Brain Eater
Posted: November 7, 2011 Filed under: aldeboran, art, monsters, wierd stuff 10 Comments
Yesterday I posted a pic of a monster I am working up; today I have a revised image. It’s a little smaller and is more ‘dug in’ to the victim’s brain, using 1/2 of it’s eight tentacles to grasp the victim by the throat and sticking tentacles in the ears and mouth to ‘pull the strings’ on the person it is controlling… leaving 4 tentacles free to attack the next victim.
Edit: Better yet! Jon C. asked me if I had ever seen the old horror movie, “Fiend without a Face.” I have not, but check it out… brains crawling around like inch worms:
Replacing Mind-Flayers and other I.P. protected monsters
Posted: November 5, 2011 Filed under: aldeboran, art, ideas, monsters, publishing, weird 16 Comments
I was doodling in the sketchbook this a.m. and came up with some sort of flying squid that was eating an off-market He-Man’s brains — something inspired by looking at too many old pulp sci-fi / horror magazine covers no doubt.
It occurs to me that this is how I might replace ‘I.P. protected’ monsters like ‘the mind flayer’ and others when I publish Mines of Khunmar eventually — plus it has an ‘Aldeboran’ vibe that I like.
I imagine this thing is capable of eating the victim’s brains and then using the brainless victim as a puppeteer uses a marionette. Obvious ripoff of Wolverton’s Brain-Bats of Venus I guess… but nothing really feels original anymore, so why not just go with it? Of course, it should have other cool powers as well. Gone is the mind-flayer’s human body — but the mind flayer really didn’t ‘use’ the human-like body it had (other than for walking around and using it’s hands to open doors). The ‘brain octopus’ (don’t have a good name for it yet) could travel around by crawling unless it has a ‘puppet’ — then it could just ride around and let the puppet do the walking.
While we are on the subject, since monsters like “The Displacer Beast” were obviously ripped by Gygax and company from an A.E. Van Vogt story (1) how is it that Wizards now ‘owns’ it? I mean, I guess Gygax (or someone at TSR) came up with the name ‘Displacer Beast’ — shouldn’t the monster itself belong to Van Vogt’s estate while Wizards owns the name ‘Displacer Beast’?
1) Wikipedia tells me it is called ‘Coeurl’ and appears in the story, “The Black Destroyer”, which also features a space ship called ‘The Beagle’. I know ‘Beagle’ is a reference to the career of Charles Darwin, but didn’t a space ship called ‘The Beagle’ for the basis of some of the ‘Blackmoor’ adventures published by TSR (I’m thinking ‘City of the Gods’ and ‘Temple of the Frog’?)
Hell
Posted: November 1, 2011 Filed under: art, inspiration, monsters 5 CommentsThis has been lurking on my desktop for the past few weeks. I don’t remember where I found it, but I sure do like it.
New artwork in progress
Posted: October 31, 2011 Filed under: art, monsters, portfolio, technique 12 CommentsHere is a private commission ‘in process.’ I thought it might be interesting for some to see my current method for doing a painting like this one. Sorry in advance for the quality of the pictures… I just periodically snapped a quick pic to show progress:
The first picture shows the original sketch that I sent to the client plus the drawing transferred to the painting surface via pencil sketch.
The second shows me having basically ‘blocked in’ the environment in greys and blacks. I learned the hard way that it is much easier to paint what goes behind something first (which seems bleedingly obvious now that I know it). I also added some indications of shadows.
In the third picture, I have blocked in the ‘local color’ of things. I.e.: if the warrior’s tunic is yellow, I paint it yellow. It has a little shape from the blocking in background stage (where I added some shadow detail — which was me skipping ahead but it doesn’t really matter now)
In the fourth picture, I am adding some shadows and details. I still have a ways to go, but one can see it starting to take shape. I hope the client likes it!
The Gorilla Man
Posted: October 7, 2011 Filed under: art, comics, monsters, serial killers, weird 2 CommentsAnother drawing I did of a serial killer: Earle Leonard Nelson (1897-1928). Nelson was nicknamed ‘The Dark Strangler’ and ‘The Gorilla Man’ by the press:
Nelson was called ‘The Gorilla Man’ because he strangled women and usually stashed the corpse in some out of the way place in the victim’s own home before leaving (an M.O. that apparently reminded some newspaper readers of Poe’s story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue“). He eluded capture for over a year, murdering at least 22 women across the U.S. and Canada. He preyed mostly upon women who ran boarding houses or who wanted to rent rooms to lodgers. He was well spoken and polite, ofter claiming to be a weary traveler who needed a place to stay. When he got a woman alone, he would attempt to convince them to look at the ceiling, saying something like, “Is that water damage? I think that plaster is about to go…” and then grab them from behind and strangle them. After she passed out, he would knot a cord, cloth or clothing tightly around her neck and then have sex with the corpse. After stealing cash and valuables, he would visit pawn shops, second hand clothing stores and barber shops and change his appearance before moving on.
