Green Men and Dragon Grotesques in Northern California

I was in downtown Sacramento visiting my brother and noticed these grotesques (gargoyles) on a hotel.

Green Men Grotesques on Downtown Sacramento Building

I only had a camera phone with me so could not get as good as a picture as I wished — but here is one. The green man is a corbel under the balcony, the dragons are the decorations in  the corners of the windows.

Green Men on a Downtown Sacramento Building

Here is another picture of the same building.

If one is observant one will see more gargoyles (or more likely grotesques) than one would imagine. While none of them will probably look like the famous gargoyles of Notre Dame Cathedral, they are special and fun to spot!

Architectural Lion Element

Strolled past these lion pairs last night. They are — my best guess — an architectural element. 

Architectural Lion

I am not exactly sure what they are architecturally speaking. They are not really columns, they are not exactly supporting a column...

They are flanking a residence on a very steep street on a hill just above San Francisco's Chinatown.

Two New Skulls have Hit GargoyleStore.com!

gargoylestore.com has just received two new skulls!

'Dr. Skully' Skulls

Here is the finished picture that I used for the website.

This is a fairly accurate model of a skull. The large version has separate molded teeth, the mandible is hinged to the cranium, and is hollow. The smaller version has less details — but both are really nice.

It's always a challenge getting a good photograph. Since a visitor to the website can't pick up, examine and such — the picture's job is a tough one. The picture needs to communicate to the view all the details about the object, the color, size, textures. It's lucky that a 'picture is worth a thousand words,' as one needs all one thousand words for this to work best.

I always want something in the photos to give scale — here I have the skulls on a table with a ruler and a hemostat as props. A window off to the left gives natural light, and a table lamp gives warm light from above.

I pasted in a photo of the inside and taken apart views as I limited the website to one photograph.

Dr. Skully Skulls Disassembled 

Here is one of the shots I took of the skulls disassembled. I needed to show how these skulls 'work' and at this point I was undecided if I was going to stick with the one photograph or not. 

This shows the skulls 'open' and the spring that holds the mandible to the cranium. The jaws are able to be opened and closed — just like the real thing. The skull 'cap' on the big skull is held in place with rods and magnets, the small guy just has the rods.

Dr. Skull Disassembled 

Here is the disassembled shot that I decided to use. A little closer, and a bit more clear.

Dr. Skully Skulls

This is the picture that I used, before I pasted the smaller photo on as an insert.