From the Sketchbook Archives: Dancing Hand

I’ve always been disturbed by hands with more than five fingers or hands in a configuration other than human. I think at the base it may be the same kind of reaction I have to bugs that I consider to have “too many legs”. It makes my skin crawl for some reason.

I used to be afraid of Spiders, but we made a truce. I don’t kill them and they stay off me. I let them have the unused corners of rooms so they can eat annoying things like flies and gnats and buzzy little annoying bugs. We get along. However Millipedes, Silverfish, and Centipedes...not so much. Yuck.

Sorry for the crappy reproduction here. This is another from the sketchbooks.  Graphite also reflects the flash of a camera quite dramatically.

{Graphite}

UPDATE:  Fresh scan from my new scanner as of 01.29.12.  No blur here and I am amazed at the amount of line detail that the scanner picked up.  Yay Scanner!

Murder in the Maze Part II: The Game

The Murder in the Maze game is fairly uncomplicated.  First take a deck of cards and pull out the number of cards equal to the number of people playing, being sure to include the ace of spades.  Second, deal the cards out to everyone face down so that no one can see anyone's  cards.  Everyone then looks at their cards and shows no one.  Whomever has the  ace of spades is the murderer.  Everyone turns off their flashlights and retreats into the maze and the fun begins.

As soon as the lights are out, the player who is the Murderer begins counting to 60 to give everyone a chance to hide.  The Murderer then begins to seek out the other players and when he finds them, taps them on the shoulder to let them know they have been killed.  The Murderer flees and the killed player begins to count to 20.  At 20, the victim screams "Murder in the Maze!"  Everyone turns their flashlights on and proceeds through the maze to the scene of the crime.  The dead tell no tales, so the victim is unable to identify his/her killer and must remain silent.  However, the remaining players can accuse whomever they like as they try to discover the murderer.  The catch is that the murderer is hiding amongst the accusers and could be actively accusing someone else.  This is where the intrigue truly begins.

This is the Trial phase of the game with everyone acting as accused and accuser except the unfortunate dead.  The trial and accusations are based  on who passed who in the dark and how close everyone was standing to the victim when the lights came on.  After official accusations are made, everyone votes on who they think is the killer with majority ruling.  That player is then forced to show their card, revealing that they are the murderer...or not.  Many an innocent man or woman has gone to their death during this phase of the game.  If that player IS the murderer - Great Fun!  You Win!  Start again!  If that player is NOT the murderer (SHIVER) the previous victim and the wrongly accused leave the maze and everyone turns off their flashlights and retreats into the maze once again.  This continues until you find the murderer or the murderer gets everyone.  Many of the games ended with the last survivor and the murderer facing each other after Murder in the Maze had been called and the lights came up!  Good scary stuff!  I do recommend playing this game only with people you trust.  It can get pretty creepy in complete darkness.

The two pieces included here were also part of the planned deck for Murder in the Maze.  The butcher knife was to be the murderer card while the two daggers were to indicate the second murderer.  I will explain the second murderer in my next post!

{Graphite on Paper}

More Maze History and Art:

Murder in the Maze Part I: The Maze

The next few posts  are going to require a little more explanation than normal.  The artwork itself isn't much different from the regular stuff, but the cause for it is.

In 1998-2002 my group of friends threw a series of Halloween parties that were HUGE.  They started out small with just our regular group of friends involved, but by 2001 they had exploded into an uncontrolled tornado of people.  The parties continued well beyond 2002, but that was the end of my involvement with them.

For each party we built a black plastic maze in my friends backyard.  We used black gardening plastic, PVC piping, staples, string, duct tape, nails, 4x4 posts, and anything else we use to keep the construction together.  The Maze was entirely enclosed so that once you stepped inside it was utterly completely dark.  You literally could not see your hand in front of your face once night fell.  You had to move slowly through it lest you slam into anyone else inside or some of the post supports.  It made us all feel like we were young again, playing hide-and-seek in the dark.

The amusing part was that the reason for all this darkness and construction was so that we could play a party game: Murder in the Dark.  We changed the name to Murder in the Maze, because that is where we played it.  It was like Hide and seek and Freeze tag all rolled into one.  We had a great time running around in the darkness.  I'll go into the mechanics of Murder in the Maze in my next post.

These two pieces of art were going to be part of a deck of cards I was creating for Murder in the Maze.  These were two of the victim cards.  My plan was to do a portrait of each of our friends as the murdered victims in the game.  These two are of myself and my friend Don.  My goal was to take flip the images and combine them in Photoshop to create something similar to the face cards of a regular deck of cards.  This deck never happened, but I got several good drawings out of the effort.

{Graphite on paper - scanned and manipulated in Photoshop}

More Maze History and Art:

Ogre's Lair Frame

A study in graphite for an ogre's lair. 

{graphite on drawing paper}.

The Storm

The weather has always affected me strongly. I have had Tornado dreams for years.

{Graphite}

UPDATE 042814:

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