GWO HO HO

This is a colored pencil sketch of Ighoude the Plague emerging from the shadows. I drew this for an open-ended six-hour drawing assignment for my spring 2010 art class.

For the most part, I'm happy with how this came out. I drew it because I wanted to improve on my previous color illustrations of this jolly undead beast, especially since I now know much more about goblin shark facial anatomy (specifically, the mechanism by which their jaw can protrude and retract). Furthermore, it was a chance to hint at how amorphous his body can be--note the fleshy pseudopod extending from his index finger through his rostrum (that's the term for a shark's snout, if you didn't already know).

I tried to make the lighting realistic, and I used a photo of my own hand taken under high-contrast light to make sure I got the shadows right. However, the shading of Ighoude's face is far from realistic. This is mostly because I fear that casting deep shadows on his face would obscure his facial details and expression. Therefore I chose to compromise realism a bit for the sake of clarity.

You can see a few flies dotting the background if you look closely. I would have drawn more of them but I ran out of stamina at that point.

The faintly-visible smog streaming from Ighoude's back is one colorful (read: disgusting) aspect of him that I haven't discussed in previously-submitted images, so here goes. The smog is a cocktail of heated gasses generated from his body's perpetual decomposition. The chimney-like tubes on his back serve to channel and expell these biproducts of bacterial activity, mostly to prevent massive internal hemorrhaging. Yes, this is as gross as it sounds. Ighoude is a character who revels in being as physically revolting as possible.