-Sothoth also masquerades as some more harmless deities. Keys and gateways are symbols of Yog-Sothoth, so I incorporated those into the design. She wears a vale (I forget what it's official name is) that allows her to see the future/the truth, or something like that.
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Comments: 25
My first thought about this picture that was Lavinia Whateley from "The Dunwich Horror".
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By now your comment is super old too, but I dig it too!
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I am a devotee of the great Outsider. Great is his wisdom and terror. These keys represent the summoning that will shatter the universe with his entrance. These stars map the new constellations he shall bring forth. And this veil...allows me to see the future. Or the truth, or something like that. Look, I haven't been a devotee of Yog-Sothoth all that long, okay. I have three magical things that would, you know what, they would totally destroy your mind if I used even one of them on you. So don't give me that look.
Idiot.
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Don't mind him. He's been hitting the Yog-Sothoth pretty hard lately.
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Okay, this may be my favorite of your recently posted pieces, and is definitely my favorite of the three recent KQ images. Just digging everything about this one...The intensity of the expression (anyone remember the Afghan refugee from that Nat Geo cover?), the eye color reflected in the veil, the repeated angular key motif (it's like a geometrical subset of the hyperpyramid depicted on her forehead), the "swaddling"-like bandages, with their mendicant, leprous, and bondage overtones...And yet my favorite elements are, once again, perhaps the most unlikely: the banded wood of the walking stick, and the gradient of her cape in the way it fades into the esoteric astrological symbols (also echoing the color scheme of the eyes/veil), with its implication that vast starry deeps are contained within the knowledge of her cult. This motif resonates for me in a very Lovecraftian way on a couple of different levels: the old "When the Stars are Right Again" adage predicting the rise of Cthulhu from sunken R'lyeh, and also the Starry Wisdom Cult of the Shining Trapezohedron associated with Nyarlathotep's "Haunter of the Dark" avatar. Okay, maybe neither of these elements are directly related to Yog Sothoth, but overall they add up to a seamless integration of Lovecraftian mythology.
I was puzzling over the hyper-tetrahedron depicted on her veil and then double-checked my depiction of it in the old "How to Get Eaten by a Preternatural Monstrosity" gag--D'oh! Sure enough, I left the figure incomplete in my rendering. Here, it would be a bar crossing from upper right to (far) lower left. But, on the other hand, I like the fact that the sigil is incomplete; as though finishing it might lead to a fully potent symbol and perhaps an inadvertent summoning or invocation of preternatural powers. It also reminds me of something I saw in one of the CoC supplements that struck me as really diabolical: the symbol of some Asian Lovecraft cult that had disfigured the Yin/Yang symbol by depicting it with the white dot missing from the black "teardrop." As though they retained the presence of light in dark, but omitted the presence of dark from light...That struck me as quite sinister and malevolent in a very subtle way.
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Thanks again, Tom! Once again, I'm loving your interpretations of the various motifs and details that I chose here. I was very excited when the star chart cloak idea occurred to me; it was one of those "By gum, that's it!" moments.
Your comment on the Afghan refugee girl is spot on. In fact, I put a lot of my ideas for another character of mine from my Earthblood world into this character. This other character is a female cultist, covered with layers and layers of robes, each one stitched with arcane sigils, and having an intense glare based directly on that very NatGeo cover girl. As you can see, many of those ideas made it into this design.
Thanks again for your help with hypergeometrical symbols and such when I was designing these! Funny how it made you realize that you had goofed on one.
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Nice sensitive painting. My favourite part (because I'm weird) is the robe hanging down from her outstretched arm.. that's some lush colouring and mark making there.
Stunning eyes!
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You just pointed out my own two favorite parts of this painting, Mr. Purdy! I ought to post a closeup of those eyes somewhere. I painted some details on there that just don't show up in this view (a bright blue ring around the iris, for example).
To get that color variety in her cloak, I pasted a photo texture of sand underneath her, modified it so that it was the general tone that I wanted, and color picked from that. I loved the color variety I achieved with that method.
Thanks so much, man!
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I da man!
Yeah please do whack up a higher rez version of her eyes matey.. that would be cool to see.
I might nick that colour picking technique!
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My Isle of the Lost painting was the first time I used that color picking from textures technique, I think. The pixel noise creates nice color variety!
You are da man!
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I love this one! I love the cloak that is made of stars, her eyes are so expressive and what I love the most is that she is so realistically proportioned! One fault to me anyway is that her hip seems to be at a different angle to her shoulders.
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Thanks! I'm glad you girls are approving of the way I painted her.
As for her hip, I only very loosely sketched in her figure underneath the cloak, so there may be errors there. However, there is a slight twist to her pose, and there is perspective to consider (we're more level with her shoulders and head, but looking down at her feet), so that should explain some of it.
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Great hands and I love the idea of her robes. Her design is very fresh! Awesome work!
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Thanks, Grace! I was pretty happy with how those hands turned out, myself.
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niiice .. I REALLY like the little detail of the key tines coming off of the arrow leading to the bridge of her nose.
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Thanks, man! I'm very glad someone noticed that little detail.
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It's refreshing to see your take on women. Nice work!
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It is? But...but...but...I went out of my way to show a boob!
Thank you! I'm glad you like this one. It's my personal favorite of the three.
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A little boob never hurt anyone. 
Anyway, She is my favorite too. <3
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I think we're united in our annoyance at improbably nude, impossibly-proportioned action babes. Though I am quite fond of Frazetta's girls...
Thanks again!
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also I love that cloak!!
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