Exhumed: Reexamining the Dead

This week I'm beginning one of the new features I mentioned previously in the Featured Creature Last Bites for 2012-2013.  With Exhumed posts, I'll be digging up older pieces and exploring them with fresh color and tones.  I'll be pulling from the backlog of images I've posted on Zombie Bites, ranging from older From the Archives posts to older Featured Creature posts.  Exhumed posts will focus mainly on the process of taking a drawn image and bringing it to the next level with tones and color.  The posts will be generally infrequent, but I'll try to keep them as regular as possible.  Exhumed will be appearing on Fridays.

Coming Soon: Night of the Cauldron

Something is brewing at Zombie Bites.  There is a strange green glow beyond the falling autumn leaves and voices echo on the wind.  Last year, Zombie Bites was haunted by the Halloween Zombie Outbreak.  This year, strange magick is afoot.  something is bringing Halloween to life.  It's the Second Annual Halloween Outbreak: Night of the Cauldron!  Night of the Cauldron posts will be part of the regularly scheduled Featured Creature.  Come check it out the week before Halloween!

From the Archives: Moody Sketches

Here are a couple of moody developmental sketches from a zombie comic I was working on some time ago.  I was planning something grandiose at the time, but this one may still emerge as a single story.

{8x5.33 Sharpie}

Featured Creature Delay

I'm tied up this week putting the finishing touches on coloring for The Serpentine Cure for Skin Crawling Comics, so this weeks Featured Creature is postponed until next week.  Sorry for the delay.  See you soon.

Psyche Delectus: The Furnace of War

It seeks only to make more of itself.

From the Archives: Eagle of Vz Sketches

Here are some of my developmental sketches for my recent Featured Creature post, Eagle of Vz.  These were done several months before the finished image was completed.

{8x6.05  Sharpie}

Featured Creature: The Dirthag

In the forest dark and deep,
awaits the enemy of sleep.
In her hag hole far beneath,
under leafroot and earthen sheath,
the Dirthag lurks with baleful eyes
the toad and writhing snake her spies.
She waits with eager wringing hands
counting as each footfall lands.
With gnarled tree limb arms so fast
She makes that urgent gasp your last.
The Dirthag drags all to her cave
The fearful, ignorant, and brave.
When she has gnawed the bones all clean,
the Dirthag, she begins again.

{8x5.33  Digital Images created in Adobe Photoshop}

Psyche Delectus: Baël

Invisibility his gift,
his cup shreds the veil
and renders the astonishment of vision.

Featured Creature: Eagle of Vz Part II

Continuing the fiction from the Featured Creature post, Eagle of Vz:

The Eagle of Vz

Part II

As soon as the Eagle's spotlight eye landed on me, I took off.  I used the same trail I'd followed up to the house, but I still nearly broke my foot several times running helter skelter through the darkness.  As I leapt over a large root in my way, the angle of the hillside sharpened suddenly and I lost my footing.  I slid the last fifty feet.  I finally stopped, a cloud of dust swirling around me.  I jumped up immediately, knife in hand.  I had landed on the next street down and just several yards from a street lamp.  I could hear the beast screeching far above me.

From the Archives: Currents of Midnight

Here's a more recent bit of play where I was exploring brush options in Photoshop again.  This piece harkens back to earlier styles.  Not a whole lot going on here other than me playing with some color.  However I feel like I was able to get close to the effects of Prismacolor pencils within the Photoshop program and that in and of itself will be useful later on. 

{8x5.33  Digital Images created in Adobe Photoshop}

Featured Creature: The Bogeyman

He waits just on the other side,
calculating the turns of tide.

When the walls 'tween worlds are thin,

that's when the Bogeyman slips in.

He comes as shadow,

He comes at night,
He comes to fill you up with fright.
And when you overflow with fear
that's when the Bogeyman draws near.
A single touch to make you scream
and then he's gone just like a dream.
First he's there and then he's not.
He's hiding in the Bogey spot.

The Bogeyman isn't here or there,
The Bogeyman is everywhere.

{8x5.33  Digital Images created in Adobe Photoshop}

 

Psyche Delectus: Hunter

Within the cauldron of experience,
the masks of time are shredded
to reveal the true essence.

Featured Creature 2012-13: Last Bites Part VI, Dreaming the Dark Night

In June I took a departure from how I'd been approaching the Featured Creature posts.  In many of the fiction pieces associated with the Featured Creature posts, artifacts of mystical power had appeared and I wanted to take a more time to shine a spotlight on those objects and their individual histories.  Beginning with the Chaska of the Chaldean Abyss, I presented these items of power while continuing to push forward with the new color aspect of my work.  Sadly, June would not be as uneventful as May and complications began immediately on June first that would challenge my ability to move forward with any regularity.