Featured Creature: The Moonlight Calls It Forth

"We entered the graveyard in the hour after midnight and it was not long before we saw the thing.  We noticed a figure moving oddly in the shadow of a tall tree.  As we walked closer, the horror that had been a man emerged into the full light of the moon.

Its putrescence was obvious as it staggered slowly towards us.  The rancid odor coming off the thing poisoned the very air.  I covered my mouth with the neck of my shirt to keep from retching.

Featured Creature: The Bunny Man

"...locals allegedly began to find hundreds of cleanly skinned, half-eaten carcasses of rabbits hanging from the trees in the surrounding areas."

Find out more about the real Bunny Man of Virginia here and oh yeah, Happy belated Easter.

{8x5.33,  created in Adobe Photoshop}

Featured Creature: Reunion at the Merrimon Library Part IX, Deidre's Warning

Reunion at the 

Merrimon Library:
Part IX, 
Deidre's Warning

~ Continued from Part VIII ~

Alan fought to open his eyes.  He was warm and comfortable and sedated within ease.  He felt as though his brain were wrapped tight in a thick comforter.  There was a warm and gentle pressure against his palm.  He woke to someone holding his hand.  When he finally got his eyes to open he struggled to focus on the figure at his side.  It was Deidre.  He squinted into wakefulness and offered a weak smile.  Deidre smiled back.

"Hi."

"Hi yourself."  She leaned in closer and rested her other hand on his forearm.  They sat silently for a moment and enjoyed a quiet reunion.  They both tried to hold back, but soon there were tears.  They held on to each other in the silence for a long while.

"I came as quickly as I could."  Her eyes were glassy.  He could tell she had not slept in some time.

"How long have I been out?"

"Two days."

Featured Creature: Reunion at the Merrimon Library Part VIII, The Blue Chasm

Reunion at the 

Merrimon Library:
Part VIII,
The Blue Chasm

~ Continued from Part VII ~

The large truck careened toward Alan.  It crushed the bookshelves and scattered books into the air as it plowed forward.  The edge of a shelf hit one of the smaller jellyfish and the thing exploded in a burst of slimy luminescence.  He turned quickly and pushed hard with his legs.  The last thing he saw as he leapt away was the creature entwined with Tim's body pressed flat against the truck's front end.  He jumped.
 

The world twisted around him and a lightning bolt of pain shot up his leg.  The library became a blur as Alan was tossed about.  He landed hard against a shelf and it fell to the ground.  The truck front flattened against the wall with a metallic grinding thud.  There was a bright flash of bluish light and the entire building shook violently.

Exhumed: The Storm

Here we have an image of an incoming storm.  With the color reinvestigation I wanted to try to capture the weight and ominousness of an approaching storm.  I also tried to simulate the odd twilight that accompanies such storms.  With such heavy cloud cover it becomes neither night nor day, but instead some dim other light.

Featured Creature: Reunion at the Merrimon Library Part VII, The Rune of Banishment

Reunion at the 

Merrimon Library:
Part VII, 
The Rune of Banishment 

~ Continued from Part VI ~

Alan quickly stacked the books again in the circle formation Tim had originally created.  The things behind the wall had begun emitting a sickening blue light that vibrated like the light from the jellyfish creatures but it gave him more than enough illumination to find Die Tür Des Bösen amongst the scattered volumes.  He frantically flipped the pages until he found the illustration with the banishing rune.  To draw the rune, Alan chose a spot on the wall adjacent to the bulging shapes.  He ran over the banishing ritual in his head adding the name of the rune, Eisott Mudulica.  He took a deep breath.

Just then the wall beside him bowed out about two feet.  It pulsed barely inches from from his face.  Thick drops of jelly dripped from it.  Alan's breath came in sharp short gasps.  As the wall stretched thin he could see a massive shape beyond , another creature like the others, but as large as a truck.  It pushed hard against the skin of the wall, but luckily the barrier held.  The monstrous shape on the other side retracted and the wall fell back into place.  However, the skin of the wall sagged slightly this time, like an empty balloon.

