Merry Christmas!
I haven't done a "holiday" themed mache piece in what feels like years. As I mentioned over on Twitter, I thought I'd end the yearly criticism and make a festive piece. That piece took the shape of the tree demon, Vevryx. Here's a short lore post explaining the project and then I'll talk a bit more about it further down.
<Lore>
Legends speak of a time of year when all the wars and conflicts stop for a single day of peace. No matter what one believes, this time is always sacred and the realm rests for this one day. Still, there exist those that refuse to accept the traditions and seek to destroy the fragile peace for the sake of chaos. When this happens, it's said that the spirit of the Festivus Terror is summoned. A massive tree demon, the creature known as Vevryx is said to spring forth from a single crystalline seed amidst the offenders. Its spindly branches beckon towards a fang-filled maw while rows of multi-colored jewels line its armored trunk. Hanging from the branches of Vevryx are large spherical eye-shaped ornaments. Called "Judgement's Gaze", these round crystal eyes are grown from the souls of the punished that are devoured by the tree. The glowing white eyes pierce through all and cannot be harmed by weapons or magic. The rare red eyes seal the movement of any foe that meets their gaze, rendering them helpless. Finally, the most rare of Judgement's Gaze are the all-black onyx eyes. The empty glare of these dark spheres steals the souls themselves and the more hanging from Vevryx's branches the more the victims. Once it's purged the sinners and restored peace, the Festivus Terror is said to vanish into the ether. A single emerald seed is all that remains with a lone phrase etched onto its surface:
"Adorn Judgement's Gaze... and observe the Festivus."
<>
Spotlight Video:
Vevryx is a medium-sized papier mache sculpture. WIP shots of its development can be found in the Imgur gallery linked here. While not being as large as some of my other projects, this one was fairly complicated and took a few weeks of work to finish. It turns out the biggest challenge was making the branches and applying the cloth skin. I had to use small pieces of cloth and work around both the branches themselves and the glass stones embedded in the trunk. It took a couple sessions to apply the skin. I went with a mix of brown and green shades to keep with the whole tree theme and had to pay extra attention to the undersides of the branches. Finally, I wanted a way to "decorate" the tree so I went with polymer clay eyes with a copper wire anchor and hung them from the branches. I plan on making more "ornaments" so I can switch up the decorating style of Vevryx each year. If I can find some garland or enough lights, that could also be an interesting experiment.
Overall, it was a challenging but worthwhile experiment. I hope to do more with the look of this one and will update here on the site when I do so. With 2020 (finally) drawing to a close, I wish everyone a happy set of holidays and happy New Year! A Retrospective is in the works for 2020 as well and I hope to post that before the end of the year.
Thanks for visiting!
~Zan