From the Archives: Environments

Backgrounds have never been my strong suite.  Every now and again I try to spend some extra time exploring environmental spaces to increase my proficiency.  Here we have a couple of sketches of some dark spaces.  I had it in my mind to do a series of pieces focused on moody and/or creepy environments.  The idea never really became more than these two sketches, but I feel like it informed some of the feeling of later pieces.

 
{Sharpie}

The Gestation Pits

Beneath my skin I drown,
The world has become incompatible,
toxic to my very essence.
I struggle against this precipice of change,
this pit of transformation. 
I gulp for air
as my lungs fill with water.
Inside me, the sleeping thing gurgles
I don't want it,
I don't want to,
I do not want this.

Friday the 13th: Vault of Shadow

Here's a little dark nugget to entertain on what promises to be at the very least an interesting Friday the 13th!  Over the next two days we have Uranus going retrograde as well as Mercury going retrograde.  This promises a certain level of intrigue as just a regular Mercury retrograde is usually enough to facilitate a great deal of mischief.  Enjoy the ride and try to hold on to your tempers as this is going to be a bumpy weekend.

Self Examination and Ego Dislocation

Here we have a Systematic Ego Deconstruction. This is where the Sword of Discrimination comes in to help strip away layers of self delusion a.k.a. the ego.  There is no blade so harsh and exacting as the one welded by your own hand.  Swords and self examination, apropos during the current Neptune Retrograde.  Interesting that one of the major myths of the west, that of the King, Arthur, involves such a sword emerging from a body of water.  Indeed, all swords must be tempered before they are complete.  Curiouser and Curiouser.

Grey Days III: The Tower Grows Again

It seeks only its own expansion.

The tower of ego knows no limit, no retraction, no restraint.

Yet in the end, it will always fall.

From the Sketchbook Archives: Dream Shard

Images I recorded from a dream / nightmare. I think the image was from a dream but turned quickly into a story upon waking.  In the dream there was a black rectangular cuboid that was very shiny.  At its base was a grotesque substance that looked as though the feeling of illness were given a physical form.  It was olive colored with dark eggplant purple bubbles emerging from it. It had integrated itself into a building and was sticking out of a brick wall.

At the Crossroads of Doubt

At the crossroads of doubt,
even our most staunch truths abandon us.
We are wrapped in darkness,
lost to to wit and to reason.
The feel of our hands is confused, one to the other,
our own flesh in the darkness become a lie,
some murky beast come to torture.
Everything rings true
Everything stinks of lies
Everything cries out
Signal or Devil?
Signal or
Devil?
Signal
or -

This House

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

Hell, Another Entrance

There are many roads into the Underworld...as many as there are names for it.  Hell, Hades, Underworld, Mictlan, Annwn, Niflheim, and on.  Sometimes, like it or not, you have to walk into it, because it is the only road before you.  All other avenues of escape have been removed and only darkness waits.  Pulsing darkness and pain that calls like an old addiction.  It wants you to believe that it is all there is.  The light was only a trick of your mind and only madness and blood are the truth.

Versus

During the month of December 2011, it felt as though there was no escape from everything that was wrong with my life...no shelter, no respite, no answers.  I had just moved all my belongings into a space half the size of my previous abode, after a year of job hunting I was still unemployed, and my new housemate's mother passed the second week of December.  By New Years Eve, I felt as though I was losing my mind. 

The Labyrinth of Vain Striving

Recommended Listening:
Apoptose
Nordlicht
from Nordland

{Digital images manipulated 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}

The House that Fear Built

Anger.  Wrath.  Rage.  I've been trying to create an image that exactly matches my feeling, but halfway through every piece, it changes.  It never stays anger.  In this case, I realize that the anger was built on a foundation of fear and dread.

I think this might be a message to myself.  The Rune Sowelu is mirrored in the piece as indication of damage from a negative solar experience.  Now that the light of the true sun is arriving the fear of that past damage is rising like a ghost pain, inspiring me to retreat from love and light.

In actuality, the true sun would heal the pain, but the previous negative encounter was so great as to cause a powerful panic driven fear of this type of encounter.  So the fear went to ground...underground.  From its seed has grown anger, rage, denial, and despair.

