Tribal Inked Cat Skull and Specimen Box
I have a niece that actually appreciates dead things. Do you know how few people can say that? Anyway, this is what she got for Christmas. Most kids would probably be horrified to get a cat head in a box.
Note the Miskatonic University label on the side. The seal (and the font on the label on the bottom of the box) is taken from the wonderful resources at the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, to whom you should really give your business. (And because their resources are licensed only for not-for-profit prop use, that means I can't sell anything I make using them, so . . . umm . . . be related to me, I guess, or make your own seal and label.)
Anyway, this thing was incredible fun to make. Please, click through and take a longer look! I'm very proud of this one.
Here's a better look at the paper seal -- broken, of course.
The skull fits neatly inside the box. I had to devise a way to keep it from rattling around, though. And, oddly enough, they don't really make convenient kitty-head sized skull stands. Not that I could find, anyway. Necessity being the mother of invention, I came up with this:
It's basically a pie wedge shape cut out of stiff paper, then covered with felt and glued in place. It's thicker at the front than the rear. The back corners sit between the flanges of the lower jaw, while the front point sits exactly at the point of the mandible.
The label on the bottom of the box hints at the skull's origin. Yes, there is a story behind it. I meant to write it out and give it to her with the box, but I wound up not having time, what with moving everything I own and not even having a printer until the day before Christmas Eve. I will eventually write it up for her and probably post it here while I'm at it.
On to the skull itself! So tiny! It did, indeed, come from a full-size cat. All the sutures were closed, it was a well-grown animal. The skull came from the Bone Room, by the way. Lovely people, ethically sourced materials, couldn't do better. Unless you went with Skulls Unlimited. But I digress. Sorry. Professional decapitation and maceration excite me.
Anyway, this is some of the finest ink-work I think I've done yet on a skull, and I'm very happy with it. It's actually not as easy as it looks to get a design that flows and is balanced and uses the space effectively without just looking like a big old mess. I had to try three times to get this one right. Pencil. Pencil and a white eraser.
The little nippy teeth we know and love. And again, the orbits that are almost totally enclosed with bone. I mentioned on the lion skull post that cats have pronounced postorbital processes and you can really see it here. They lend the skull a staring, owlish appearance. I think it's one of the more beautiful skulls I've seen, which makes sense: cats are beautiful animals.
A top view. Such a lovely natural surface to work on. So many curves and swells and clean lines.
In this picture and the next, if you look very, very closely, you can see one of the chief problems with inking bone -- the ink will hit any small crack or suture and run right along it, darkening it. It happened in a couple of places here on the braincase. There's nothing to be done for it but gently scraping out what you can with the tip of a very sharp craft knife and leaving it. You can't prevent it, so you learn where the sutures are and try to work around them as much as possible.
I am proud of the designs on the lower jaw here. The mandible is the hardest part, mostly because it is a very long, very narrow area broken up by various foramina -- tiny little holes. In the case of the cat, there were fewer holes to work around, which helped immensely.
They sit in our laps and purr -- Tazendra is in my lap right now -- but they evolved as wonderfully efficient little hunters. It's not hard to understand why small animals must regard them as furry, walking nightmares.
Note how few teeth the cat has, compared to, say, a wolf. They don't need much to do their murderous work.
Speaking of murder, here's Fish, showing that cats really know how to put the cute in execute.
I just love this picture. It looks like Fish's head is much larger, but if you look at the distance between the eyes, she is not much bigger than the cat the skull was from. Fish is fat but aside from that, she is slightly above average-sized for a female housecat.
Due to the wide variance in domestic cats, I cannot even make a ballpark guess at the gender of the skull. Some housecats have sagittal crests -- Fish does -- and some do not -- Tazendra doesn't. Some females have stocky, thick bones, like Sif, and some males are naturally gracile, like Mathurin was. As with domestic dogs, our cheerful meddling has broken the barrier of consistency that give most wild species their comparative uniformity. And you know, I'm grateful for that, because I've had an incredible variety of cats in my lifetime, and each has been wonderful and special in her own way.
I'm quite happy with this project. It's rare that things turn out more or less exactly as I want them to, but this was a pleasing exception, and I got pretty much precisely the results I wanted. The only thing I could possibly say is that the skull does not look old. That, however, will fix itself with time.
Hope you enjoyed the show! It's a real pleasure sharing this stuff with you, I have to say. I know I've been busy lately and slow to reply, but I appreciate your comments, every one of them. Art is hard for me right now, and each kind word is remembered and goes to feed that fire. Thank you.
