by Chris Marks

Near the end of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu," a crew of sailors happen on the recently surfaced city of R'yleh, the tomb of the star spawn Cthulhu. Unknowingly, they awaken the Old One and pay for their curiosity with their lives and sanity.

This is a slightly modified version of the Wizard's Attic vinyl Cthulhu model kit. I removed most of the neck tentacles and used a few to replace some of the claws on his hands. Cthulhu is supposed to be able to morph and stretch his limbs into all manner of shapes, and I wanted to reflect a little of that in my version. Cthulhu's body is almost entirely filled with plaster and a metal framework to prevent it from drooping. The result was a very heavy model that drooped anyway. This however was a very nice accident as it gave the figure a sense of action, and the scene was planned around this.

The columns are wedding cake decorations filled with plaster, then distressed using various bits on a Dremel. The statue is another wedding cake column shortened and topped with a bash of figures from the board game Hero Quest. The two fleeing humans are taken from one of the Gigantics models.

Cthulhu was entirely hand-painted with acrylics using both brushes and sponges. The base is an old shadow box turned upside down and covered with plaster made to look like water smoothed sand. There are puddles on the base made with Woodland Scenics realistic water. This was also hand-painted with acrylics. The seaweed was made using cooked spinach hung over the model and dried then covered with a liberal coating of Future. The base is covered with strange shaped beads taken from my parts bin and painted black, then dry brushed with grays and browns.

Image: Run away!

Image: Statuary

Image: The stuff of nightmares ...

Image: ... on a sandy beach