The Inspiration: I was walking through a local park with a friend when I found some curved twigs on the ground that were covered in all these knobbly bumps, and I thought to myself, "These look like fingers, but really creepy, nightmarish monster ones." I gathered up a handful and took them home.
In this photo, I'm hammering out the concept. I had gathered six of these twigs, because while a standard human hand has five digits, it easily makes it more alien and exotic to add a sixth!
One day, I accidentally stepped on one of the twigs, snapping it into two pieces. At first, I was devastated, but then I found a use for the now twain twig: I used the curved tip as a dewclaw, and the thicker end as a forearm, which gave the whole hand a wrist to balance on, so the digits wouldn't be driven upwards, tearing the hand apart.
After some research, I found that Paperclay was the best material to use to bring this whole project together. For one, it takes several days to dry. This meant that I would have plenty of time to work on it and deal with any issues that might arise. Secondly, it's easily malleable, straight out of the package. Finally, it sticks well to itself, so whenever the weight of one of the twigs would drag it down and tear through the clay, I could easily fix the tear by building on top of it.
A closer view of the knobbly digits.
A close-up view of the dewclaw and the protruding bone tip. Paperclay shrinks a bit when it dries, but this ended up working in favor of my project, as it made the hand look shriveled and ancient, as if it had been severed from its owner a long time ago.
I had a number of inspirations for this project. I'm fascinated by dewclaws on animals, like cats and dogs, or even the nasty dewclaws found on the long dead dinosaurs. One of my favorite dinosaurs is Therizinosaurus, a strange-looking dinosaur that possessed terrifyingly long claws, which also inspired this hand. I also thought about tree ents, and the nasty trees that seemed to attack Snow White in Disney's 1937 classic, and this sort of came out like a nightmarish beast hand with long, curving, tree-like fingers. I wanted the project to have a very organic aesthetic, so I'm very pleased with how it all came together.
