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So it occurred to me that Lovecraft has been a life long influence upon me, though in broader spiritual terms more of in the entertaining peripheral decorative sense, though there has been the occasional intense focus as I wander among objects of attention. I keep dipping in and out Kenneth Grant, and while wondering to what end, I thought, “What the hell?” and decided I would share some of my artworks based upon HPL on WF. Hopefully any viewer of these images gets a kick out them. I thank you for your attention.
So here goes:
Blake’s View is a small painting, 9x12 inches, oil on canvas – actually watercolor canvas, which is much lighter and smoother than the normal grainy duck type. This image and most of the following were all done with that material, the oils themselves being Windsor & Newton. Mu brushes are like ragged infantry, but I get by. The scene depicted is of the demise of Robert Blake from HPL’s short story The Haunter of the Dark. To briefly sum up, poor Blake intrepidly snuck into an abandoned church (seen on the horizon of the image through the window) and encountered decayed remnants of a sect called the "Church of Starry Wisdom" (a cult elevated by Grant to Universe B access status, or something like that…). Blake finds dead journalist and an object that unleashes an entity which forms a telepathic connection with him. Later, while documenting his horror on paper, a power blackout comes and the entity reaches out from the church and appears to him with it’s “three lobed burning eye”, then sucks out his life force, mind, etc.
Shortly after finishing this painting, one thing I noticed about John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, though I have seen it a number of times, is that the description of the evil church in that movie is taken almost word for word from HPL’s story. One of the better Lovecraft inspired films.
A wintry scene:
The Aeon Dead City is 16x20 inches, inspired by the novella At The Mountains of Madness, one of my faves. Intrepid explorers in Antarctica, while in curious pursuit of alien beings that had been dug up from the ice and then awakened to murder their comrades, discover an ice covered cyclopean city deep within the mountains. Within the structures the narrator describes sculpted walls containing hundreds of millions of years of recorded history of the Old Ones, carrot shaped creatures with batlike wings, multiple eyes and limbs who crossed the gulfs of Outer Space to come to Earth during its primordial formation. They built great cities, herded dinosaurs for food and even fought Great Cthulu and his octopoid star spawn for control of the planet. Though there is a scene depicting early hominids as pets, the narrator concludes with admiration of the pioneering Old Ones that they were a lot like us – he declares, “They were men!”
If you look left of center, against the backdrop of the mountains, you can see the explorer’s airplane as they try to escape the city before being overrun by the Shuggoths that rule it. Perhaps you will notice the monsters themselves, once rebellious slaves of the Old Ones, emerging from the towers in the foreground. I tried to capture the pentagonal obsession of the builder race, but that’s hard to emphasize in everything – it’s supposed to be a big city.
I had read the Del Torro was exploring making At the Mountains of Madness into a feature film, but adandoned the idea because of Antarctic horror was overdone by movies like The Thing and Alien vs. Predator. Also, apprently HPL’s writing style make is hard to create a script – sounds like BS to me, but I note that most Lovecraft movies that are attempts at direct adaptations either mutilate the story or combine several into one. People just can’t be faithful to the gloomy New Englander WASP.
For the octopus lovers out there, these next three I offer with dampness:
R’lyeh, 16x20, which I have heard should be pronounced “Errr-lughhh”, as if one were puking, was actually the earliest attempt on this form of smooth canvas. Inspired by a scene from The Call of Cthulu, here tentacles rise from the semi submerged "non-Euclidean" city. It should be noted that Cthulu (note the tentacles rising from the open vault beneath the tower), whose image is described by HPL in the story, is invisible or transparent in nature, being made of another type of matter than what we know – but I don’t how to paint that.
Here's a pinup for you (again, not invisible):
Somewhat influenced by a visit to the Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg Florida, I felt giddy and decided that, in emulation of Dali, the full title should be: "Great Cthulu Lording Over His Octopoid Star Spawn Reveling in a Tsunami of Blood Under a Broken Sanguinated Moon in the General Vicinity of What Was Once Downtown Denver in Like a Way Far Off Future…"
I figure the Anti-LARPer faction might appreciate this one:
Harry Meets Cthulu is oil and ink on letter sized cardstock, a giddy (yes) experiment in speed that was a personal reaction to the constant stream of Potter “fan art” on Deviant Art. I do believe I created this at about the time of the much anticipated release of one of the later movies, which would explain the mass ejaculation that perturbed me enough to act. I have only ever read one paragraph out of one Potter book while stocking new releases at a department store and thought, “Nah, not for me.” I have relatives, however, who were addicted. I did rent a VHS copy of the first movie from Blockbuster back in the day. While realized that I would probably love it if I was nine years old, I could barely pay attention to what seemed to me a modernized Dickens tale. Years later I would read Judika Illes remark that if you were to subtract the magic as a prop, then Potter would be... a modernized Dickens tale. Think what you like of her and her work, but I reveled momentarily in the agreement.
