Birology: The Astronaut and the Shadows...

This took forever.

At about the same time as I did the Leviathan squid picture I also had the idea for a sort of Steampunk astronaut investigating a spaceship. I liked the idea of someone wearing one of those cumbersome brass diving suits in space, mostly because those diving suits are incredibly cool in their design, and also it's in keeping with the Neo-Victorian feel that Birology pictures tend to have about them.

After a lot of rough sketching of a fella tramping around shadowy, cathedral-sized ship-spaces, I hit on the idea of something more claustrophobic. And because light and dark play such a huge part in Birology pictures I wanted to include shadow as something malevolent rather than just decorative. But not just one shadow; a writhing mass of them.

So here we have it: a tangle of nightmarish shadow creatures dragging a panicked astronaut into the darkness and, presumably, to his death. His only chance of stopping a shadow - his light - is just out of hand's reach...and getting further away. I also tried a version with a green LED source, but it didn't quite get the effect I was going for, even though it does look pretty hellish.

The weird shadow creatures are whatever you want them to be. Nightmares come to life, shadows taking revenge, aliens, 2 dimensional beings pressing themselves onto the fabric of a 3D world... or maybe something else. All I know is, they completely burned out my Biro trying to get that nice thick black darkness look.

I like to think it was worth it.