Exhumed: D'spayre

Here we have a reinvestigation of a previous sketch of one of my favorite dark Marvel comics characters, D'spayre.  With the color, I wanted to clean the drawing up a bit and give him a dreary backdrop to look menacing against.  I also made the line work in the image part of the color.  As I began I had redrawn all of the line work in black, but I found the contrast too harsh.  With the color line work he takes on a phantom quality which suits D'spayre very well.

{8x6.18,  Graphite with color added in Adobe Photoshop}

 

From the Archives: Dark Corner

When I drew this, there was a person I was working with that I strongly disliked.  I often imagined dark things growing in the corners of our office due to the poisonous environment.  The building was older and had a slight musty / moldy smell and our section of the building got very little sun...lots of dark corners.

{8x6.17  Ball Point Pen}

Psyche Delecus: Lilitu and Pazuzu

In the desert night,
armies are gathered
and a bargain is struck.

New Abstract: Devestation Sentinel

Patrolling the razor wire perimeters of the seas of blood, it dispatches those unwary souls who cross its borders.

The Featured Creature: The Night Thing

Here we have a strange winged denizen of the night. Once I'd inked this piece, I didn't care for the flame hair, but it was already integrated in the drawing.  However, in Photoshop I was able to remove it.  When I began adding the tones, a seed of a story came to me.  It didn't take long for it to explode into a full short story, but I haven't gotten it to a finished state just yet.  Expect an update with the full story soon.

Here is the beginning of the story:

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.

From the Archives: The Marriage

I haven't drawn in this style for some time, but much of my work used to look like this.  After my Drawing II class in college, my drawing style changed dramatically.  I became very aggressive with prismacolor and elements of collage began to integrate with many of my drawings.  It was a very experimental time with media.  I was a smoker at the time and I collaged the gold foil from my cigarette packs into several drawings.

Featured Creature: Three Tongue

Here we have the first Featured Creature of the 2013, a creepy little three tongued spikey demon.  I suspect he is a demon of lying or maybe gossip.  I dunno.  He's not telling me he just keeps making these horrible snorting noises.

From the Archives: Emptiness

A creepy sharpie sketch from some time ago.  This was a developmental sketch for a painting.  After scanning the image, I did a little tweaking around the edges in Photoshop to cover up the white.  The white made the cloaked figure a little hard to see.  I was trying to achieve a subtle ambiguity with the darkly cloaked figure in night darkness. Where does the shadow begin and the figure end?  It still needs more work, but a solid idea.

Featured Creature: One-armed Male Zombie

Here's another decaying undead shambling from the darkness. This one used to be male before the change and has more of an appetite now, or perhaps he is just waving to say hi or reaching out for a hug.  I'm not sticking around to find out.

Engine and Entourage

Having passed through the gates of Halloweenland and following Persephone's Descent deeper into the seasonal Underworld, we are greeted by a flaming visceral engine and its unsettling entourage.

Visitor

Space folds like draped cloth and light falls into the void created when the visitor arrives.

The Voidchild

The voidchild is the preeminent development in gentech worker fabrication for the new millennium!  The gentech encoded into the voidchild's DNA matrix will allow complete bureaucratic control of all higher brain functions within the voidchild unit.  No need to worry about distractions from job quotas or insubordinate behavior anymore!

Abraxas and the Revelation

The Abraxas portion of the image set itself up quickly and then surprised me by asking for more space, which is unusual in this kind of piece.  I gave it a few more inches of space and suddenly a fog filled hallway became a great grey chasm.

Archaeology of the Light

Surface niceties reveal hidden demons.  Dig deep, double check your sources, learn the smell of a lie.  On a personal level, this reflects my inability to conceal my rage despite many and varied efforts.  Blood always shows through, whether its your own or someone else's.

Disturbance at the Gate

Things never stay dead.

Just when you think you've buried all the corpses of your issues and marked all the tombstones, you turn to find gnarled decaying fingers breaking the soil.  Sometimes it feels like it would just be easier to let the bastards eat me instead of fighting them back into the dirt again and again.  After rebirth fifteen I really stop seeing the point.

At the Bottom of Everything

Within the vast mucoid detritus of our lives,

lurk the forgotten and the exiled,

the denied and the refuted,

all the wretched furies never given voice or form.

He Gave in to His Demon

There seems to be a demonic theme running through my art this month.  Considering the conjunction of Saturn and Mars in Libra on the 15th, I can understand it.  These two are known respectively as the greater malefic and lesser malefic and they are together now in the sign of balance and relating.  We are all stepping on each others toes and having our personal demons/issues dragged to the surface.

Discovery in the Hall of Mirrors

We sleep upon the surface of a vast ocean.

Soulsplitter

This summer is relentless. The Pluto / Uranus square has taken no prisoners and this heat is scary.  Untenable situations abound, but the Soulsplitter is unconcerned. It performs its duties with the consistency of the sunrise, and I fear it isn't done with us just yet. 

Recommended Listening:

Rome

Die Brandstifter

from Mass Mensch Material

{Digital Images manipulated in Adobe Photoshop}