This is my senior project while I was in the illustration program at UVU. I created 12 illustrations based off the book "The eaters of the dead" By Michael Crichton. All of these images were painted digitally using Corel Painter 15 and a Wacom drawing tablet. I hope you enjoy them. I've included the descriptions from the book for each piece.
#1: The peoples of the narrow rivers are called “wykings”. Every morning a slave girl comes and brings a tub of water and places it before her master. He proceeds to wash his face and hands, and then his hair, combing it over the vessel. Thereupon he blows his nose and spits into the tub. When he has finished, the girl carries the tub to the man next to him, who does the same. Thus she continues carrying the tub from one to another, till each of those who are in the house has blown his nose and spit into the tub, and washed his face and hair.
#2: The funeral pyre of the dead king Wyglif was set aflame, and the ship, the man, and everything else blew up in a blazing storm of fire, and pushed out into the sea in the darkness of night. He is burned in a twinkling, so that instantly, without a moment’s delay, he enters into Paradise.
#3: Ibn Fadlan, Arab of Bagdad; and Buliwyf, the new leader of the gigantic Northmen, a tall man, and strong, with skin and hair and beard of pure white.
#4: Then there came a great storm on the banks of the river Volga, and after this storm a cold mist lay on the ground. It was thick and white, and a man could not see past a dozen paces. Now, these same giant Northmen warriors, who by virtue of their enormity and strength of arms and cruel disposition, have nothing to fear in all the world, yet these men fear the mist.
Buliwyf is sought for a hero’s mission. The far country suffers a dread and nameless terror, which all the peoples are powerless to oppose, and Buliwyf is to make haste to the far country and save his people and the kingdom of Rothgar. He must also take eleven warriors with him. And so, also, must he take Ibn.
#5: The Northman vessel, sailing up the Volga River, with Ibn and twelve of their company. The ship was as long as twenty-five paces, and as broad as eight, and of excellent construction, of oak wood. It was fitted with a square sail of cloth. The ship was fitted with benches for oars. At the head of the ship was the wooden carving of a fierce sea monster.
#6: Then Buliwyf said to watch in the night for the sky curtain; and upon one evening in the sky there were shimmering pale lights, of green and yellow and sometimes blue, which hung as a curtain in the high air. Ibn was much amazed by the sight of this sky curtain but the Northmen count it nothing strange.
#7: We traveled for five days in a region of forests. The forests of the Northlands are cold and dense with gigantic trees. It is a wet and chilling land, in some locations so green that the eyes ache from the brightness of the color.
#8: Hurot Hall, the great hall of King Rothgar, that sat high upon a cliff, was a huge great hall of wood, strong and imposing. The mark of a vain man, the hall sparkled from a distance. It was richly inlaid with silver and even some gold. On all sides were designs and ornaments of the greatest splendor and richness of artistry.
The black mist had come from the vanity and weakness of Rothgar, who has offended the gods with his foolish splendor and tempted the fiends with the siting of his great hall, which has no protection from the land. The gods have sent the black mist to strike him down and show him humility.
#9: In the great hall of Rothgar, a mighty feast was held, and Buliwyf and all his warriors joined in great celebration, preferring the ministrations of slave girls and freeborn women.
#10: To kill the monsters of the mist, you must overcome their very mother. The mother is very old and she lives in the caves of thunder. She was frightful to look upon; and also she wore snakes upon her head as a wreath; and also, too, that she was strong beyond all accounting. But the creature saw us, and screamed hideously at our approach. But if she was female, I saw no sign, for she was old to the point of being sexless.
#11: The monsters of the mist come, and they seek a final revenge for the killing of their mother.
To the Northmen, monsters of the mist means a mist that brings, under cover of night, black fiends who murder and kill and eat the flesh of human beings, and disappear by day. They appeared to be manlike in every respect, but not as any man upon the face of the earth. They were short creatures, and broad and squat, and hairy on all parts of their bodies save their palms, the soles of their feet, and their faces. Their faces were very large, with mouth and jaws large and prominent, and of an ugly aspect; also their heads were larger than the heads of normal men. Their eyes were sunk deep in their heads; the brows were large; also their teeth were large and sharp. The fiends are loathsome; they are fierce and cunning; they speak no language of any man and yet converse among themselves; they have hands of abnormally large size; with powerful muscles. The beasts stank.
I felt as one of them, having spent much time in their company, or so it seemed. Buliwyf said, “You have seen much of our ways. You dress and now you speak as a Northman, and not a foreign man.” Indeed, that night I felt I had been born a Northman.
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