These are some alternate labels for pemmican blocks, complete with wrong orthograph, just like those that the starkweather moore expedition pick up in australia.

I f you remember of my miskatonic U speciment shipping box I did not too long ago, you might be interested by the stickers and labels I made for it. Here they are in their high-resolution JPEG glory :

And the final post for today is about props too. As I mentionned before, I am currently playing through beyond the mountains of madness with my players and I (of course) made some props to add to the gaming experience…

This little post is there to indicate you that I updated many of the posts presenting prints with some new pictures and even some of the original matrix that were used to print these. Here are the links to the posts : post1  post2  post3  post4

…also for those who are interested  in home-made instruments, I made this little one last weekend. It is an electrified thumb piano :

Pemmican is the staple protein food for both men and animals in the Antarctic. It is made from a mixture of beef tallow, dried ground meat, wheat germs, molasses and cod liver oil. To every one thousands of this mixture are added two pints of lemon squeezings. This mixture is then shaped into compressed one pound blocks, wrapped in waxed paper or tinfoil, and frozen solid. The block are fed to dogs without preparation. for expedition members, the blocks are dropped into stew pots as the quickest way to cook them.

As promised, after having put the pemmican label for download here, I did a little tutorial with photos to show how you can turn these labels, some styrofoam and a bit of time into a realistic prop that will certainly add to the ambiance of your next arctic related call of cthulhu game.
Fisrt, the materials and tools needed are :
materials :
1-a block of styrofoam at least 3″ x 3″ x 7″ for one pemmican block (note : styrofoam sheets are smaller than 3″ so you can glue two pieces together using wood glue to achieve the good size)
2-some printed pemmican labels that can be found here
3-brown acrylic paint, I used transparent burnt umber for this one
4-a piece of waxed paper
5-acrylic medium and varnish, gloss is better
6-tea, coffee or iron buff to age paper

tools :
1-ruler
2-pencil
3-exacto cutter or knife
4-any kind of wood saw or hot wire cutter
5-sandpaper
6-brush

Once you’ve gathered all these things, you can start building you pemmican block.
Step one : take your prepared block of styrofoam and mark the dimensions of you future block on it, reffering to the label, I put approximately 1 inch more each side of the label, the height and width of the block should be around 3″.

Step two : take your saw and cut your marked block following the lines you just did, I know, cutting styrofoam is messy…

Step three : Take you freshly cut piece of foam and some sandpaper (100 grit or coarser is fine) and sand down the corners and the sides of your block to make it look more like it was shaped by hand.

Step four : remove all dust form the sanding and prepare your acrylic paint by mixing it with a little bit of water to make it more fluid. Paint the entire block takign care to vary the intensity of the brown over the whole surface, let it dry.

step five : While the paint is drying take a cutting board and the waxed paper roll and cut a section 13″ long (3″ for the four sizes plus an extra of 4″) and set it aside with the rest.

Step six : Now that the paint on your block has dried, take the acrylic medium and paint some of it on one of the sides of the block, stick the waxed paper to the side, taking care to keep the extra parts of paper on the two sides equal, also let a 1″ distance from the side of the block. Turn your block so the waxed paper in lying on your table and paint the next side with acrylic medium. Stick the paper to it and continue like that for all the sides of the block until it is entirely wrapped like in the picture.

Step seven : Paint the sides of your block with acrylic medium and fold the first section of paper so a part of it stick to the block and the rest forms a triangle shape, apply more medium and stick that triangle to the block forming a new triangle. repeat until a little piece of paper is left and stick this piece to the other side of the block with acrylic medium, repeat for the other side. apply some more acrylic medium on the folds of the sides to make them more sturdy, let the medium dry.

Step eight : Cut one of the pemmican labels and stick it to the side of the block with apparent folds so it holds the entire wrapping, set aside to dry.

Step nine : go to your kitchen and find some dark black tea and prepare a tass, go back to your now dry block and with a brush apply tea uniformely to the label, wait until it dries and repapply some on the sides if the label, make some drips and scrape the corners of the label to simulate the light damaging occasioned by the handling and shipping of the pemmican block, for this step you can also refer to my article on paper aging here.

Step ten : admire your realisation and use for whatever use you found for it : ambiance enhancer for a game, decoration element for your room, book holder, amateur lovecraftian movie prop, etc.

I hope you enjoyed reading through this tutorial and maybe realising one of these pemmican block props. i know that I’m not posting a lot of material which is prop related these times but I might come back to it soon.

It is such a great citation from Blixa Bargheld… and also the title of my last print edition. I worked hard last week to get that this project to completion. And the final result is : an edition of 17 copies of an two colors (black and grey) woodcut print, 12″ x 15″. But this is just some numbers…the interesting part is the image itself of course.

The print will be put for sale on my now existing etsy shop soon, but I will only accept to ship in the canada and united states, so if you are interested keep watching.

Due to my heavy print production lately, I decided to launch an etsy shop to sell them…and maybe some prop products if I find the time for that. I recently finished an edition of 15 woodblock prints in two colors and it is mainly these that will be on sell on my future shop but, I might add others with time and I’ll try to get some giclees prints of some of my paintings too…

So look out for the shop : oilandsugar.etsy.com

I will show 3 of my recent prints at the galerie circulaire in Montreal from the 4th to the 19th december.

There will be my mezzotint : “Black ink & needles”, my linocut : “salvaging kit” and an older dry point which is entitled “survivalism”.

For those who are interested, the opening of the show will be on the 4th of december at 17h30, the sale of the prints will be at 18h00 the same day. There will be a lot of other engraving artists from Quebec and Montreal showing too.

I just past by the usine 106u art gallery in mtl yesterday with some of my work and talked a bit with the owner of the place, which is a really nice guy and I just got booked in for a future show there. Its the first step to get into the art milieu, and I will really begin sell my art and get some more visibility. For the show I will present mostly paintings and prints (mezzotints, wood, lino) that I did recently and mostly in the spirit of what I’ve been doing in symbolism of resistance. I will keep on posting info on this upcoming show and my current work here as it comes.

This is the first thing lovecraftian I post since a long time, and it is like that mainly because of the university taking most of my free time. But, here it is, an miskatonic university specimen shipping box, made specially for expedition, like the one at the mountains of madness. The box is made of pine wood which was oxydized with iron buff and stained. The label and the protection seal were aged and stained in a similar manner, enjoy :