His early life is filled with examples of bizarre behavior, but, when traveling or setting up a victim, he was always polite and well spoken and made a favorable impression on people. He enjoyed talking at length about religion and usually carried a Bible.
Nelson was skilled at picking locks and slipping away. A Canadian sheriff captured Nelson and put him in a cell fastened with two padlocks. After the deputy left the room for less than two minutes, Nelson picked the locks and escaped. He was recaptured the next day and handcuffed; Nelson was able to slip out of the handcuffs right in front of his captors and hand them back with a smirk.
When he was hanged in Winnipeg for the two murders he had committed in Canada, Nelson maintained he was innocent and claimed to have never visited many of the cities in which murders credited to him took place.
Recommended reading: Bestial by Harold Schecter (2004)
2 New Beholders
Posted: October 5, 2011 Filed under: art, monsters, portfolio, project 5 CommentsI’ve had some commissions on the drawing board lately; first up is an illustration of a group of dudes about to get wasted by a beholder, in pen and ink:
This is a pencil sketch I did beforehand. As you can see, there were some changes (click image to make bigger):
I’m also working on some other stuff, including one of a more gonzo take on the same thing. This one is probably for my own wall. Work in progress — please excuse the shitty photo. Sucks to be Mr. Fighter man who has just gotten his torso erased. Dwarf is stoned and Wizard is getting his chest blown open with a lightning bolt. R.I.P.
EDIT: To answer someone’s question, I posted back in May that I was thinking about doing my own version of a picture that was done by the official Wizards of the Coast artists. The ones done by Wizards featured some of their standard ‘iconic’ characters fighting a beholder. This one (below) is my version of that picture with my own ‘iconic’ characters including Mr. Dwarf who looks like a garden gnome.
Albert Fish the Cannibal
Posted: October 3, 2011 Filed under: art, comics, monsters, project, serial killers, weird 3 CommentsHere is another drawing of one of the world’s most evil people, Albert Fish. I’ve been working on drawings of Fish and Peter Kürten lately; Fritz Haarmann, Peter Stubbe, Armin Meiwes, Alfred Packer and Andrei Chikatilo and others are all eventually due for their portrait.
Besides murdering and eating people, Fish felt compelled to shove needles so deep into his gootch that he could not pull them back out; there were 25+ needles and pins permanently embedded in his pelvis when he died. Fish was executed by electric chair in Sing Sing prison in 1936. Rumor has it that his crotch lit up like a Christmas tree covered in blue lights when the juice hit him because of all of the metal in there, but that can’t be true, can it?
Welcome to Carcosa!
Posted: September 6, 2011 Filed under: art, monsters, portfolio, publishing, weird 5 CommentsA while back I admired the Longmore illustration for LotFP’s ‘Carcosa‘ and promised to post a few illustrations I drew for Carcosa. There is nothing official about these pictures; I just did them for my own purposes… and they were not made as anything other than to satisfy my own vaguely ‘sword and planet’ illustrations urge… they could just as easily be from Aldeboran or somewhere else.
No children were harmed in order to produce these pictures.
First up: A group of “Carcossan” adventurers.
The dude who looks like ‘Alley Oop’ has both a pistol he stole from Buck Rogers and a bow and arrows while the other guy has binocular specs.
Note the henchman in goofy helmet bringing up the rear.
Second: Snakelady
Somebody bought the nonexclusive rights to use the ‘snakelady’ for a book that, as far as I know, hasn’t been published yet.
In this situation, I’d choose the pistol over the sword, too.
3rd: “Gug” attacks and people die.
4th: She’s gonna shoot that flying worm right out of the sky.
Adventurers and BEM Lurker
Posted: August 31, 2011 Filed under: art, monsters, picaresque, portfolio, underground, weird 7 Comments
Just finished this private commission today. The client gave me great latitude with subject matter, but wanted a group of ‘dungeoneers’ in peril.
Favorite Monsters Revisted: The Beholder
Posted: August 18, 2011 Filed under: monsters 2 Comments