From the Archives: Chained

From long ago, an image of anxiety and fear.  Looking back, I'm not sure what all the odd patterning is about.  I recognize the symbolism of some of it, but from this end it seems more visually disruptive than effective.  At the time, I do recall being very preoccupied with neon Prismacolor pencils because of the intensity they brought.  I'm sure that was part of this.

{Sharpie and Prismacolor pencils}

Exhumed: Strange Eye

Here is a simple sketch of a nonhuman eye.  As I was working on it, I wanted to do more than just add color to it.  That's where the shading and bubbles came in.  I tried to give a subtle sense of structure to the "head" that houses this eye.  Obviously a larger creature but it's exact nature we cannot tell.  You can bet though that there are tentacles involved!

{8x6.533,  Graphite with color added in Adobe Photoshop}

Featured Creature: Reunion at the Merrimon Library Part VI, Towards the Circle

Reunion at the 

Merrimon Library:
Part VI, Towards the Circle

~ Continued from Part V ~

Alan crawled slowly towards the corner.  He held on tightly to the copy of Die Tür Des Bösen with his good hand and angled the wrist of his wounded hand to keep from putting too much pressure on it.  It had swollen up in an ugly way, the fingers grown to twice their size.  Luckily the intense pain had faded into a dull throb.  Small favors, he thought.  In short hobbled movements, he slithered towards the corner.

From what Alan could see in the dim light, most of circle that Tim had created was still intact.  One of the piles closest to him had been knocked over when Tim rushed from the circle.  The books had not scattered but merely lay down like a sliced loaf of bread.  They could easily be stacked again in their original positions.  He would need them to be as exact as possible to attune the energies so that he might close the gate Tim had opened, if he could close it at all.  He clung to that hope as he crawled, eying the shapes that moved beneath the skin of the walls.

Featured Creature: Everything's Fine

"Samantha!  Oh My God!  You disappeared!  Where where you?"  I rushed to hug her.  "Are you okay?"

"Everything's fine."  She smiled at me.  she was stiff in my embrace, her breathing shallow.

"Thank Goodness."  I pulled back but kept a comforting hand on her shoulder.  "I was worried."  She continued to smile.

Exhumed: Dead Wolf

This piece was orginally posted within the Featured Creature weekly posts.  I updated the black and white with a greyscale version shortly after.  The Exhumed color piece here isn't too far away from the tonal version due to the muted nighttime lighting, but I feel the texture and depth here are much stronger.  Actually, getting the colors muted was a bit of a challenge for me with this piece.  No matter what combinations I used, everything seemed too intense for moonlight.  It wasn't until I began bringing in the fog textures that the colors finally calmed into what you see here.

{8x5.57,  Sharpie with color added in Adobe Photoshop}

Featured Creature: Reunion at the Merrimon Library Part V, Illumination

Reunion at the 

Merrimon Library:
Part V, Illumination

~ Continued from Part IV ~

Alan sat for several long moments with his back against one of the bookshelves for support.  He slumped to a sitting position and watched the jellyfish creatures, trying not to look at Tim.  The vibrating light from the creatures pulsed in a slow rhythm, casting odd patterns on the walls.  The fearsome shapes that Alan had seen earlier beyond the egg were appearing now on the wall above where the circle had been.  He watched as massive shapes slithered beneath the surface of the wall.  His throat closed up with rising panic.   He took deep slow breaths to quiet the quivering fear within him.

When Alan had moved out of range of the creatures he realized that he still clutched the copy of Die Tür Des Bösen in his good hand.  Alan scoured the book.  He struggled to see in the momentary flashes from passing cars, but could not read in the quickly fading light.  The sleet ticked against the window incessantly, rising and falling with the wind. 

