The death of rats - need inspiration for some discworld fan art

I'm very tempted to try some discworld fan art from the book/movie hogfather.  Specifically The Death of Rats.

I know i want to paint something, I even saved a rat skull and have a pork pie burried deep in the freezer for this. The turnips i pla ted specifically for this didn't grow, so I would have to get some from the store.

Anyway, if you know what I'm talking about, can you help me brainstorm?

And what's your favourite moments from the book and/or movie?

I also have a pair of old, falling apart, leather boots that could be used for props.

You need Quoth the Raven in there :D  
And I don't know how you make an expression of a sniggering rat... but... That WOULD be neat.

Some stills I got from a low res version of the movie

Quoth, absolutely belongs there!

We have his brother here.

In fact, I had a terrible job not naming this fella Quoth as Austin is such a Discworld fan.

He shares his brother's love of eyeballs too. He says these ones look a bit bloodshot, just the way he likes them...



He ate the lot of them. Though he did say they weren't like proper eyeballs. They had hard bits in the middle and weren't full of salty water like they should be.



I wonder if a painting through a raven's eyes could work?

Found my copy of hogfather, the only Terry Pratchett book I've found second hand.

And a tiny rat skull for practice.

I just figured out the actress for the granddaughter is the same as in Downton Abby

Some ideas from last fall.  I think that was when the idea first started, but I didn't feel my skills were up to it and gave up.







If memory serves, this is gathering random ideas from my head and, in the case of the big rat, the internet.

squeak.

I've been attempting thumbnails to decide a composition.

And I've come to the conclusion that I am trying to cram too much into the painting.

Maybe if I treat it like a still life with the death of rats.  That's four things at minimum on the table (pie, turnip, sherry, rat).  Four is an awkward number for composition so I might need to try something different.

r ranson wrote:Four is an awkward number for composition so I might need to try something different.

That depends a lot on the relative shapes and sizes as well. The rat and the sherry could be relatively tall and thin, the pie and turnip round and fat. The structure of the table itself could form a fifth elephant element....

Audio book.

Chapter 12 has a lot of death of rat and hogswatch decorations

Chapter 16 has death of rats replace the angle at the top of the hogswarch tree with a little star on the end of his scythe.

I never did anything with this yet.  The more I try to do my own composition, the worse I feel I get.

But maybe this is worth trying?

Any suggestions to help me get over my fear of failure?

First cold morning this summer.  I know it will be hot in an hour when the sun gets above the wildfire smoke, but for now, I am wearing my cardigan.  This always reminds me of Halloween and it's time to get my costume ready.

I've been very down on myself and my painting this week.  The better I am at copying masterworks, the worse I feel about composition skills.  I need to spend a few months focusing on this skill.

So, with the understanding that i will probably fail, maybe that freedom could help me try and paint the death of rats?

In a way, I'm sort of asking for help.  But I also don't know what kind of help i need.

So perhaps, I'm asking for help to figure out where to focus my learning or experiment next.  The first stepping stone because this problem looks so big to me.

What i have so far.
1. A real rat skull (most of one) i dug up in the garden.
2. Fake rat skeleton, bigger than life size
3. An budding interest in making miniature things
4. Painting skills that allow me to copy, but not create
5. Lack of confidence

What about making it a series of paintings or drawings?

K Kaba wrote:What about making it a series of paintings or drawings?

Wouldn't that be great!

At this stage, one would be a victory.

What I mean is more...
So sometimes the overall idea that I want to make is too vague or big or important or something for what I want to make. It's a bit like that "fear of a blank canvas" or writer's block. The idea of having to do it  and do it right in one shot is the block.

The easiest way I've found around that is like most big problems, eat it one bite at a time. I might do a dozen ATCs (trading card sized) of rat skeleton drawings, or half a dozen quick putty sculpts of rat skulls over a week. Maybe I'd take pictures of that rat skeleton model from a dozen wacky directions and use those as references.

And the raven?  Maybe in the background.

Maybe 99% cloak and just a pinch of skeleton nose ...

K Kaba wrote:What I mean is more...
So sometimes the overall idea that I want to make is too vague or big or important or something for what I want to make. It's a bit like that "fear of a blank canvas" or writer's block. The idea of having to do it  and do it right in one shot is the block.

The easiest way I've found around that is like most big problems, eat it one bite at a time. I might do a dozen ATCs (trading card sized) of rat skeleton drawings, or half a dozen quick putty sculpts of rat skulls over a week. Maybe I'd take pictures of that rat skeleton model from a dozen wacky directions and use those as references.

I think a series would be lovely...if I knew how to do one.  Just one.  Doesn't even have to be good.

But right now, I'm lacking somethingm, I don't yet know what, to get even started on one.  

Weird thing, there are a few times in my life when I've tried to teach an adult to bake.  Twice, "stick it in the oven" is met with blank looks.  "You mean rhe microwave?  Where is it?"  There are adult people in this world that don't even know they don't know what an oven is.  

There is a blind spot here where i don't know what i don't know to make this project happen.  So I can't figure out how to learn it.

Maybe if I can do just one, next year it might be fun to do another...and maybe most years.  But the thought of this commitment makes me not even want to try.  That's too much obligation to myself.  So I focus on one.

paul wheaton wrote:And the raven?  Maybe in the background.

Maybe 99% cloak and just a pinch of skeleton nose ...

Quoth is epic.  

I've been having fun with fabric lately, so mostly cloak sounds like fun.

Maybe he can look giant and majestic.  And in the foreground, off to the edge, is something obviously small.

I forgot, i also have pork pies in the freezer and a sherry glass.

r ransom wrote:
I've been very down on myself and my painting this week.  The better I am at copying masterworks, the worse I feel about composition skills.  I need to spend a few months focusing on this skill.

So, with the understanding that i will probably fail, maybe that freedom could help me try and paint the death of rats?

Composition is so hard! It's something I've always struggled with, maybe because I can't visualize things.

Recently, I was trying to help make a logo for my friend's school. They'd made an A.I. version, and I thought their school might get more traction with something more hand made. First, I just remade the design with painting. But, the design itself still looked like A.I., so I thought. "I'll try to make a new sign for their school! It shouldn't be too hard."

Bwahahaha, poor, naïve me from before did not know what I was talking about! I tried sketching out a bunch of designs. I did three or four, and they were all bad. Then I tried water coloring some sketches. Also bad. Then I got disheartened and gave up.

I honestly find it easier to sketch out components separately and then put the pictures in photoshop so I can move things around on different layers to get something that looks decent. I hate spending time drawing something...only to realize it looks terrible in the composition.

Having said all of that, I think this picture was really eye-catching: