Just in Time for Halloween...

Another blurb here to remind everyone that the t-shirts I recently designed to promote the HBA are still available through Neatoshop and the Horror Blogger Alliance.  If you are interested in purchasing one, the images below link directly to the ordering pages.  I got my HBA t-shirts in the mail a little while back and I've been working hard on this ad to show you how good they look!  I was like a kid at christmas when the package arrived!  Thanks Jeremy!

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}

Featured Creature: The Melting Man or Every Time is the First Time

Here we have a face of sorrow and grief swallowed up by darkness.  I've begun playing with the Featured Creatures in Photoshop immediately after scanning them.  The greyscale tones bring such a depth to the creatures I cannot resist.  I am definitely going to continue this process.  Thanks Vincent!

Halloweenland

The tide turns, the Autumn Equinox passes, and we enter into the season of the Underworld.  Welcome to Halloweenland.

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!

Autumn Equinox: Persephone's Descent

Today is the Autumn Equinox, the temporal and celestial midpoint between the Summer Solstice and the Winter Solstice.  Here in the northern hemisphere, from now and into winter, the days grow shorter and the nights grow longer.  This is the beginning of the dark half of the year.

Visitor

Space folds like draped cloth and light falls into the void created when the visitor arrives.

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}

Featured Creature: Death's Head

Here we have the grim vision of a revenant head emerging from a cloud of darkness.  Shriveled with hate and age, it measures us with its baleful eyes.

The Voidchild

The voidchild is the preeminent development in gentech worker fabrication for the new millennium!  The gentech encoded into the voidchild's DNA matrix will allow complete bureaucratic control of all higher brain functions within the voidchild unit.  No need to worry about distractions from job quotas or insubordinate behavior anymore!

Abraxas and the Revelation

The Abraxas portion of the image set itself up quickly and then surprised me by asking for more space, which is unusual in this kind of piece.  I gave it a few more inches of space and suddenly a fog filled hallway became a great grey chasm.

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}