I’ve been working with great publisher Cemetery Dance for awhile, and today they posted the new cover that I did for author Ray Garton‘s new book Dereliction. Go check out the limited release here, and order it. I’ll wait… Now that you’re back, we can talk about the cover a bit more. Well, at least I can. I love working on Ray’s books, and with Cemetery Dance. Not only are they great folks aside from Read more…
For a very long time, since way back when I was a college engineering student, I’ve been fascinated with ancient architecture and stonework. Near the top of that list has always been the Egyptian statues known as the Colossi of Memnon, two massive representations of pharaoh Amenhotep III. When I say massive, they are among the largest stone sculptures in the world. Each is 60 feet tall, on 13 foot bases. While you’re out googling them, Read more…
It’s been a little while since I’ve posted a new ink, and it’s about time I did. Life gets in the way of art sometimes, but art is still something I need to be building consistently. In this case, I wanted to try another fossil as the base idea for an ink. I have lots of reference images from visits to various museums, and I decided this would be a good time to put one Read more…
So, I went ahead and did it. I signed up for my first ever booth at a major art convention, in this case the Spectrum Fantastic Art Live show in Kansas City in May, 2012. What the hell was I thinking? Now, before we get any further, let me just say that I’m very much looking forward to the convention, and the folks that run the show have been great to work with. But this Read more…
Life has ups and downs of course, and I’ve said plenty of times that art is a great catharsis. I used that catharsis this very morning, for a new digital piece. I like digital art, in this case more photomanipulation than full, line by line sort of art. My style(s) of art usually has a lot of brush strokes, an illustrative reality so to speak. But sometimes I like to explore the chaos of my Read more…
In getting ready for my Spectrum booth this coming May (check out the event here), I’ve been working out which pieces of art to bring with me. One of the ideas that came up, which I’ve had before, is to combine three of my smaller inks into one framed set. I had two previous H.P Lovecraft oriented pieces, The Deep Ones and Cthulhucraft, so I decided a third one would work out great. After some Read more…
No, I didn’t misspell that title, it actually is spelled “valravn”. The valravn is my new artwork, and new Alphabeast. From Danish folklore, a valravn is a half-wolf, half-raven creature. From Wikipedia (and a couple of other sites): “The valravns appear in traditional Danish folksongs, where they are described as originating from ravens who consume the bodies of the dead on the battlefield, as capable of turning into the form of a knight after consuming the heart Read more…
For some time, I’ve been wanting to create another “loose” piece, using scratchboard, ink, acrylic, and seemingly everything else I can find in my office. Quite a few people like the previous piece like this, last year’s The Lost Nightmare, and I thought today would be a good time to try another. I had picked up some new scratchboard stock, so I went to work. I had an idea of where I was going, towards Read more…
For this week’s Alphabeast creation, I came across the description of a type of mean faerie, called an “unseelie”. Now, in the many descriptions I’ve come across, sometimes it’s described as the “unseelie court”, and sometimes as the creature itself. In either case, the unseelie is seen as a very mean faerie, one that tends to be very dark as well. Sometimes they are mentioned as being evil, and other times they just go out Read more…
Here’s a new Alphabeast creature, and an interpretation of a scene from one of my very favorite films, John Carpenter’s The Thing. If you haven’t seen the film, go ahead. I’ll wait. Back? Wasn’t that just awesome? To create an ink of the creature isn’t the easiest, considering that it doesn’t really have one single form. So I looked at some of the great scenes in the movie, and one of them has always stuck Read more…
I’ve been a big fan of the film Dark City since I saw in the theater back in the 90’s. For awhile now, I’ve been considering doing some ink art of one of the creatures from the film. They are known as “the strangers’, and our hero (played by Rufus Sewell) has to go up against them. They fit pretty well with the Alphabeasts idea, being aliens (or something) as they are, and so I Read more…
This week for Alphabeasts, which I’m now caught up on, I decided to try something different. With my computer being backed up and doing some maintenance, I thought I would try a larger piece than the others have been. This week’s letter was “R”, and the first thing that popped into my head was “revenant”. Those with a sharp eye might remember a cover I did a couple of years ago, for Brian Keene’s book Read more…
Over the course of the last two years, from January 2010 to present, I’ve been writing monthly articles for the Apex Book Company. I’ve now compiled those two years of articles into an ebook collection, called Life As An Artist In Repose, now available for purchase on Amazon here. The idea behind my articles for Apex has always been the “life as an artist” style articles. What I see as an artist in the publication Read more…
Here’s today’s second catch-up Alphabeast art, for the letter Q. This is a qilin, from Chinese mythology, and something I found very interesting. As a creature, a qilin is (from Wikipedia and others) a creature that’s described in a few different ways. Among them is a description of a beast with horns/antlers, more of a dragon’s head, and taller like a deer or giraffe even. I thought it would be a good challenge to try and do Read more…
In trying to catch up on life, especially while my computer is a bit busy, I’m finding that I can still work on ink art away from the normal spot. Case in point, today’s first catch-up Alphabeast art. I had a few “P” choices to pick from, but this one stood out quite a bit. The Peg Powler (I know, it sounds like a suburban realtor) is quite a creepy creature. It’s a take on Read more…
For quite awhile now, I’ve wanted to do an ink of a large tortoise. I’ve seen them in various places throughout the years, and they have a great texture in their skin that I’ve wanted to try and work with on an ink. Any time you have an ink idea with texture though, it complicates things. You only get black lines (unless you are doing a wash or something), so those black lines have to represent both the Read more…
The second Alphabeast ink of the day is a Japanese mythological creature known as the onryō. If you’ve seen The Ring (or Ringu), even maybe The Grudge, you probably have a pretty good idea what a onryō is. An onryō is a vengeful ghost, seeking retribution for some wrong that happened to it during life. The most famous onryō is probably Oiwa, from the Japanese ghost story Yotsuya Kaidan. Oiwa, before she dies, was given a poison creme that Read more…
A few different ideas went through my head when it came to the “nightgaunt”, for my latest Alphabeast. For those that don’t know, a nightgaunt is a creature that is present during night terrors. Now, night terrors are the worst thing in all the world. Frightening, to the point that getting a night terror affects you for many days after. If you haven’t had one, then good for you. If you have, you have my Read more…
I’ve been working on a number of projects, and one of those is to expand the offerings that I’ll have at my Spectrum Live booth this coming May. To that end, I’m trying to create a number of small acrylic paintings to have there. I’ve also wanted, for some time, to try my hand at another fossil piece. I had created an ink of a dinosaur previously (see it here), and I thought a painting Read more…
Quite awhile back, when I was first getting back into inking, I created an ink based on the Im-Ho-Tep/Mummy character from the 1932 film version of The Mummy (see it here). The idea with that one was to work from a photo, something I hadn’t done much (if ever), to recreate the iconic face of Karloff’s mummy. Since then, I’ve wanted to create a different mummy, one that didn’t rely on any photos at all. Read more…