Author: lgkade

Illustrator. Author. Sculptor. Mellow Rebel.
monsters, Theater Macabre

Mythic Articulations

I am pretty much doomed.

Not in some theological “I really should have done that one thing instead of that other thing” sort of way. More like a “these are so freaking cool I am going to sell all my blood to buy them” sort of way. I’ll get back to that in a minute.

Look, I love monsters. Anyone who has checked out more than one post on this page knows that. Anyone who knows me personally really knows that. And by monster, I am an equal opportunity enthusiast of anything in the para-zoological sphere; give me your faeries, your kelpies, your poor huddled goblins.

So, when someone does something monstrously cool, I kind of fall for that project. Yesterday, I stumbled upon Mythic Articulations. Check this out:

Fairy Skeleton

That’s the skeleton of a wetland fairy. I can’t get over how cool this is! Could you imagine having one of these sitting on your desk, or under a glass dome? I’m thinking about getting one and using some acrylic glazes to give the bones a patina.

Tooth Fairy

This little bundle of nightmare tonic is the Tooth Fairy skeleton, and seriously couldn’t be any cooler!

I was wandering around the site, checking out the cool skeleton art posters, skulls, and the other monster skeletons when I saw something that took the air right out of me. How freaking cool is this?

Chupie

Yeah, that’s a Chupacabra skeleton in a can. It’s a model kit, kids. And because the folks at Mythic Articulations made the bones with ball-socket connectors, these kits are completely poseable.

Werewolf can

Here’s a werewolf for those of you into more traditional horror tropes. I prefer the fairy skeletons, personally; I really want to fill my studio with little skeletons under glass!

The price range might seem a bit steep on the surface; most of the skeletons are over $60, but there are art prints and books available for less than $30. Compared to a lot of collectibles they are actually pretty affordable, and your money is supporting a small business that creates unique and imaginative art.

Mythic Articulations uses state of the art 3-D printing technology, and makes each monster to order. You can check out all of their monsters here, or purchase them directly from their Etsy shop.

Workbench

Workbench Wednesday: Sewer Edition

Odin’s Day again? Time for another look at what’s on the workbench!

Work on Morbid Stories for Dreadful Children continues, with Volume One: The Miller’s Daughters about two-thirds finished. Here are the pencils for page 23:

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I am laying in digital inks now, and will feature a time-lapse film of the finished art on Friday! For a look at the scripted breakdown of page 23, take a look here!

The next coloring book is underway as well, with pencil concepts making way for some background art. First up, a Nosferatu who has the unfortunate job of Sewer Inspector:

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Here’s the finished inks for the sewer:

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Rough concept for the Phantom of the Opera, who landed a terrible gig as a Karaoke DJ:

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These will be featured in Grimmleigh’s Classic Monsters (with terrible jobs), which I am expecting to have available in late September!

And these two are super rough speed sketches that I put together while watching old Hammer Horror movies the other night. The tree scene will probably be used with a vampire or in one of the fairy tales, and the graveyard will be for a Slavic grave goblin:

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I really am drawn to floating apparitions in the woods…

Thanks again for stopping by! If you like what you see, feel free to click that “follow” button! I update nearly every day, and subscribers get a handy e-mail notification when new content is posted!

Have a great one!

 

 

 

 

 

Morbid Tales

Breakdown: The Miller’s Daughters, page 23.

Over the last year I have been working on a long-form graphic novel, which will eventually comprise a collection of original Fairy Tales and macabre morality plays. The first of which, the Miller’s Daughters, is about half way done.

The villain of the story, a wandering Rake, has embarked on a killing spree. As you can see, the story gets pretty grim:

Miller Page 11 High
Page 16 of the Miller’s Daughters

The hardest part of the story, frankly, has been that I am now at the point where the Rake is murdering the protagonists of the story. I really don’t like writing about kids getting killed, but it’s a ghost story… So I have to get through this part.

Here is the script for page 22, in which the Rake confronts Ophie Miller.

Page 23

Top Panel: The Rake is perched on a branch, several baby badgers are sitting around him, staring curiously. The Rake is clasping his hands together, looking up like a man at prayer.

Text Box:

The Rake, seeing his quarry treed in such an unfortunate manner, sat down to taunt his prey.

Panel Two: The Rake’s head and hand fill about 2/3rds of the panel. He is looking up, menacing. Little Faeries, stars, and flowers are flitting about his head.

Text Box:

“You, with your hair so dark, in that tree so high, remind me of the fairy stories, young miss,” said he.

