Featured Creature: Lover's Tongue

From Marge Hollander's Digest of Demons and Devils:

"Approximately three to four feet in length, the Erasti el Isnan, or Lover's Tongue, are considered one of the lesser Chimera.  In Die Tür Des Bösen, this creature is referred to also as one of the Hungry, a class of cruel rapacious demons that manipulate bodily appetites.  Reputed as petty demons of sexual obsession and jealousy, Erasti are often considered more pests than an actual demonic threat.  Erasmus Möller's account of his encounter with the Arch Duke Grahtennas, gives an indication of the Erasti el Isnan as pets of the greater demons due to the delicate erotic pain of their stings.

Zombie Bites New Abstract: History Set VI, Within the Garden of Integrations

The further neutralization of the conflict of opposites bridges the gap between imagination and mundane reality.  The landscape literally comes to life as the elements give themselves over to the process of the creation of the new. The more they give of themselves, the more fertile and resplendent the landscape becomes.

Zombie Bites New Abstract: History Set V, First Meeting

Fire and Water are thrust together at the borderline with chaos and violence as the fruit of their first interaction.  As they struggle to separate they blend together and transmute each other.  Their struggle cools the Fire with rising steam and impregnates the Water with the seeds of life.  The Athame plunges into the Chalice.

Featured Creature UPDATE: The Night Thing Part III

The following is the continuation of the short fiction presented for the Featured Creature piece, The Night Thing.  I will be posting each update to the original post as I go If you would like to read the pieces as a continuous whole.

The Night Thing Part III

"What the hell was that?!?" Ricky asked, but the man was gone, moved back under the covered area in front of the doors.  The man turned in a circle several times and poured the salt around him until one whole container was empty.  He tossed the container away and closing his eyes, began chanting.  It might have been Latin or maybe Spanish, but Ricky wasn't sure.  The howl came again.  Closer.  This time it extended into what sounded like a bird call, but deeper and almost clicking.

From the Archives: Ghoul

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

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UPDATE 011415:

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

Featured Creature: Girl in the Shadow

"Franklin and I found the missing girl at the graveyard near Hadley Heights.  A faint mist had moved in after sunset and it danced around the gravestones as we searched.  At our approach, the girl seemed to be floating in mid air.

Zombie Bites New Abstract: History Set IV, Border Guard

This piece has been particularly challenging to bring to any kind of completion.  It has gone through four distinct phases where I thought it was finished, yet each time when I moved to post it, it felt wrong or incomplete in some way.  Each time I went back and re-explored it until it felt finished again.  This is the most final it has felt thus far.

Zombie Bites New Abstract: History Set III, Dionysus at Sunrise

Today is the eighth anniversary of my first posts on Zombie Bites.  Although for many of those years this blog has lain fallow in terms of posts, since 2011 there has been a maelstrom of activity.  I suppose that the past two years have been more about playing catch up and getting things up to speed, but there has also been a dramatic change in the attitude and direction of my art.

Zombie Bites New Abstract: History Set II, A Bright and Distant Plain

"In the dream, I emerged from a deep pool.

The liquid was hot and black and nearly reflectionless.  There was an olive coloured steam coming off of it in areas.  The vapor danced across the surface like flame and dissipated quickly as it rose.  The liquid flowed with a rhythm not unlike breath.  At the edges of the pool it expanded and retreated in miniature tides.  Unsettled by its motion, I moved to the edge and climbed out.  The pool was surrounded by a ring of rough white rock and as I climbed I saw the bright desert plains that extended on all sides beyond it.  

Featured Creature UPDATE: The Night Thing Part II

The following is the continuation of the short fiction presented for the Featured Creature piece, The Night Thing.  The good news bad news here is that although I am updating the story here, this isn't all of the story.  Once I got fully into editing, several plot points expanded a bit and so did the page count, which created more pages to edit.  Regardless, I will be posting each update to the original post as I go If you would like to read the pieces as a continuous whole.

The Night Thing Part II

Ricky began sweeping.  Margaret had left him a long list of cleaning duties to be done by morning.  The store was being reviewed next Wednesday and Margaret always wanted the store cleaner than a new car on review day.  That always meant more work for Ricky: clean behind the shelving units, dust every surface, reorganize the freezer, sweep and mop twice during shifts.  Margaret was generally a relaxed manager, she even let him wear his earphones on third shift, but when a review was coming around, she became a relentless bitch.

From the Archives: The Burning Dead

My vision here was of an undying creature that even fire would not destroy.  Kind of the way a burned vampire might look after an unsuccessful assassination attempt, but more of a zombie or a ghoul.  Lack of flammability would certainly makes those guys more fearsome. 

