One of the hardest things for me in this project was the textures of the sandworms’ skin. Here are some of my experiments.
There was a lot of trial and error here. The one in the middle I started to find something that worked and inked it. For inspiration I looked at a lot of art on Pinterest. Basil Wolverton and Robert Crumb were particularly influential.
After the above test I did a larger one at the size I would actually be drawing the piece.
This is the texture I settled on. For the finished piece I penciled in all of the texture all the way down each worm’s body so I could see how it looked before I inked it.
The inspiration for this one came from photos of swans facing each other forming the shape of a heart.
To create this I started out drawing just one sandworm and experimenting until I got the shape right. I scanned it, duplicated it, and reversed it. At this point I just had two basic shapes. So I made a rough tracing of them and filled in details for each individually. I wanted them to look alike but not identical. Inking one then making a mirror image of it would be cheating.
The skin textures and segments of each are different. The teeth, smiles, and head positions are different. I even made the color of each worm slightly different, but not too different. I didn’t want to ruin the symmetry.
Of all the sandworm drawings, this one is probably my favorite.
I like the way the creature dominates the frame. I like all the detail in the textures of the sandworm and the rock. I like how the guy is looking up right into the worm’s mouth. The whole thing just works.
This is the original sketch. I reversed the image for the final version because I had two other drawings where the sandworm was facing right and I thought it seemed repetitive.
I also changed the human figure. I liked the idea of him looking up at the sandworm but wasn’t happy with the execution, and I thought the cape made him look more like a comic book super hero. Plus, I wanted something a little more fun.
For this year’s Realm Makers, a speculative fiction writing conference I attend every year, I decided to go to the costume banquet dressed as Bob Ross, the painter of television fame, as if he were a Fremen from the planet Arrakis (Dune). As part of this I drew four sandworm illustrations for use on postcards. I’ll be handing these out saying, “Hi, I’m Bob Ross of the Fremen and we’re painting happy little sandworms.” I’m hoping that this crowd will be amused. But I’m prepared to crash and burn.
Big Mouth Sandworm
These drawings are not meant to be accurate portrayals of the creatures Frank Herbert describes in his book Dune. They’re more of a parody. In this one I drew a sandworm, with a very large mouth, rising up out of the desert to swallow an ornithopter in midair.
Here’s the original sketch torn from my notebook. I liked it well enough that I scanned it, enlarged it, printed it, and traced it.
You may notice a couple of changes I made. The most obvious is probably the ornithopter. I decided it was too low and moved it up closer to the sandworm’s mouth. The other change is about halfway down the sandworm’s body where it looks like there’s an eye staring out at the ’thopter. It was supposed to be simply a blemish on the skin of the worm. It didn’t really turn out that way so I got rid of it.
The line art was drawn on smooth Bristol board with brush pens. I scanned it at 1200dpi with an Epson V600 Photo scanner as a TIFF. Color was added digitally. In another post I’ll talk about the software I use and how I use it.
Printing of the postcards was done by Specialized Printed Products and I’m very happy with the finished product. I had shopped other online quick prints and just couldn’t get what I wanted for an acceptable price.