My Anger and Rage are defense mechanisms attempting to protect the part of me that was damaged in the previous incident.  Being only damage control, they were never meant to last and have begun to break down as the expenditure of energy required to maintain them is becoming greater than the energy needed to heal.  The current set of experiences in my life have pushed me further and further out of every comfort zone I have.  All my defense mechanisms are eroding and collapsing out of the necessity of energy conservation. All my issues are springing forth anew.  All my dead are returning to life.

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

From the Archives: Portfolio 2001 Back Cover

This is my favorite of the three 2001 portfolio pieces.  The aura of mystery alone sustains it.

The front cover initiates the portfolio.   It is very presentation oriented and uncomfortably intimate.  The table of contents, still presentational, is focused on organized content.  This is the end of the portfolio, or even further after the end.  The portfolio is finished and these are the last visual echoes of its passing.

The fire of inspiration has been extinguished and the plumes of smoke evaporate into the night sky.  Here the hand of the artist is retreating, fading into the night of clouds.  The portfolio has been presented and the hand now moves away, leaving you to think on what you have observed.  The image block of the moon has lost its glow and become transparent, its contrast and intensity diminished.  It is being absorbed now by the sky. 

This piece is best observed while listening to Cocteau Twins or Dead Can Dance.  I recommend Victorialand or Within the Realm of a Dying Sun, respectively.  I know this is all pretentious and silly, but once in awhile there are those images that move beyond mere representation and step into the mythic, the symbolic.  I am very grateful to have had this image move through me.  Pretentious or not, the mystery within this piece moves me.

Like the preceding pieces from my 2001 portfolio, this was scanned from a physical copy.  This one had many touches up as well and also was sadly lost to The Hunger of the Zip Disks.

{digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

From the Archives: Graveyard Study

This is a study I did for another piece I was working on.  Sadly the full piece was never finished.  There may still be hope for that one yet, so I won't give anymore details as I want it to be a bit of a surprise if I do pull it off.  Regardless though, I am a bit enamored of this quiet aged graveyard scene.

A brief and tiny hurrah - this is a new record for me:  This post makes 30 posts this year.  This is the greatest number of posts I've done in any given year since I started my blog.  I know it's not much, but I'm looking at it as the beginning of something good.  :-)  My goal is to post a minimum of two posts every week, more if I can manage it.  Time will tell.  I know this is a mediocre achievement, but this is the first year I've taken my blog and truly pushed it.  Thanks for reading so far.  I hope this has all been entertaining.

{Pen & Ink, Sharpie}

Interior Life from the Archives: The Wall

A bit of homage to Arthur Adams from New Mutants Special #1.  I was always fond of the Enchantress' hateful wall.  This also falls into that same category with the inanimate coming to life.  So...if you're exploring a haunted castle or catacombs, don't stand too close to the walls eh?

This condenses one of those horrible days where it seems like the entire world is set against you into a single moment.  "You're not going anywhere boy - we have a very comfy place for you here inside the wall!  Hold still."  EEP.

Just my brief comment on how vexed I get sometimes by the practical inanimate world.  It seems our little bits of stuff control us in many ways.  Cell phones, cars, clothes, dishes, shoes, TV's, gaming platforms, computers, furniture...a laundry list of inanimate things that control our actions and decisions.  We are forced into a slavery by their very presence.  Their comfort leads us into a languid torpor and should we try to escape them, we find their gravity to be insatiable and insidious.    We all become, indeed, bricks in the wall.  Mind you, I'm not saying that homelessness or poverty are great, but at what point does having our every want met become just another drug?  Who is served by the Omnipresence of THINGS?  Who Benefits?

{Pen & Ink}

Depths

Bones are always buried.  During our lives, they are buried in our flesh, and when we die we place them under the soil. 

{created in Photoshop.}

In Space

This was a left over panel from the UCBC Flyer from last year.

I'd forgotten all about it until I happened upon it recently.

{created in Adobe Photoshope Elements}

Entryway

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."


ENTRYWAY.
{Digital photo manipulated in Adobe Photoshop.}

The Monoliths

I had a dream of a place like this. In the dream it was underground. 

 {Prismacolor and ink}