Zombie Bites New Abstract: Lake of the Dead

Its waters hold the secrets of beyond,
but the dead are greedy with their truths.
Knowledge comes from only a sip
but at a dreadful price.

This House

Some places are stained with a belligerence that takes on a life of its own.

Devil's Head IV: It Swims in Blood

It emerges from beneath red tides, parting the crimson mist.  It moves with a singular purpose, yet robotic. It lumbers past and into darkness, its muscled arms creak like leather pulled too tight.  Its breathing is ragged and wet, fading into the distance with each thud of its monstrous feet.

In the Valley of the Mask

At the bottom of our lives,

the soulless urge waits.

We've no reason to fear this skin we've shed,

yet a shiver still comes at its similarity

to our reflection in the mirror.
It is only absence,
it is only emptiness,
echoing the beating of our hearts.

Fear wears only the clothes we provide.

The Labyrinth of Vain Striving

Recommended Listening:
Apoptose
Nordlicht
from Nordland

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

Before You Receive Their Mercy, First You Must Bleed

Recommended Listening:
Hildur Gudnadottir
Ascent
from Without Sinking

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

What's that behind you?

This is thing that you always feel staring at you when your back is turned.  That creepy tingly feeling are its hairs on the back of your neck.  It always zips away when you turn your head around, though.  I aimed my camera over my shoulder and caught this quick snapshot.

Mandala Cross of the Mothmen

Once again a mandala has found its way over from Trail of Breadcrumbs.  This one isn't so much gruesome as the last one, but it's dark air of mystery was what felt more appropriate to Zombie Bites...that and the Mothmen.

From the Sketchbook Archives: Ghost

This piece was created very shortly after Sharpie premiered their new fine tip writing pens.  Needless to say I was VERY excited by the mark making possibilities.  Straight to paper here with no graphite sketching before the pen.  I was playing with the new fine point and this little guy emerged.

The Guardian

Blocked and bound at the wall of forbidden passage. This is another one of those pieces that doesn't want to give up its information.  There seems to be a diffusion around it.  My attempts at revealing its inner nature seem to be pushed away each time I try to analyze it.

Interesting that there is a Venus symbol in the structure of the piece and what appears to be the head of a large bull hidden in there as well.  If we follow the structure of the Crux Ansata and apply it to the Kabbalah, the guardian head emerging from the circle would be in the placement of the Daath level which is associated with Choronzon.   Choronzon is often considered to be the dweller at the threshold, the demon of dispersion, the guardian at the gate.  So now my difficulty in analyzing this piece becomes clearer.

Alan Moore and J. H. Williams III give a very interesting depiction of this level of consciousness in the 20th issue of Promethea.

Recommended Listening:
Moderat
Seamonkey
from Moderat


{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

Bullet in the Brain Pan

This one is a sister piece to Io Pan.  It was created from the same source material, but with a very, very different outcome. Io Pan seems to be moving towards some greater cohesion whereas this piece is about violent dissolution.

On an unrelated, but related note, I recently watched I saw the Devil for the first time.  The movie is dramatically gory, but as I was discussing with my friend Josh, it is gory with a purpose.  You need to feel knee deep in blood by the end of that movie.  I feel as though that kind of aesthetic applies to my pieces like this.  This piece is difficult for me to look at because it should be.  I feel I need to make a counterpoint here.  The movie Hostel and those of a similar make like the SAW series, are simply torture porn to me.  I Saw the Devil is a story about Revenge and all that it entails.  In Hostel, we are watching torture with no other overtures or elements.  In I saw the Devil the director takes you through the horror of the situation to bring you to an ultimate point of tragedy.

I guess I'm justifying a bit here because I was nervous about this piece from the moment I created it.  I'm not afraid of gore and the visceral reaction it evokes from me, but there is a line.  I do not want my pieces to be gory for the sake of aesthetic violence.  I guess my question becomes then...Where is the line?

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

Gestation Mandala

I usually save my mandalas for Trail of Bread Crumbs, but this one was so gory and dark I figured it would be more at home here on here on Zombie Bites.  I don't have much for you on this one, other than it makes me think of raw steak bits or a wounded heart.

Recommended Listening:
The White Birch
Breathe
from Star is just a Sun

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

Seasons Greetings

There is a reason that Santa Claus wears red, or maybe this isn't so much Santa as what the Big Bad Wolf did after Granny and Little Red were gone. LOL. Maybe a little of both, but I did draw initially as Santa.

A little bit of tribute here to Mike Mignola to say the least.  His strong chiaroscuro style and his penchant for antique and ancient artistic elements have always been a strong influence on me.  If you haven't read any Hellboy, you are really missing out!

My initial idea behind this piece involved a much more elaborate set up, but as I began working on the piece, simple seemed the way to go. This is a functional christmas card. It is already the correct size for printing on 8.5x11 paper - justify to the right. I couldn't decide on Color or Black and White, so I provided both. Enjoy!

