Halloween Re-Release October 25th

I found this nugget on the Halloween Movies Site.  I saw this a few years back on the big screen, can't resist another opportunity to see it again big and scary.  Check Halloween Onscreen for local times and theatres!  See you there!

Haunted Asheville Tour on the Autumn Equinox

On the night of the Autumn Equinox, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to go to Asheville, North Carolina and take the Haunted Asheville walking tour with a group of friends.  It was GREAT!  Our tour guide, Tad, was very friendly and shared many interesting and creepy facts about all the sites we visited.  I found out lots of new creepy information I never knew about Asheville.  If your in the area and looking for a good haunted tour, I give this one five stars!

Mandala Cross of the Mothmen

Once again a mandala has found its way over from Trail of Breadcrumbs.  This one isn't so much gruesome as the last one, but it's dark air of mystery was what felt more appropriate to Zombie Bites...that and the Mothmen.

From the Sketchbook Archives: Ghost

This piece was created very shortly after Sharpie premiered their new fine tip writing pens.  Needless to say I was VERY excited by the mark making possibilities.  Straight to paper here with no graphite sketching before the pen.  I was playing with the new fine point and this little guy emerged.

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.

From the Archives: Skeleton Study

This was a study for a larger piece involving several other skeletons.  That piece is still in the works, but this study is very pleasant all its own.  That and who can resist a dramatically lit skeleton!

Its when I work on something like this that I realize my deficiencies in human anatomy.  It makes me want to draw more skeletons so that I may learn.  I'll get on that.  :-)

{Pen & Ink, Sharpie}

UPDATE: Green Ghoul - Black & White

I guess all is not lost after all...I took the original scan of the Green Ghoul from my post earlier this week and ran it through Photoshop a few times to get the color out and then cleaned up the black and white.  Also, as a bonus, while I was in Photoshop I added some grayscale to the Black and White image.  I'm reposting the original color for reference.

I'm still feel the black and white image is stronger on its own.  I feel the dramatic contrast makes the Ghoul jumping much more frightening.  The Grayscale is just okay.  The black and white is my favorite.  As before...it is all about the teeth.  That is the part that is trying to get me.  Teeth by their very nature want to bite.  :-O

{Pen & Ink original scanned and manipulated in Photoshop}

From the Archives: Green Ghoul

A brief homage sketch to Tales from the Crypt style horror.  There is also a quality here that reminds me a bit of the cartoon bunny from The Twilight Zone movie...after its transformation.   I feel like there should be strobing lights or something.  

That scary rabbit gave me that gut wrenching feeling you get from seeing something unnatural and filled with hate.  You just look at it and you know...nothing good can come from this.  Similar to my gut reaction to the spider head from John Carpenter's The Thing.  It pops off and sprouts legs and you are left agape, "That did not just happen! AUUUGH!"  Yeesh.  Always check under and behind furniture!  You never know where toothy evil lurks.

I regret making this piece in color now.  It was initially just a quick black and white sketch and I added the color much later.  I think this may be a lesson for me...if it starts out black and white it needs to stay that way...or if I'm going to colorize, a quick trip to fedex office or scan and photoshop instead of (in this case I feel) messing up the original.  Live and learn!

{Pen and Ink and Sharpie!}

From the Archives: The Collapse

I wonder if this what a snake's skin looks like to the snake after it has been shed?  That is kind of how this feels to me now.  I recall an overwhelming feeling of dismay and despair upon drawing this originally, but now it seems more like a discarded skin, an empty mask that I once wore.  I am also getting a strong Grey Alien vibe here...or maybe a one of their corpses. 

A bit of a nod here to the Munch's The Scream.  Also an intentional attempt at duplication of woodgrain or linoleum cut print within Photoshop. In the end, just a sketch, but an interesting exploration nonetheless.

{Created in Photoshop}

UPDATE 022614:

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

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}

Murder in the Maze Part III: The Second Murderer

During third and fourth years of the Maze parties, so many people were playing the Murder in the Maze game that we developed an alternate set of rules for a second murderer within the game.  This was to help the game last a little longer with a large crowd so that everyone would have the opportunity to be "killed".  Also, sometimes the games would run long and people would have to head home to bed and had not had a chance yet to be the murderer.  So we inserted a second murderer to up the ante across the board!  There were several variations on how the second murderer was activated and came into play.  I don't remember them all, but following is the rule we used most often.

During the game, if the first murderer tapped the second murderer on the shoulder, then the second murderer was activated and tapped the first on the shoulder letting him know that he had become a murder victim and was dead.

Once this unknown murder had occurred, it would throw off any theory anyone had developed so far on the identity of the murderer and turn the game intrigue up to 11!  There was always lots of chatting after we were finished playing about who was where when and who secretly or not so secretly was watching or overheard when the murders were committed.  Lots of fun moments in the dark scaring the crap out of each other!  Good Times!  :-P

The first piece of art here is the flyer for the 2000 Maze party.  The flyer was printed on neon green and neon orange paper.  I apologize for my crappy scythe.  The image of Jack here has a MUCH better scythe!  :-)  Over time, Jack kind of became the official mascot for the maze parties.

{Pen & Ink, Text created in Photoshop}

The second piece of art here is the box I created for the deck of cards I created in Photoshop for the game.  During that time I had backed up many of my art files to zip disks and did not realize my error until too late.  I don't remember the exact year it occurred, but rapidly over several months time, all of my zip disks began to scramble and become unreadable.  I found out far too late that this is something that happens with zip disks over time.  I lost two years of artwork due to the scrambling.  The Murder in the Maze deck artwork was on those disks.  I've looked through all my old files to see if I had a hidden copy, but have not found any trace of the cards.

The person on the front of the box is my friend Don.  He let me xerox his face and use it as the cover.  The image from the back of the box is a skull painted by my dearly departed friend Ratboy aka Mike.  It was attached and used as the keystone in a fearsome archway we built for the entrance to the maze.  I'll see if I can find a picture of the archway and post it at some point.  The background is from several photos Don took of the black plastic that we used to construct the maze.  Those photos were used in the website we created to celebrate and advertise the Maze.  The website only ran for a couple of years but is no longer present on the web.  In my next post I will post some of the work I did for the site and give some more background info on it.

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

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:

From the Archives: Three Character Sketches

These three sketches were from a short comic book story I was working on with a guy in California whose name escapes me.  Things didn't really work out, but the drawings had been done.  Figured I would share these.  Set in LA, the story was a Noir type slasher flick involving a serial killer.  Looking at these now, I just realized some strange parallels involving a story I am currently working on with another writer.  Two of the characters look very similar.  Didn't notice that until just now.  hmph.  The stories, however, are very different.  I will post some of that when I am further along.

{Sharpie}

From The Darkness

My favorite kind of Monster next to Zombies - Werewolves.  I'm not necessarily saying what this is, although it does look that way.  I discovered this image while working on some thing else, so who knows.  Enjoi!  :-)

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop.}


UPDATE 011515:

A variation of this this piece is now available on a tshirt or other cool paraphernalia at my Neatoshop!  Drop by and check it out! 

Digital Webbing Zombie

This is the Zombie image I created for the DigitalWebbing Zombie DrawOff.

{Pencilled, Inked, Scanned, then Colored in Photoshop}