Pre-NecronomiCon Correspondance

Some ballpoint pen skull studies, the perfect size for yet more postcards, this time for friends I'll see at NecronomiCon-Providence 2017. Only two weeks away!

Dim Shores Postcard Art- Watercolor Skulls

More "Thank You" postcards made for those who participated in Dim Shores' 2017 GoodReads contest.

Dim Shores Postcard Art- Skulls in Space

Congrats to Chris Gomes, the winner of Dim Shores' GoodReads contest who received one of my scratchboard illustrations from Christoper Slatsky's Palladium at Night.

There were eleven participants, all who bought Slatsky's book and left a review on GoodReads, and as thanks, I've made postcards for them...

Anatomy of a Cover: Muscadines

Cover with variant font placement.

Last year Dunhams Manor Press published S.P. Miskowski's Muscadines, which met with deserved attention and praise in the weird fiction community, and now- this weekend!- the book is up for a Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novella. To celebrate the occasion and perhaps draw a bit more attention to Miskowski, whose latest collection I Wish I Was Like You was just published by JournalStone, I offer a look at the Muscadines cover art development.

These eight thumbnails show how quickly S.P. and I honed in upon the Muscadine grape and a wine bottle as a cover image, and the addition of a woman's hand made the design both sexy and dangerous.

 Hoping to bring an element of horror into the cover art, I experimented with faces of men screaming, pleading, writhing in pain, their features twisted reflections on (in?) the bottle. To make the faces more authentic, I bought a bottle of wine, peeled the label off, and drew the faces I made in white chalk on black paper.

A Dunhams Manor collectible, the bottle went unopened until KrallCon 2016, where it was unceremoniously emptied and tossed. I should've kept it on my shelf and continued to make funny faces into it...

With the elements in place, I did larger and more finished drawings to test their effectiveness. S.P. didn't think it was necessary to see more of the woman behind the bottle other than her hand, and of course, she was right. My wife Laura helped get the lighting correct by posing her hand with the bottle.

These chalk drawings were all donated to Dunhams Manor Press to be sent to subscribers- yet more DMP collectibles! Hope this original art finds its way to happy readers of horror...

Finished pencils and final scratchboard image, 8" x 10"

Added bonus: pages of surreal portraits inspired by Francis Bacon, whose work prompted Miskowski to pen this novella in the first place! With such inspiration, you know any resulting story will be wonderfully twisted and bizarre! To conclude, best wishes to S.P and Muscadines at ReaderCon this weekend!

The Horror in Ballpoint

Whenever someone comes across my Cthulhu Commune zine on Etsy and bothers to place an order, I try to include a drawing done in ballpoint pen as a token of appreciation.

I figure it's the least I can do for someone willing to shell out a few dollars for a zine these days.

Ballpoint is a humble yet versatile tool, and with some care, is capable of some fine detail that can take on the appearance of silverpoint.

The more time spent with the sketch, the more interested I become in textures generated by the ink, and at this point I can easily spend an hour lost in the act of drawing.







Cthulhu Commune #1 and 2 can be found at my Etsy store, where I occasionally offer other original pieces and illustrations. And yes, orders come with complimentary Cthulhu drawings, too.

My Mother's Skin

A year after meeting the young author Brian O'Connell and hearing him read his story "My Mother's Skin" at KrallCon, he has posted it online along with my illustration that wasn't included in Ravenwood Quarterly #1. It's nice to see the image paired with the story at last.

Palladium at Night Contest

The latest Dim Shores update: "PALLADIUM AT NIGHT turned out even better than we hoped. Christopher’s story and Dave’s meticulously detailed art blended so well together. And, you may remember, there is a contest. If you buy and read PAN and then review it on Goodreads before July 5, let me know. Anyone who does so will be entered in the contest, and on July 6 I’ll use random.org to pick a winner. All reviews are eligible, regardless of the rating you give, as long as you bought the book. The winner will receive an *original* Dave Felton scratchboard that was used as one of the interior illustrations: the ossiferous satellite seen here. Limited to 200 copies as usual, there are 29 copies left for sale."

Participate for a chance to win my original art to Christopher Slatsky's Palladium at Night!

Dim Shores 015: Palladium at Night by Christopher Slatsky

I've wanted to work for Sam Cowan since we tabled together at NecronomiCon 2015, where he was selling his first three Dim Shores chapbooks by authors Jeffrey Thomas, Matthew Bartlett, and Scott Nicolay. Not only were these authors of weird fiction perfectly paired with illustrators I admired (Serhiy Krykun, Aeron Alfrey, Michael Bukowski), the books were beautifully designed and hand-numbered by Sam. Two years later, the stars are finally right.

I'm proud of our work on Christopher Slatsky's Palladium at Night.

I'll need to do an "Anatomy of a Cover" post for this book at a later date. In the meantime, don't hesitate to grab a copy of this chapbook, limited to 200 hand-numbered copies. It even comes with a print of the cover art and an embroidered NASA-style mission patch!

Eddie at the Prudential Center

To share my excitement for Iron Maiden's 2017 North American tour, I put together a scratchboard image of Eddie at the Prudential Center in Newark. The hockey player is a sculpture that stands outside the venue, the home of the New Jersey Devils.

The Castle-Town Tragedy on Kindle

Brandon Barrows' The Castle-Town Tragedy and Other Tales of Carnacki, the Ghost Finder, released by Dunhams Manor Press two years ago, is finally available on Amazon's Kindle. This digital version does not have my interior illustrations, but keeps the cover art and includes an additional story by Barrows, as well.

The Stay-Awake Men design

Coming from Dunhams Manor Press in 2017, Matthew M. Bartlett's next collection of weird fiction, The Stay-Awake Men.

This cover proposal is pen-and-ink with white chalk on toned paper.

A Volume of Sleep, Illustration I

An illustration for Jayprakash Satyamurthy's upcoming collection, A Volume of Sleep.

The pen-and-ink drawing of the shrine was digitally added to an ink wash painting on a 5"x7" clayboard to achieve the background's surreal form of the deity's earthly manifestation.

Expect A Volume of Sleep from Dunhams Manor Press in Summer 2017.

Ventriloquism Promo Art III

This scratchboard image was created to promote the audiobook version of Dunham Manor Press' The Secret of Ventrioloquism.

This chilling collection is narrated by the author himself, Jon Padgett.