Mind Flayer Mighty Mugg

A couple of months ago, Jon over at Wizards of the Coast put out a call for artists interested in painting up a Mighty Mugg as a Wizards of the Coast character. I volunteered to make a Mind Flayer Mighty Mugg.

Here's my pitch sketch!

All the parts of my Mugg all laid out. Notice also, my epoxy putty, to use to sculpt the tentacles.

The face drawn on and some epoxy tentacles. I added several layers of epoxy sanding in between each one. Unfortunately, the seller of the putty sent me very old putty, which resulted in some of the putty already being hard and not very malleable. Oh well. Can't win every time you shop on eBay. After that I spray coated my drawn pieces with workable fixative. BAD IDEA. Acrylic paint becomes very streaky and thin on a smooth surface of fixative. Oh well. That's why the smart people think you experiment with this first. I ended up painting over the whole Mugg with gesso. After several layers, I lost my drawing, but acrylic painting was adhering well to the gessoed surface.

 My only other progress shot. Sorry I was pretty bad at taking photos as I progressed.

The final painted Mugg.

He looks like a tiny Chthulu that fell in a vat of Welch's Grape Juice.

The obligatory human skin cape. If you're wondering, the cape is painted felt. I had to get a paint specifically meant for cloth.

I'm hoping he'll be on display at Gen Con; I'm not 100% sure that will happen.

Anyway, this was a fun break from digital painting. It's the first time I've used acrylic paint in about 6 years. Hopefully that isn't too blatantly obvious.