Pazuzu

This was done last minute for a sale at Dynatox Ministries. "Pazuzu," the name of the demon from The Exorcist, was the code for a discount.

In the Forest of the Night

Illustration to "In the Forest of the Night" by Alter Reiss, published in The Lovecraft eZine #34, March 2015, which can be read online here.

For this fantasy-flavored mythos tale, I tried to capture the sense of a medieval tapestry or renaissance woodcut by skewing and compressing the perspective. The flourish of the Elder God was fun to lose myself in, and the design of the bones on the sacrificial stone is, to me, the picture's strong point, and alone could've been the illustration.

Exit Horizon

Illusration to "Exit Horizon" by Damir Salkovic, published in The Lovecraft eZine #34, March 2015, which can be read online here.

What the Storm Brings

Illustration to KC Grifant's "What the Storm Brings" in The Lovecraft eZine # 34

The Story of Herr Hackenschmidt

 

Illustration to Benjamin Welton's "The Story of Herr Hackenschmidt" in The Lovecraft eZine #32.

William Hope Hodgson

Returning to scratchboard portraits in time to remember the birthday of British author of weird fiction, William Hope Hodgson, who ran away from home at the age of 13 for a life at sea… which would influence his works such as The Ghost Pirates and The Boats of the Glen Carrig. He enlisted in England's Royal Artillery at the start of World War I and he died at Ypres in 1918 at the age of 40.

Lovecraft wrote of Hodgson, "few can equal him in adumbrating the nearness of nameless forces and monstrous besieging entities through casual hints and insignificant details, or in conveying feelings of the spectral and the abnormal in connexion with regions or buildings." (The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature, Hippocampus Press, 2012, p.77)

For more info on the works of William Hope Hodgson, visit the blog administered by the Hodgson authority Sam Gifford.

On the Birthday of H.G. Wells

To commemorate H.G. Wells' 148th birthday, I offer a humble portrait of the author of The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The Island of Doctor Moreau, and The War of the Worlds... I did not know Wells was also responsible for the story that influenced the 1976 film, The Food of the Gods. Incredible!