From the Archives: Haunted

With the header for November 2015 I opted for a bit photo manipulation instead of a drawing - I ran out of time.  I was working with an older photo of myself for a different piece and it became this header.  I've gotten a good bit of mileage out of this image of me with a sheet wrapped around me as a hood.  It has been a creepy gif, the deadly sin of pride, a white wizard, and here a somber figure in the blood soaked bounds of the haunted forest.

For 2015, I wanted to take the headers in a different direction than the work I had been producing.  I chose to adopt a looser style.  Although the 2014 pieces all had some underlying element of dark humor or social commentary, the 2015 headers have all moved back towards the essence of the work I want to create: horror.

{13.33x4.68,  Digital Images manipulated in Adobe Photoshop}
 

Halloween From the Archives: Subway

In the spring of 2015 I created a set of Halloween themed pieces as submissions to a fiction print anthology focusing on Halloween.  The anthology was set for a juvenile reading level.  I toned down my usual gore and darkness and tried to shift my imagery a little towards the lighter side.  You will see as the pieces progress that the darkness began creeping through regardless.  Although my submissions were rejected, I ended up with six lovely pieces that I will be sharing between now and All Hallow's Eve.  I hope you enjoy them.

I haven't done a lot of work focused on fear in a city setting.  For this piece I chose a subway late at night.  I also wanted to highlight that moment of horror where the protagonist narrowly escapes whomever or whatever is chasing them with only a thin barrier of protection keeping their pursuer at bay.

{8x5.33,  created in Adobe Photoshop}

Halloween From the Archives: It's Right Behind You

In the spring of 2015 I created a set of Halloween themed pieces as submissions to a fiction print anthology focusing on Halloween.  The anthology was set for a juvenile reading level.  I toned down my usual gore and darkness and tried to shift my imagery a little towards the lighter side.  You will see as the pieces progress that the darkness began creeping through regardless.  Although my submissions were rejected, I ended up with six lovely pieces that I will be sharing between now and All Hallow's Eve.  I hope you enjoy them.

With each piece in this set I tried to tell some kind of story even it was only a simple one.  This piece shows one of the greatest fears I had as a kid: the nearby but unseen monster.

{8x5.33,  created in Adobe Photoshop}

From the Archives: See

It seems each year that February always brings about a rebirth of direction for me artistically, at least with the Zombie Bites headers.  Above is the first header from early 2015.   After the unsettling events in America during the latter half of 2014, I wanted to find a way to express those feelings of deep seated group intensity, sharpened awareness, and fear filled paranoia.

For 2015, I wanted to take the headers in a different direction than the work I had been producing.  I chose to adopt a looser style.  It is not as apparent in this piece as I was overcoming the tension of the 2014 year end.  Although the 2014 pieces all had some underlying element of dark humor or social commentary, the 2015 headers have all moved back towards the essence of the work I want to create: horror.

{13.33x4.68, created in Adobe Photoshop}

From the Archives: What Balloons Feel

Here's a quick older sketch of a darksome thought about balloons.

{8x4.56,  Graphite}

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}

From the Archives: FEAR

Here is a quick graphite sketch for a logo design or larger art piece.  Perhaps in time it will become both.  Check this week's Exhumed post for my current thoughts on this idea.

{8.5 x11,  Graphite}

UPDATE 022614:

This piece was Exhumed and reinvestigated with color in February 2014.  Check out the Exhumed image here.

Suspicion

Darkness and ignorance lend the credence of fact to speculation and fear.

Recommended Listening:

Brighter Death Now

Consumers

from The Slaughterhouse

{Digital Images manipulated in Adobe Photoshop}

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.

Fear of the Night

Here's something nice and creepy for your Friday the 13th.  A little wild hog in the dark, a little Mothman, a little snowy owl, but ALL something you don't want to see following you in the dark or anywhere in the dark for that matter.  I think this might be a heebie-jeebie.  That is the scariest part, because if you were to get the heebie jeebies, that means there would be more than one.  Eep.

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}

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}

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.

Suicide Set Part I: Panic

In Mid-November of 1998 I attempted suicide by swallowing a bottle of muscle relaxers.  My life at the time felt completely out of my control and I felt myself sliding into darkness, but I felt powerless to stop it. I created the drawings in the suicide set just before my attempt.  I don’t remember drawing these pieces.  Looking at them now I realize that they are based on the four elements, but at the time I don’t recall intentionally directing them that way.  I was drawing more out of emotional desperation than any kind of intent.

Panic addresses my inability to communicate.  No matter how hard I tried, it seemed that my ability to verbalize my needs was stifled and choked.  The air was running out and I think I knew on some deep level that I was running out of time.  That the opportunity to fight back was quickly evaporating.  I was sliding into the final darkness and felt I had no way to stop the descent.  I felt completely powerless.

I really only understand any of this after analyzing in the years following.  During the event I felt removed from myself.  The month preceding my attempt, I felt like I was on auto pilot.  A ghost robot of myself set for self destruct.

I would like to note on the side of safety and communication that today, despite the difficulty of my current set of life circumstances, that I do not in any way feel suicidal.  It is simply that the time has come to share these pieces.

{Sharpie}

The Fear

And finally after 3 months of back breaking Rage, from stage left comes the source of all my drama.  Raw skinned and trembling, paralyzed and wide-eyed, My fear takes focus.

I find that I can't be angry now.  There is no resentment and my rage fades like a retreating storm.  I feel sadness for this impoverished part of myself, this portion of me with skin so thin that even the movement of air is like knives.

When I was finished with this piece I found no righteous vindication but instead a strange compassion.  I had thought the resolution of the quest to find the source of my Anger would find a villain to be defeated, but instead I find a victim.  Already defeated, and in that defeat a circling whirlwind of misplaced energy.  A leprous pariah to be given succor, relief, and healing.

{Digital images manipulated 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}