Kelpie

This year we set ourselves our own project and are expected to have outcomes every month. This month I decided to illustrate a Scottish fairy tale called the Laird of Morphie and the Water Kelpie, about a laird who tricks a kelpie into carting the stones for his castle. He works the kelpie until it is nearly dead, but keeps his word and releases it once the castle is complete. The kelpie curses the castle and the Laird and eventually the Laird's line dies out altogether. It's a short, creepy story and one of my favourite kelpie tale (second only to Loch Sgamhain).

I've built a diorama of the loch where Morphie finds the kelpie and the horse form and true form of the kelpie, this being the latter. When I finish painting the background of the diorama, I'll take photos of the doll on set and those will be the illustrations. I still have to make a Morphie doll, his wife, his house diorama and the castle diorama. Not sure if I'll get it done for Halloween but we'll see. We have a crit on Monday as a sort of catch-up, so I'll show my tutor and see what he thinks of the whole idea.

Anyway, he's made from a wire and tinfoil armature, has fimo legs and head, cold porcelain fins (I've decided I hate cold porcelain), roving, twine and latex dreads and the seaweed is latex too. His body is just plain cotton fabric I dyed and painted with latex, then hand-sewed on from a pattern I made for him. The little bit of saliva is hot glue and his eyes are map pins!

Hope you like him (: