Welcome to the 3rd installment of my MONSTER FINGER COLLECTION:
The Vampire Finger
How much do you know about vampires? Think (or write) the traits you are familiar with and then compare them to the ones I wrote below. Did they match? Did we know the same?
I haven't written blogs about the first two fingers (zombie and mummy), because the videos were quite clear and I felt like there was nothing more to say about them.
With the vampire finger however, I feel like there is. Starting from the look of it.
I know that mine is not the stereotypical vampire finger, pale and/or with a black nail. And the reason is that I had a hard time defining what makes a vampire look like a vampire. But not even that, what makes his finger look like a vampire's?
Edward Cullen and Dracula (e.g.: Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker's Dracula, the 1992 film) are both vampires, but one looks like a normal teenager and the other one looks like, a vampire?
Now I read Dracula by Bram Stoker and he certainly describes the count as definitely not what you and me would consider a nice looking old man, but something terrifying.
So sometimes you have to compare what you think you know about vampires and their backstory, the stories, the legends.
What I know about vampires:
- They feed on human blood (they may have large fangs for this purpose)
- They are immortal.
- They sleep during the day and they sleep in a coffin.
- They turn to dust when exposed to sunlight.
- They are repelled by garlic.
- To be killed they need to be stabbed in the heart with a wooden stake.
- They can shape shift into bats/wolves.
- Pale skin? (on white people)
- They are cold to the touch. (Or should be, if there isn't blood circulating in their bodies)
- Being dead, they should be quite stiff (Rigor Mortis), but they are still standing and talking, so I'd like to rule this one out.
- Have supernatural powers (speed, strength, etc., Bram Stoker's Dracula walked/crawled on walls like a lizard)
It's difficult when you have only one finger to showcase the whole nature and background of such a well known legend like the Vampire, and it's not like we can compare it to something real and living. I knew I didn't want his finger to look totally human (Edward Cullen), because it wasn't identifiable as a vampire on its own and for the sake of the tutorial, I needed it to, and I didn't want it to look like part of a Halloween costume either.
So I decided to make it more monster-like. I thought about his nature more than what people should expect to see.
This is what I thought:
''He might be skinny, because human blood may be hard to come by. Longer finger nails might be useful when hunting for prey, they are more intimidating and can easily pierce through skin; mud and blood stained finger shows carelessness for its victims and incapability to relate to them on any human level. He is more beast than human, he forgot what being human was like, if he was ever one. It has to forget, if it will have to learn to feed on them. Being desensitized is part of the process or it would starve.'
This is the logic I followed to sculpt and paint this finger, but then if you changed the story, if you made the vampire a gentleman who can resist temptation and walk among humans looking like an equal to avoid detection, neat and alluring with prospects of wealth (jewellery) to ladies of limited resources and attacks when the ladies are at their most vulnerable, there's another monster.
A goth teenager, also enthralling and alluring to his victims, who walk willingly into his arms and offer him their blood, with promises that that is the only way they can be together forever. Only it's not, because he can't stop drinking until they are dead.
There isn't a right or wrong way to sculpt a vampire finger, and mine isn't certainly the only one I thought of. Just like not all human fingers look the same (male, female, child, black, white, care, etc), not all vampires are the same.
I'm an eternal romantic, so I love love love the idea of a Gothic or a romantic vampire gentleman. I just didn't want this one particular vampire finger to fall into a cliche' and I am certainly not done making monster fingers.
Let me know below what your idea of a vampire is, if you have a set one? Or if you are more like me and tend to think that, just like humans, vampires are unique.
I'd also like to know if we knew the same things about vampires and if there are traits you know that you'd like to share, that are not listed above.
Bless you for reading,
Maive
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