Featured Creature: In the Fields

"Its arms rose and fell like a carnival ride as it moved around the fields.  It twisted back on itself like a slow moving tornado.  A thin cloud of dust danced behind it.  There was a whining noise coming from the thing, like the howl of wind inside a drafty house.  It was covered in baleful red eyes and no matter where I walked they seemed to always face towards me.

Exhumed: Nightboy

Here I've exhumed a portrait of the Nightboy.  With this reinvestigation, I chose to remove the black sketchy blot in the background and replace it with some scenery to give the image greater depth.  I also chose a very dark muted palette to reflect nighttime lighting.  I tried to soften the image a bit with the muted colors. However, my original drawing is so stiff I never quite got beyond it.

{8x6.02,  Sharpie with color added in Adobe Photoshop}

Featured Creature: Eye of the Dead

"It is said that all succumb to the light of the Oculi Mortui save the wielder of the lantern.  A favored artifact of thieves and assassins, those exposed to it's light are drained of vitality and fall into a state of paralytic torpidity.  After the lantern's passing, they wake at the next sunrise exhausted and disoriented.  Horrible dreams have been recorded by those who have been exposed to it.  Sleepers are assailed by visions of terrible lifeless vistas where the wind ceaselessly howls."

{8x5.33,  created in Adobe Photoshop}

Exhumed: Grahtennas

Here is the color version of a previous sketch of the demonic arch duke Grahtennas.  In the first portrait of Grahtennas I posted the intensity of color was much greater, but that piece was more of a depiction of the essence of Grahtennas.  Here, I toned down the intensity of the color to lend it a more atmospheric sense of space. 

{8x5.33,  Sharpie with color added in Adobe Photoshop}

Featured Creature: Doctor Theodore Mars

"At the time of his incarceration, Doctor Mars was in the process of surgically reconstructing live human subjects into complex and unnatural forms.  Investigation of his laboratory revealed that he had been performing these operations for an as yet undetermined number of years.  It is suspected that he was conducting his procedures at multiple clandestine locations and that the full catalog of his victims has yet to be uncovered and identified."

{8x5.33,  created in Adobe Photoshop}

Exhumed: FEAR

Here we have explorations of an older sketch for a fear logo.  Whereas most of the other Exhumed pieces have been about simply adding color to develop the image further, here I've taken the idea from the original sketch and constructed an entirely new design. 

{8x5.33,  Created in Adobe Photoshop}

Featured Creature: After the Storm

"The morning after the storm, they found them hanging from porches and trees, car bumpers and the sides of bridges, fences and clotheslines.  No one knew what they were, but by nightfall, everyone knew."

{8x5.33,  created in Adobe Photoshop}

Featured Creature: Reunion at the Merrimon Library Part IV, From Beyond the Gate

Reunion at the 

Merrimon Library:
Part IV, From Beyond the Gate

~ Continued from Part III ~

Alan put his hands under Tim's arms and dragged him away from the circle as quickly as possible.  With the only light coming from the windows now, the corner had become an abyss of pitch.  Through the windows, Alan could see that the buildings across the street were dark as well.  Only passing car headlights and the darkening grey sky offered any illumination.

"Get up Tim!  C'mon Timothy, You've got to get on your feet!  We've got to get out of here!"  Tim managed to get his feet beneath him and he and Alan rushed towards the table.  Nonetheless, Alan kept hold of one arm to support him.

Alan had begun sweating profusely.  He knew that this was only the beginning and if he could not get he and Tim back to his house and within the arcane protections surrounding it, they were both in mortal danger.  First, though, they had to get out of the building.  

As they reached the table, Alan made sure Tim could stand on his own and grabbed his backpack.  He directed Tim to his own jacket and kept his eye on the dark passage to the restrooms for any sign of movement.  From the pack, he procured the book Tim had been reading earlier, Die Tür Des Bösen.  He hoped he could find some indication of what Tim had been exposed to that could lead him to devising some form of defense.