PROGENY OF YIG

PROGENY OF YIG

"The moving object was almost of human size, and entirely devoid of clothing. It was absolutely hairless, and its tawny-looking back seemed subtly squamous in the dim, ghoulish light. Around the shoulders it was rather speckled and brownish, and the head was very curiously flat. As it looked up to hiss at me I saw that the beady little black eyes were damnably anthropoid, but I could not bear to study them long."

"Yig’s chief trait was a relentless devotion to his children—a devotion so great that the redskins almost feared to protect themselves from the venomous rattlesnakes which thronged the region. Frightful clandestine tales hinted of his vengeance upon mortals who flouted him or wreaked harm upon his wriggling progeny; his chosen method being to turn his victim, after suitable tortures, to a spotted snake."

H.P. Lovecraft & Zealia Bishop, The Curse Of Yig

I had a hard time with this one. While I do think the face on my original design is creepy, it just didn't seem to be an amalgam of snake and human. I had drawn another snake-human hybrid, an oibonok, when I was doing my Charles Saunders series and I really liked the way I approached the face on that one. I redid the progeny of Yig with a similar face that's more of a mix of human and snake. I also really liked the idea of the feet and hands poking out from the scales from my original drawing. 

The progeny of Yig were first mentioned in HPL's revision story for Hazel Heald called The Curse Of Yig. It was published in the November 1929 issue of Weird Tales with an illustration by *gasp* Hugh Rankin! I have to admit, this one's not that bad. its tighter and more refined than the other Rankin illustrations I've talked about on this blog. The body and face are odd in a great uncanny sort of way and the whole thing is obscured but still detailed.

There's also a weird bit of obscure pop culture that's thrown into the mix there. Every time I draw a snake/human hybrid the cobra monster from Dreamscape pops into my head. I haven't seen Dreamscape since I was a child and, in fact, only figured out what the movie was a few years ago. I only had a vague recollection of a man turning into a stop motion snake. Maybe now's the time to finally revisit this movie.