Recommended Listening:
Northaunt
Night Alone
Horizons


{Images created in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop}

Up on the Rooftop

"Later that night, he heard the jingling again.  Faintly, just as before, it circled the house like a passing car.  As before, the soft padding crunch of snow and again, the faint jingling.  He stood in the kitchen, a cigarette quivered between his enraged fingers. He smoked two more as the jingling continued for another fifteen minutes. He'd had it with those damned kids.  Ed grabbed the broom and his flashlight and headed out into the snow.

"Alright you little bastards!" Growling, he threw the door open and waived the broom in a wide arc.  The light flashed across the snow.  It was smooth.  No footprints.  He stepped out, broom at the ready.  No footprints anywhere in the yard.  His face full of confusion, his broom lowered.  He heard the jingling again, just beyond the corner of the house.  He raised the broom once more and moved to intercept. They weren't gonna get away.  The snow on his ankles tickled and burned with each step.

At the corner of the house he found no footprints, but could still hear the jingling. Something hit his arm and bounced into the snow.  He leaned over and picked up something wet.  It took him a moment to adjust his hold on the broom and get the flashlight up to his other hand.  It looked like a shredded piece of cloth from a coat, but it was covered in red paint.  No.  No, it wasn't paint.   Ed dropped the cloth and backed away from the house.  His line of vision moved slowly up towards the roof.  His mouth hung agape at the sight of the thing.  It was chewing absently above the bloody patch it made, a ring of bells circling its neck.  Each time it chewed, the bells would softly jingle.

Ed turned and ran.  The flashlight fell free into the soft snow, a small glowing thumbprint disappearing behind him. He hadn't gone that far, the door was just a few more feet away.  He heard a loud snort and his bladder emptied into his pajama pants.  Then there was a hard pinch at his neck, like when his mother used to grab him as a child.  His arms flailed as he was yanked back.   Ed screamed, but then a rough blow at the back of his head made him quiet.  He felt dizzy now.  He lurched and vomited blood as the pinch at his neck grew harder.

"I'll be good Ma.  I won't do it again."  The pinch grew harder still and he knew he was gonna get a spanking.  Then he was flying, flying up and into the christmas sky.  A trail of paint splattered on the snow beneath him. No. No, it wasn't paint."

Recommended Listening:
Svartsinn
Torchbearer, Kill the Light
Elegies for the End

{Image created in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop}

SEES YOU WHEN YOU'RE SLEEPING. KNOWS WHEN YOU'RE AWAKE.

Need I say more?

{Drawn in Sharpie, Color added in Photoshop}

Gates of the 14 Aethyr

Empty,
I walk through fog and shade and rain.

A door opens within me, before me,
A space within a space.
I step out of nothing into nothing.
I step through and into myself.
I am the gate through which I pass.

All doors swing open,
a vast passage up down to the bottom top
of every no thing.
The sacred hole in the great hedge,
the womb throat of the Universe,
with a great wind singing through it.

Across this vastness,
across this great wallless infinite,
I convey the burden of space.

Recommended Listening:

ELDAR

From the Deep Sea (Featuring Wyrm)

Sapere Aude

{created in Photoshop}

Not Exactly Krampus...

Not exactly Krampus, but I think devilish enough to fit the season.  Be good for goodness sake, Krampus is coming!

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

UPDATE 010413:

I discovered recently that this piece had some visual issues that I hadn't noticed before.  I've gone through several computer upgrades since this was originally created so I'm chalking it up to the better system I'm using.  Regardless, I noticed the hard black edge within the piece that I had not seen before.  Here is an updated version of how I intended the piece to look.  It's a subtle trade, but I had not intended that hard line in the original.

From the Sketchbook Archives: In the Darkness

This is me pushing Sharpies again.  Sadly in the middle of this piece my Teal Sharpie ran out. I had to mix it with yellow and light green.

This one had to be tweaked a bit to get it to show correctly.  I don’t have access to a scanner right now, but I do have a digital camera.  I discovered that the flash reflects quite nicely off of heavy sharpie works.  UGH.  This piece and several others had to be worked over in Photoshop to get them even close to the originals.  When I have access to a scanner again, I will properly re-scan these.

{Sharpie}

UPDATE:  Fresh scan from my new scanner as of 01.28.12.  No glare in the fresh one and no needful Photoshop retouch.  The actual color of the physical piece is somewhere between these two.

Some catching up to do...

Sorry for disappearing for a few weeks there.  I was finishing up my move and cleaning my old abode...aaaannnnd to top things off, because I didn't have nearly enough to do, I caught the flu this week.  OH JOY!   However, today my move is complete, my old abode is clean and fresh, and my flu is on the mend (although my ribs are very sore from coughing - ouchie).  Here's a little devil I concocted in penance.  Hope you like.

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

From the Sketchbook Archives: Night Thing

Silently, across the sea of night,
a sound like wind in the leaves.
I hold my breath and stand stock still
until it passes.
The chill of its presence
makes my breath a faint cloud.
I rush to the safety and warmth of interior light
and check all the bolts on my locks.
Outside, the tree limbs creak
at the touch of the wind.
"Perhaps," I think,
and light a candle for protection.