Featured Creature: The Melted Man

"I did not realize it was present until I heard the hollow groaning of its breathing.  As I turned, it made a shrill moaning noise and retreated, its skin visibly boiling at the touch of my flashlight's beam.  I felt pity for the thing's suffering and moved my light away.  I only caught a glimpse as it struggled to escape, leaving a glistening trail of itself behind as it disappeared somewhere in the depths of the cavern.

Zombie Bites New Abstract: History Set I, The Rape of Persephone

I had plans for the History Set pieces leading up to  Zombie Bites eighth year anniversary, but the universe, as usual, has other ideas.  I'm apologizing in advance for the terseness of the History Set posts.  I've run out of time and my energy over the past couple of weeks has completely bottomed out.  I think the events of this past year have taken a much greater toll than I originally thought.  I've been feeling run down lately and each new post gets harder and harder to write.

Zombie Bites New Abstract: Veiled Essence

The slow unveiling of a heart.

The Moth Diaries Trailer

Here is the trailer for The Moth Diaries.  I am fascinated by this girls face.

From the Archives: DC Comics Joker

Here we have a quick sharpie sketch portrait of DC Comics' Joker.  I was trying to bring in some elements I hadn't seen in the Joker while keeping the violent mania essential to the character.  I looked at Tim Curry as Doctor Frank n furter while drawing.

Featured Creature: Priest of the Eye

The following is a translation from Die Tür Des Bösen:

"The Svyash Chenniksglaza, or the Priests of the Eye, are an ancient fanatical sect of devotees to The Great Devourer, Mihreshibal.  As young men, the priests dedicate the entirety of their existence to the service of their master.  They undergo great personal mutilation to become initiated into the cult of the Devourer.  The priests sacrifice their physical vision as an offering to their master during their initiation by having their eyes burned out with a heated iron.  There are unsubstantiated rumors of other, greater mutilations, yet it is also claimed that their vision is replaced with the greater sight of their lord.

Zombie Bites New Abstract: Teachings of the Veiled Fire

Cernunnos in the red room
answers each question
with only a gesture or a look.
The dance of firelight is his mirror,
but there is no flame to be seen.

Zombie Bites New Abstract: Looking Within

The core ego system of the psychonaut accesses the matrices of the Information Super Infra Structure for consciousness upgrades and essence flow optimization.

Cell Count Trailer

Just read the blurb that compared this to Cabin Fever (which I loathed).  That is unfortunate, however, the trailer is compelling.

UPDATE 02.01.13: 
My apologies, I just caught that I'd posted the trailer for Two Red Eyes here. oops.   I have corrected it.  :-)

From the Archives: Environments

Backgrounds have never been my strong suite.  Every now and again I try to spend some extra time exploring environmental spaces to increase my proficiency.  Here we have a couple of sketches of some dark spaces.  I had it in my mind to do a series of pieces focused on moody and/or creepy environments.  The idea never really became more than these two sketches, but I feel like it informed some of the feeling of later pieces.

 
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The Featured Creature: The Night Thing

Here we have a strange winged denizen of the night. Once I'd inked this piece, I didn't care for the flame hair, but it was already integrated in the drawing.  However, in Photoshop I was able to remove it.  When I began adding the tones, a seed of a story came to me.  It didn't take long for it to explode into a full short story, but I haven't gotten it to a finished state just yet.  Expect an update with the full story soon.

Here is the beginning of the story:

Zombie Bites New Abstract: Transformation Requires a Sacrifice

In the case of this piece, perhaps what is being sacrificed here is a point of view. An allowed releasing of perspective to expand to a greater understanding.  This also points to the necessary changes that all transformations require.  If one needs to live in water, one must grow gills and fins and if one is to live in a realm of fire, one must accommodate a certain level of continuous destruction.

Zombie Bites New Abstract: Throne of the Moon

"The throne shimmered with an eerie glow as the aperture in the ceiling opened.  The full light of the moon fell in a fan across the chamber.  In that delicate pallor a figure was revealed.  It was nearly invisible in its transparency.  In the radiance of the throne I could see inside it as though I were viewing a living xray. 

Two Red Eyes Trailer

I haven't seen this movie, but I do find this trailer very compelling.  There is a quality to it that dredges up my childhood fears from watching The Legend of Boggy Creek when I was two years old.  Check out Two Red Eyes on Facebook.

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.

