Okay, progress on this.
You may remember that the original plan was to cover a balloon in paper mache, then cut off the bottom to give a flat surface, and sculpt over the top of that.
Disaster.
With the bottom of the shape cut off, the paper mache just couldn't hold the weight of the clay and the whole thing folded.
Was thinking of folding the whole thing, but then came across this cheap plastic bowl i had stored away. It looked almost the teardrop shape i was after, albeit a bit taller than i'd have liked.
But, what the hey, lets give it a go.
It was strong enough to take the clay, so i whacked it on, all the while thinking what i'd have him look like.
This is where Wells' being vague and rather contradictory doesn't help at all.
The shape was easy enough, being "A big, greyish rounded bulk" and, at the front seems easy enough, being "... huge rounded bodies - or rather heads - about four feet in diameter, each body having in front of it a face".
The face is described variously as "This face had no nostrils... but it had a pair of very large, dark coloured eyes and just beneath this a kind of fleshy beak".
That beak was "... a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim of which quivered and panted and dropped saliva."
Lovely, descriptive stuff, but then we get a contradiction to the mouth being lipless with "... peculiar v-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip".
Okay, with all the above i had an idea what to do and i knew from before that i'd have a problem making a v-shaped mouth as you basically end up with a smily face. I got round that before by making the upper part much more beak-like but this time i thought i'd actually invert it and have the v upside down.
HG contradicts himself again with the skin being "greyish" then "... there was something fungoid in the oily brown skin". I liked the idea of fungoid skin so deliberatly detailed it up more as some sort of growth rather than bare skin. Last thing was to put in two beads for eyes.
Next up, a coat of Bleached Bone to start with, then a very watery wash of Burnt Umber after to try and add mottling to the detail i already had on.
