Wednesday 20 December 2017

Challenge 'Ate' Begins - The Unspeakable Thing Under the Bed



In keeping with tradition, I'll open the Painting Challenge with its first entry. Doing this allows me to 1) play the gracious host, 2) briefly stoke my ego by being first on the scoreboard. (A misplaced sense of moral superiority which is always cruelly squashed by the avalanche of follow-on painters who are far more industrious.)

For this, our eighth edition of the Challenge, the theme is 'Challenge Ate', and so celebrates all things scary, creepy and monstrous. I could easily go off on a tangent on how this could reflect the socio-political landscape of parts of our world today, but lets keep this civil and focus instead on kinder, gentler monsters, such as fire breathing dragons, rapacious werewolves and perhaps even dread Cthulhu.  

Mulling over what I would do for this entry, I thought back to my childhood, remembering what I believed to be particularly frightening and monstrous at the time. I clearly remember having a puppet that seemed quite scary at night, and the moon-shadows of the trees outside my window could be quite unsettling, but the thing that really made me bring the covers to my nose was the thought that something unspeakable could be lurking underneath my bed. 

What could be under there? Was it listening for me go to sleep before it would make its move? If I ran, would it catch me before I made it to my bedroom door? Should I peak under my bedframe to make sure I was safe? Thinking of all these things while peering over the top of the sheets was such wonderfully delicious torture. 

It's a wonder I got any sleep at all during those years.

Anyway, here is a little vignette I came up with as a wink to those macabre childhood imaginations. 

The bed and teddy bear are 3D prints from files I found on Thingiverse. The bedlinen is tissue, soaked in diluted white glue, while the lone slipper and tentacle were mocked-up from milliput sculpting putty.



As I was pressed for time, I decided to paint this in a fairly straightforward greyscale effect, with only the tentacle being in colour. I would have preferred to experiment with a few more ideas I had, but considering the time constraints I'm fairly content with how it turned out.





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So, with the opening entry out of the way I welcome you all to Challenge 'Ate'! 


I look forward to posting any entries that come in from now until New Years Day. Remember to leave your posts in draft form on the blog and send me a note when you have something ready to go 'live'. 

The gates are open - let's see your work! 


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42 comments:

  1. Love it! Very "Monsters Inc". A great way to kick things off mate.

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  2. Excellent...let the madness commence!

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  3. very evocative (and yes I'm using all my big words for this challenge)

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  4. A very nice and appropriate start

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  5. Very fun Curt! Great start!

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  6. Top drawer start! I think the muted colour scheme works perfectly to evoke the feeling of dread....

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  7. Fantastic work, Curt - and a great starter! Good luck, everyone!

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  8. Great one Curt! Let the mayhem begin.

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  9. The tentacle makes me think of the CRA for some reason...

    Great stuff dude, and you continue to impress with your fiddling on 3D printers!

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  10. Great to get the competition started .....

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  11. Lovely little vignette!
    Best Iain

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  12. Woo hoo!!

    Awesome piece Curt, very evocative. I remember I was so scared of having a foot or an arm leave the protection of the covers at night!

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    1. I remember having the same thoughts as well. ;)

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  13. Awesome i just love it nice start

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  14. Really lovely star for the Challenge!!!

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  15. Nice one Curt! What a great start.

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  16. Love it! That is a really nice little piece to kick things off

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  17. Excellent work, Curt! I really like the Maurice Sendak vibe the pallet evokes...not sure if Sendak did Ccthullu though! ;)

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  18. Clansman, a really nice way to kick off the Challenge! As a Non-painter Follower, it is always great fun to see the collective imagination of all participants, and recapture some of the boundary free imagination of childhood. To all a fun Challenge!

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  19. What no blood streaks from someone beeing drawn under the bed and consumed? Nice work Curt, just not as dark as it could have been :-)

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    1. I often find in these scenes that less is more. I think it's the unseen that provides the tension. I was actually tempted to have nothing beside the bed but the tipped over teddy bear and the slipper but had the extra milliput in my hands and fell to the temptation of doing a tentacle. :)

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  20. What a great start Sir, fabulous execution!

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  21. A wonderful build and a fantastic opening salvo Curt!
    Let the Games begin :-)

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  22. Thanks very much for all the kind words folks. After all the preparations it's great to finally have the Challenge off to a running start. Enjoy the show!

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  23. Great opening salvo Curt! And nice to kick it off with some scratch building (or printing) as well.

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  24. As I am not taking part at all this year I would like to say good luck all.

    Right back to the two-four and work on the Molson muscles for me. 8-)

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  25. Just the right piece to start this years frenzy! You’re setting the scene perfectly with this little piece. For some reason I thought the challenge wouldn’t start till saturday... so you got me cold this time. Will have to try and squeeze some painting time in tomorrow in order to not completely mess up in the opening stage already.

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    1. Get cracking Nick! We're expecting some wonderful stuff from you this year. :)

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    2. Already at it my friend, already at it ;-)

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  26. What a super start to this Challenge.

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  27. Almost missed this. A fantastic piece Curt and way to kick off the challenge!

    Christopher

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  28. Strangely enough, I have never experienced those particular fears, but this vignette does capture the emotion brilliantly I imagine.

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