A note about skulls, animal parts, art, and ethics, for those new to the show and not sure of how I do things.
Note the Miskatonic University label on the side. The seal (and the font on the label on the bottom of the box) is taken from the wonderful resources at the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, to whom you should really give your business. (And because their resources are licensed only for not-for-profit prop use, that means I can't sell anything I make using them, so . . . umm . . . be related to me, I guess, or make your own seal and label.)
Anyway, this thing was incredible fun to make. Please, click through and take a longer look! I'm very proud of this one.
Here's a better look at the paper seal -- broken, of course.
The skull fits neatly inside the box. I had to devise a way to keep it from rattling around, though. And, oddly enough, they don't really make convenient kitty-head sized skull stands. Not that I could find, anyway. Necessity being the mother of invention, I came up with this:
It's basically a pie wedge shape cut out of stiff paper, then covered with felt and glued in place. It's thicker at the front than the rear. The back corners sit between the flanges of the lower jaw, while the front point sits exactly at the point of the mandible.
The label on the bottom of the box hints at the skull's origin. Yes, there is a story behind it. I meant to write it out and give it to her with the box, but I wound up not having time, what with moving everything I own and not even having a printer until the day before Christmas Eve. I will eventually write it up for her and probably post it here while I'm at it.
On to the skull itself! So tiny! It did, indeed, come from a full-size cat. All the sutures were closed, it was a well-grown animal. The skull came from the Bone Room, by the way. Lovely people, ethically sourced materials, couldn't do better. Unless you went with Skulls Unlimited. But I digress. Sorry. Professional decapitation and maceration excite me.
Anyway, this is some of the finest ink-work I think I've done yet on a skull, and I'm very happy with it. It's actually not as easy as it looks to get a design that flows and is balanced and uses the space effectively without just looking like a big old mess. I had to try three times to get this one right. Pencil. Pencil and a white eraser.
The little nippy teeth we know and love. And again, the orbits that are almost totally enclosed with bone. I mentioned on the lion skull post that cats have pronounced postorbital processes and you can really see it here. They lend the skull a staring, owlish appearance. I think it's one of the more beautiful skulls I've seen, which makes sense: cats are beautiful animals.
A top view. Such a lovely natural surface to work on. So many curves and swells and clean lines.
In this picture and the next, if you look very, very closely, you can see one of the chief problems with inking bone -- the ink will hit any small crack or suture and run right along it, darkening it. It happened in a couple of places here on the braincase. There's nothing to be done for it but gently scraping out what you can with the tip of a very sharp craft knife and leaving it. You can't prevent it, so you learn where the sutures are and try to work around them as much as possible.
I am proud of the designs on the lower jaw here. The mandible is the hardest part, mostly because it is a very long, very narrow area broken up by various foramina -- tiny little holes. In the case of the cat, there were fewer holes to work around, which helped immensely.
They sit in our laps and purr -- Tazendra is in my lap right now -- but they evolved as wonderfully efficient little hunters. It's not hard to understand why small animals must regard them as furry, walking nightmares.
Note how few teeth the cat has, compared to, say, a wolf. They don't need much to do their murderous work.
Speaking of murder, here's Fish, showing that cats really know how to put the cute in execute.
I just love this picture. It looks like Fish's head is much larger, but if you look at the distance between the eyes, she is not much bigger than the cat the skull was from. Fish is fat but aside from that, she is slightly above average-sized for a female housecat.
Due to the wide variance in domestic cats, I cannot even make a ballpark guess at the gender of the skull. Some housecats have sagittal crests -- Fish does -- and some do not -- Tazendra doesn't. Some females have stocky, thick bones, like Sif, and some males are naturally gracile, like Mathurin was. As with domestic dogs, our cheerful meddling has broken the barrier of consistency that give most wild species their comparative uniformity. And you know, I'm grateful for that, because I've had an incredible variety of cats in my lifetime, and each has been wonderful and special in her own way.
I'm quite happy with this project. It's rare that things turn out more or less exactly as I want them to, but this was a pleasing exception, and I got pretty much precisely the results I wanted. The only thing I could possibly say is that the skull does not look old. That, however, will fix itself with time.
Hope you enjoyed the show! It's a real pleasure sharing this stuff with you, I have to say. I know I've been busy lately and slow to reply, but I appreciate your comments, every one of them. Art is hard for me right now, and each kind word is remembered and goes to feed that fire. Thank you.
A note about skulls, animal parts, art, and ethics, for those new to the show and not sure of how I do things.