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

Featured Creature: Deconstructed

My experiences in November and December of 2012 inspired this robotic piece.   I haven't approached any science fiction or robotic oriented pieces in the Featured Creature until now.  I guess I was a little gun shy as most of my work tends to be primarily emotive, mythical, or magick based.  I suppose this is still within the realm of emotive: a revelation about ego presented as fictional construct.

Zombie Bites New Abstract: From the Lake of Fire

"The lava separated with each of its steps, sizzling and retreating at the disruption like water dropped suddenly into hot grease. I didn't realize that I was seeing an ambulatory entity until it was almost fully emerged from the lake. It's energy matrix must be magnetic, I believe, to allow it to exist in this most inhospitable of environments. I was able to film about three minutes of footage of the thing until it stepped out of the lava. Its proximity quickly melted my remote camera.

MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech is copyrighted. Share it anyway.

I've never heard this entire speech or seen all of this  footage before in my life.  I'm very grateful for this video.  Help keep the internet free, share this video!  Can't stop the signal!

Zombie Bites New Abstract: Lake of the Dead

Its waters hold the secrets of beyond,
but the dead are greedy with their truths.
Knowledge comes from only a sip
but at a dreadful price.

Nightscape Trailer

Sometimes you don't know that you've been waiting for something until you see it.  Check out their website here.

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.

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

Featured Creature: Spirit Path

"Between the mundane world and the land of shades there are many paths.  On these trails, the two realms collapse onto each other like stacks of magazines dropped and scattered.  Many a strange apparition exists on the twilight passages that lead beyond, but few have returned to share what they have seen."

Zombie Bites New Abstract: Limboland

The strange nowhere place of being severely physically ill.  Reaching out into the emptiness for resolution and finding more grey, more hopelessness as your life is drained away.  Struggling for breath and life as it winds down, down.

Zombie Bites New Abstract: Winter

This is the essence of my life for the past two years.  On the surface, things have become frozen, coagulated into an icy hinterland.  Winter has set in.  Beneath the surface, my waters boil for freedom and release, a fiery urgency focused on moving forward.  Every choice, every motion requires twice as much effort and energy to accomplish.  Amber like circumstance has become impossible to dissolve.  I struggle for possibility in an ever tightening circle of dead ends.

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.

Featured Creature: The Thing in the Cave

"I hung my lantern from a nearby support strut and set about to examine the strange opening.  It was emerging from the cave floor at an odd angle, as though it had been grown there.  It was soft and warm to the touch, but had a solid structure that seemed like plastic.  The horned protuberances were covered with small fine hairs that stung my fingers when I touched them, much like a cactus.  The entire structure dripped with the humidity of the cave.  I wiped the sweat from my brow to see more clearly.  I'd looked all about the cave but still could not locate the source of all the steam. 

Self Portrait: This Has Always Been Within Me

Due to the recent ingress of Pluto into Capricorn, it would seem the Universe wants my molten core raw and exposed.  Despite my reservations, despite any resistance on my part, my illusions continue to drip away like overheated wax.  I'm forced to allow it, because... well, it's the Universe.  You can say no, but it's wasted breath.  All you can do is manage the pain and shake your fist at the uncaring sky screaming every expletive and curse you know.  Many have questioned this action on my part, but I think that it is important to lodge a complaint even if the boss is the system / Universe your immersed in.  At least if anything else, they will know that you did not bow willingly.

My Ra

It is his force that draws me to him.

Questions: Recommended Listening?

In posts involving my abstract works, I often included links below the images to music that I feel is relevant or to my current playlist.  My goal was to offer an extra bit of ambiance to the images by creating a soundtrack to dark worlds I am envisaging. However, time has gotten a bit crucnchy for me recently and I'm looking to save some time in my postings.  Those particular links require a good bit of time and research. 

My question is this:  Do you, my readers, find those links useful or interesting?  Do you check the links or investigate the musicians? 

I was considering adding a Recommended Listening page as some of the music has begun to repeat.  This way I could keep the links and save a bit of time.  Please let me know what you think.  Thanks.

From the Archives: The Marriage

I haven't drawn in this style for some time, but much of my work used to look like this.  After my Drawing II class in college, my drawing style changed dramatically.  I became very aggressive with prismacolor and elements of collage began to integrate with many of my drawings.  It was a very experimental time with media.  I was a smoker at the time and I collaged the gold foil from my cigarette packs into several drawings.

Featured Creature: Three Tongue

Here we have the first Featured Creature of the 2013, a creepy little three tongued spikey demon.  I suspect he is a demon of lying or maybe gossip.  I dunno.  He's not telling me he just keeps making these horrible snorting noises.

He Finds Me in the Temple

Through the pinhole of a mind,
with the white hot intensity of speed,
the message comes.