From the Sketchbook Archives: Nightboy

A quick sketch portrait of a nighttime denizen from some time ago. This piece illustrates the reluctance I have sometimes to completely embrace solid black shadows.  It probably would have worked just as well without the hatching or the thin highlights on the neck and at the temple and hair.  Once the black is applied though, it's permanent.  The challenge as always is knowing when.

{Sharpie}

UPDATE 022614:

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

Featured Creature: Devil's Head

Another horned headed monster this week for the second installment of Featured Creature, but a few more steps towards a darker demonic tone.  Somewhere between a satyr and a werewolf I think.  Once again, the background tone was added in photoshop post scanning to give give the image a little more punch.


{Sharpie and Uni-ball Vision Elite Pen, tone added in Adobe Photoshop}

The Room that Ate the World

I thought I had no story to tell about this piece, no insight, but my initial reaction to this piece seems a plausible narrative.  I saw a room containing several people, all altered, in this opulent space.  One of the participants within the space has an insight that transforms their consciousness and those around them.  Their mind literally is blown by the change in point of view.  Visually it makes me think of las vegas a little.  Perhaps it is a religious ceremony.  There was also a flash of a court room.  Of course the room that ate the world would be a mystery.

Archaeology of the Light

Surface niceties reveal hidden demons.  Dig deep, double check your sources, learn the smell of a lie.  On a personal level, this reflects my inability to conceal my rage despite many and varied efforts.  Blood always shows through, whether its your own or someone else's.

From The Sketchbook Archives: Blue Boy in the Underworld

For some reason, still not sure exactly as to why, I never filled in the background on this sketch.  When I found this in my notebooks, I didn't want to mar the original with a bland fill-in that wasn't necessarily in line with what I was feeling when I originally drew the piece.  Instead, I played a bit in photoshop and added a background. 

{Sharpie with background added in Adobe Photoshop}

Featured Creature: Satyr's Head

I've been feeling lately that I haven't been spending nearly enough time drawing by hand and I've been fearful of losing my drawing chops (as it were).  Beginning this week and hereafter, I will be posting a new sketch of some dark creature or other.  Satyrs, Ghosts, Zombies, Demons, you name it.  They will all be crawling out of the recesses of my mind to haunt and frighten. All will be hand drawn with pencil, pen, and sharpie.  By the end of it all I hope to post a veritable army of monsters.  Welcome to my first Featured Creature!

He Came to Me

It is only my fear
that keeps me from my happiness.
I have survived many things
and it is the tide of this history
that will carry me into his arms.

Disturbance at the Gate

Things never stay dead.

Just when you think you've buried all the corpses of your issues and marked all the tombstones, you turn to find gnarled decaying fingers breaking the soil.  Sometimes it feels like it would just be easier to let the bastards eat me instead of fighting them back into the dirt again and again.  After rebirth fifteen I really stop seeing the point.

From The Sketchbook Archives: The Gate

This was a sketch done the same time as He Who Bears the Fury.  This became a finished painting as well.  After a botched attempt at changing the main colors of the painting, in frustration I painted over the entire piece.  This sketch is all that remains.

At the Bottom of Everything

Within the vast mucoid detritus of our lives,

lurk the forgotten and the exiled,

the denied and the refuted,

all the wretched furies never given voice or form.

He Gave in to His Demon

There seems to be a demonic theme running through my art this month.  Considering the conjunction of Saturn and Mars in Libra on the 15th, I can understand it.  These two are known respectively as the greater malefic and lesser malefic and they are together now in the sign of balance and relating.  We are all stepping on each others toes and having our personal demons/issues dragged to the surface.

From The Sketchbook Archives: Shadow Struggle

I think at the time I drew this, I was sensing the coming struggles I would undergo with my sarcoidosis.  I felt a great inevitable darkness surrounding me.  Not sure on the exact timeframe, but I know it was before 2003.

{Sharpie}

Discovery in the Hall of Mirrors

We sleep upon the surface of a vast ocean.