From the Archives: Lapine Suspicions

Here's a recent quick emotional graphite sketch.  I wanted to do something more with this piece, but it never expanded beyond this simple image.

{8.5x11,  Graphite}

Bristol 

From the Archives: Zombie Meat King Sketch

A preparatory graphite sketch for a color zombie image from long ago. 

{8.5x11, Graphite}

From The Archives: Loose Zombie Head Sketch

Here we have the last of loose zombie sketches.  Because of the size of this sketch, I had to piece it together from multiple scans.  It came through mostly okay, but there are a few patches of variation between the scans.  This piece is the last of the loose zombie sketches.

{11x17,  Graphite}

From the Archives: Loose Chunky Zombie

Here's another loose zombie sketch with a chunky undead emerging from some bloody chamber of horrors.  With this one I had a bit of trouble getting it scanned.  The original drawing was fairly light and on a heavier stock paper.  This sketch had been folded like several other pieces from this month and the creases were very dramatic in the scan.  I had to play around in Photoshop a bit to erase the creases.

{11x17,  Graphite}

From the Archives: Loose Twisting Zombie Sketch

Within this sketch, you can see that I was fighting the looseness a bit.  The essence of the loose style is present, but I don't feel that is it as successful as the slender zombie I presented last week.  I feel like the fault lies with the detail.  Although in some areas it works better than others, the arm for instance, but I feel like it flattens other areas, the legs and shoulder.  This one also belongs to the 11x17 folded set.

{11x17,  Graphite}

From the Archives: Loose Slender Zombie

More loose zombie goodness from some time ago.  This looser style is very visually pleasing in retrospect, but at the time I remember being frustrated with the loose shapes and lack of explicit detail.  I wish I could let go more to explore this style, I enjoy the organic quality of the shapes.  I can't imagine inking it though.  My inking process is very controlled.

This one is the first of a set of sketches I'll be posting that were done on 11x17 sketch paper.  For storage purposes I had folded the sketches and placed them in binders.  After scanning, I went back into the images in Photoshop and removed most of the fold lines, but you can still see the folds in a few places.

{11x17,  Graphite}

From the Archives: Zombie Profile Sketch

Here is a super loose graphite sketch of a zombie in profile.  At the time I drew this I was experimenting with a different technique from my normal style.  I was turning the pencil sideways from my regular hand position I use in an attempt to draw more loosely.

From The Archives: Floating

This sketch is an earlier exploration of the same idea I used in a later piece.   This piece is also in the same arena as The Old Blue Man from the Interior Life set over at Trail of Breadcrumbs.

{Graphite}


UPDATE 060614:

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

From the Archives: Morbid Angel

From the Archives: The Man Who Fought The Clock

This was a supporting character in one of my dark superhero stories, but I had considered at one point telling his tale separately as a singular horror piece.  He is nearly driven mad by his fight to preserve the world from a dark supernatural force.  He finds the ultimate enemy hidden behind the forces of power and corruption. It manifests to him as clocks.

From the Archives: Vampire Hunter

Here's a vampire hunter from a story world I was developing some time ago.  In this world, most of the protagonists and antagonists were vampires.  He was to be a bit of an ass and difficult to get along with.

From the Archives: Vampire

Several portrait sketches for a vampire character from a comic book fiction I was working on in the early 90's.  At the time I was very much into the giant hair.  Here though I see the beginning of some of my later more chiaroscuro visuals.

{Graphite}

From the Archives: Ghoul

Here is a portrait of a ghoul at night.  Suddenly revealed in torchlight, perhaps disturbed during his grisly meal.

{Graphite}

UPDATE 011415:

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

From the Archives: Heads

These sketches were all drawn so close in time frame, I decided to post them  as a group.   Seeing them all together like this, they kind of look like a gang of creepy demon goblins here to cause trouble for some intrepid hero / heroine.  But who is their dark master?  hmmm...maybe I will make these guys into a super villain team.

{Graphite}

UPDATE 031213:  To find out what dark flower grew from these sketches, check out my posts for The Devil's Square.

From the Archives: Rotting Apple Teeth

A sketch from long ago.  A Goblin named Rotting Apple Teeth.  He's a yucky mix of Blix from Legend and that damned clown doll from the first Poltergeist movie.  I suspect he is involved with the frightening of children.

{Graphite}

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

From the Archives: The Ghostly Princess of Mirrors

The Ghostly Princess of Mirrors was cursed long ago.  The curse forced her into a strange endless limbo.  Her transparent metallic face takes on the aspects and appearance of the person to whom she is speaking, but her eyes are always closed.

From The Sketchbook Archives: Sun Discovers Chaos

This piece is mostly about the strange creature in the foreground. This creature shows the influence of P. Craig Russell's art on my creature designs.  The odd shapes in the corner were from a piece of plastic from a roll of over sized copier paper.  I was determined to use it as a shape template, but this was the only time I ever used it.  However, it did help inspire the Cthulhu style monster.

{Graphite}

From The Sketchbook Archives: She Hunts at Night

Here is a quick sketch from long ago of a goblin girl.  I imagine her with a singsong style of speech with very jerky body movements.  I suspect she leaves a bloody mess everywhere she goes.

Her feet make me think of baba yaga's hut.

{Graphite}

From the Sketchbook Archives: Strange Eye

Here's a quick sketch of a strange Cthulhian eye.  I've always been fascinated / creeped out by octopus and squid aspects of the Cthulhian Mythos.  My goal with this sketch was to explore some of the nonhuman eye construction one might encounter in the worlds of H.P. Lovecraft.

{Graphite}


UPDATE 042814:

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

From the Sketchbook Archives: The Gateway

Here is another sketch for a larger piece.  I had a vision of a large arched gate that a dark river ran beneath.  My initial thought was of the Moon card from the Tarot, but upon time and reflection, I think this may be an incarnation of the river Styx and the entrance to the Underworld / Realm of Hades.  Considering the time frame during which this sketch was created and Pluto's inevitable ingress into Capricorn (my sign), Styx seems very likely.  Also, the two guardians are very much like grim reapers.  Of course, both visions can be true.  Intriguing.