Of course, with regards to the artwork, I have received and discussed some “anatomical” comments in the past with regards to my depiction of the eldritch beast facing down the young wizard - but I figure that figures given the nature of the occult reaction of what Illes also referred to with some fascinated annoyance as a “phenomenon”.
So here goes:
Blake’s View is a small painting, 9x12 inches, oil on canvas – actually watercolor canvas, which is much lighter and smoother than the normal grainy duck type. This image and most of the following were all done with that material, the oils themselves being Windsor & Newton. Mu brushes are like ragged infantry, but I get by. The scene depicted is of the demise of Robert Blake from HPL’s short story The Haunter of the Dark. To briefly sum up, poor Blake intrepidly snuck into an abandoned church (seen on the horizon of the image through the window) and encountered decayed remnants of a sect called the "Church of Starry Wisdom" (a cult elevated by Grant to Universe B access status, or something like that…). Blake finds dead journalist and an object that unleashes an entity which forms a telepathic connection with him. Later, while documenting his horror on paper, a power blackout comes and the entity reaches out from the church and appears to him with it’s “three lobed burning eye”, then sucks out his life force, mind, etc.
Shortly after finishing this painting, one thing I noticed about John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, though I have seen it a number of times, is that the description of the evil church in that movie is taken almost word for word from HPL’s story. One of the better Lovecraft inspired films.
A wintry scene:
The Aeon Dead City is 16x20 inches, inspired by the novella At The Mountains of Madness, one of my faves. Intrepid explorers in Antarctica, while in curious pursuit of alien beings that had been dug up from the ice and then awakened to murder their comrades, discover an ice covered cyclopean city deep within the mountains. Within the structures the narrator describes sculpted walls containing hundreds of millions of years of recorded history of the Old Ones, carrot shaped creatures with batlike wings, multiple eyes and limbs who crossed the gulfs of Outer Space to come to Earth during its primordial formation. They built great cities, herded dinosaurs for food and even fought Great Cthulu and his octopoid star spawn for control of the planet. Though there is a scene depicting early hominids as pets, the narrator concludes with admiration of the pioneering Old Ones that they were a lot like us – he declares, “They were men!”
If you look left of center, against the backdrop of the mountains, you can see the explorer’s airplane as they try to escape the city before being overrun by the Shuggoths that rule it. Perhaps you will notice the monsters themselves, once rebellious slaves of the Old Ones, emerging from the towers in the foreground. I tried to capture the pentagonal obsession of the builder race, but that’s hard to emphasize in everything – it’s supposed to be a big city.
I had read the Del Torro was exploring making At the Mountains of Madness into a feature film, but adandoned the idea because of Antarctic horror was overdone by movies like The Thing and Alien vs. Predator. Also, apprently HPL’s writing style make is hard to create a script – sounds like BS to me, but I note that most Lovecraft movies that are attempts at direct adaptations either mutilate the story or combine several into one. People just can’t be faithful to the gloomy New Englander WASP.
For the octopus lovers out there, these next three I offer with dampness:
R’lyeh, 16x20, which I have heard should be pronounced “Errr-lughhh”, as if one were puking, was actually the earliest attempt on this form of smooth canvas. Inspired by a scene from The Call of Cthulu, here tentacles rise from the semi submerged "non-Euclidean" city. It should be noted that Cthulu (note the tentacles rising from the open vault beneath the tower), whose image is described by HPL in the story, is invisible or transparent in nature, being made of another type of matter than what we know – but I don’t how to paint that.
Here's a pinup for you (again, not invisible):
Somewhat influenced by a visit to the Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg Florida, I felt giddy and decided that, in emulation of Dali, the full title should be: "Great Cthulu Lording Over His Octopoid Star Spawn Reveling in a Tsunami of Blood Under a Broken Sanguinated Moon in the General Vicinity of What Was Once Downtown Denver in Like a Way Far Off Future…"
I figure the Anti-LARPer faction might appreciate this one:
Harry Meets Cthulu is oil and ink on letter sized cardstock, a giddy (yes) experiment in speed that was a personal reaction to the constant stream of Potter “fan art” on Deviant Art. I do believe I created this at about the time of the much anticipated release of one of the later movies, which would explain the mass ejaculation that perturbed me enough to act. I have only ever read one paragraph out of one Potter book while stocking new releases at a department store and thought, “Nah, not for me.” I have relatives, however, who were addicted. I did rent a VHS copy of the first movie from Blockbuster back in the day. While realized that I would probably love it if I was nine years old, I could barely pay attention to what seemed to me a modernized Dickens tale. Years later I would read Judika Illes remark that if you were to subtract the magic as a prop, then Potter would be... a modernized Dickens tale. Think what you like of her and her work, but I reveled momentarily in the agreement.
Of course, with regards to the artwork, I have received and discussed some “anatomical” comments in the past with regards to my depiction of the eldritch beast facing down the young wizard - but I figure that figures given the nature of the occult reaction of what Illes also referred to with some fascinated annoyance as a “phenomenon”.
