Category: Art

Telvanni Outfits

Master Aryon’s Traveling Kit

I tried to imagine Master Aryon dressed casual and practical for traveling.
The inspiration was the note in his Dwemer Museum, recommending the visitor come back often as he is always acquiring new artifacts on his travels. This suggests that he is not above a bit of adventuring and wandering around in random holes in the ground (similar to what Steen does in her free time). Of course, he would not be all decked out in his full Telvanni raiment whilst doing so. Hence this drab and rugged little number: ready to weather the most violent ash storm, yet comfortable and flexible for mobility.

Archmagistress of House Telvanni

Inversely, I always draw Steen in her worn old traveling clothes, without much finery (and I’m uncreative with outfits), so I tried to imagine what Archmagistress Steen would like like in full-on Telvanni finery. I wanted it to be super ostentatious and extravagant. I’m still playing around with the ideas, clearly, but at least she doesn’t look like she just came back from a week-long mountaineering expedition. Maybe Aryon pleaded with her to try to not wear something covered in dirt to a big important function, so she threw this together. I mean, she was a low-born nightblade, so… something something new money. I don’t know.

Making Dagoth Ur Hands

For the Dagoth Ur costume hands (to go with the Dagoth Ur Mask), I initially did a few trial runs with gluing the nails onto my hands and painting my hands with the facepaint, but I soon ended up with facepaint on everything. So I elected to instead make gloves. Luckily the cloth wrist (and ankle) wraps cover all the seams, so I don’t have to worry about that.

First, I glued long pointy nails onto grey gloves. I used superglue, because they don’t ever need to come off, so I didn’t bother with nail glue:

Making the Dagoth Ur Gloves: Before Paint

Then I dry-brushed black onto the gloves, to bring out hand/finger details, and to make the nails look like they reach really far back onto the finger. I went back and fourth for weeks trying to decide if I should make the nails red (the way Dagoth Ur’s nails actually appear) or black (which I thought would look scarier). I went with black, and I don’t know whether that was the right call. I guess I could always re-paint them red?

Making the Dagoth Ur Gloves
Steen in Dagoth Ur costume
And then, tah-daaah! Final gloves

And, much to my surprise, the gloves were thin enough that I could still operate my phone with them on…

The Dagoth Ur gloves work on phone screens

Hehehehehe 🙂

Making the Dagoth Ur Mask

Well, as promised, here is the “making of” portion to accompany my Dagoth Ur cosplay post.

Making the Dagoth Ur Mask

First, I made the main mask portion with modelling clay without the headdress portion, because I began to make it from modelling clay and found that it would just take too much clay to build. So I decided to cut the headdress part later out of foam or something.

Then, I coated the modelling clay in vaseline, to prepare it for the paper mache. Then I went to town, putting layers and layers of paper mache on top of the modelling clay:

Making the Dagoth Ur Mask

I was particularly worried about the modelling clay getting stuck in the eyelids, because as you can see in the above image, the paper mache actually wrapped inwards on the clay eyelids. Surprisingly, however, no bits of clay stuck in the eyelids whatsoever! But the entire beard was stuck in, and I had to fish the clay out of the beard with a fork. I got it out, though.

If you’re wondering why the paper mache is blue, that is because I saw somebody suggest using shop towels instead of newspaper because they are buff and absorbent. I thought that sounded like a great idea – but after having done it, I’m not particularly impressed with them that I’d say to use shop towels over newspaper. I feel like, just use whatever you have on hand. If you have a bunch of newspaper, use that. If you have shop towels, I guess use that.

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