“Of lost spirits in the wood, of sylphs, sidhe, and baine,” said he.

“Won’t you join your sister, dear?” he asked, as sincere as a jackal at an abattoir.

Panel Three, lower left hand corner: Ophie is incensed, in a defiant pose she is clutching one tree branch for support while gesturing at the Rake with her free hand. She is yelling.

Text Box:

Ophie replied only with a string of newly-catalogued curses, the depth and vivid imagery of which would have changed the nature of naval operations for centuries if they had been heard by any other ears.

Panel Four: The Rake looks shocked, eyes wide open…

Text Box:

Some so boldly vulgar as to give even this calloused Rake reason to blush.

Final Panel: Text:

Fancying up a new demise for so skillful a vulgarian, the Rake rummaged around in his rucksack until he found a decent sized package; all brown paper, grease stained and wrapped in twine.

Tomorrow, I’ll post the preliminary pencils for this page as part of the Workbench Wednesday update.

monsters

Monster Monday: the Shishiga

Russia is lousy with monsters. Seriously. You can’t swing a wet kobold without hitting some sort of gremlin or beastie. And the farther you get from the cities, the more bizarre and unusual the monsters get!

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The Shishiga is an aquatic goblin that haunts the swamps and lakes of Russian and Slavic regions. I’m not positive that the Shishiga actually goes as far as Western Europe, but I think it’s safe to say that any area with Baba Yaga legends probably has Shishiga lurking about and mucking up the waterways.

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Shishiga are not fond of clothing, they are described as being naked little fiends, with clammy white skin and tousled hair. The common Shishiga is most often seen sitting on a log or shoreline, muttering to itself and combing its hair. Sadly, this is also an omen that the person seeing the Shishiga is going to drown soon, or die of mysterious causes. Whether this death is caused by the Shishiga, or it is just acting as a messenger of death is unknown.

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Shishiga are notorious for harassing people, (a common goblinoid trait) and like to steal things from unwary people’s homes. The all-time favorite pastime of the Shishiga, though, is bringing misfortune to drunkards. Shishiga have been known to enter taverns and steal money, cause accidental lewdness, and manipulate a victim’s clothing so that their pants or shirts would fall off when they attempt to stand up. Some might say that drunks and cowards manufactured the Shishiga to pass the blame for their poor behavior, but those well versed in goblin psychology know the truth.

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The Shishiga artwork in this post are concept sketches for the Shishiga page in my upcoming coloring story book, Grimmleigh’s Mythic Horrors. My current book, Grimmleigh’s Beastly Oddities, is available on Amazon now.

 

 

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Time Lapse Theater: the Vampire Brides

I have been working pretty diligently on my next coloring book, Grimmleigh’s Classic Monsters. Previously this week I showed off some of the concept sketches for upcoming pages, and today I thought I would show the process from start to finish.

First, I take a picture of the rough pencils from my notebook, and import that into ProCreate on my iPad. Here is the photo:

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Now that the reference picture is in place, I get to work doing final pencils, then digital inks. At that point, I set aside the black and white art for the coloring page and backgrounds… But a lot of the time, I like to get into the picture and add some color. Here is video showing that process!

(I uploaded the video in HD, so it might take a minute to convert)

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Fan Art: Selina and Harvey

One of the projects I am working on re-imagines the Batman mythos, with Bruce Wayne as the psychopathic one percenter who gets his kicks by dressing up in body armor and beating on street people in the slums of Gotham.

Selina Color
Selina Kyle

Selina is a young woman with a mission: She has been gathering up and caring for the feral cat population of Gotham City. The little warehouse space she shares with her feline wards is cold, and feeding so many unwanted cats gets expensive. Selina is not above petty theft (and the occasional bigger heist) to keep the kitties fed.

Harvey
Harvey Dent

Harvey Dent was once the hot-shot District Attorney playboy of Gotham City. He was assigned to prosecute Boss Sal Maroni, who offered evidence linking the heads of the Wayne Foundation to organized crime rings throughout the city. Unfortunately, the courtroom was the scene of a horrific terrorist attack that left 17 people, including Maroni, dead. Harvey Dent was assumed killed in the attack as well; the truth may be worse.

Harvey Dent has been wandering the alleyways of Gotham’s slums, fighting a one-man war against the petty thugs and drug pushers of the city’s underbelly. The fate of his victims is determined by a single flip of his lucky quarter.

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Tea-Time with Tony Poulson

Tea Time? More like rambling lunatics at 2am. Tony Poulson is one of the nicest guys you could ever meet, and a really good illustrator, too. He was kind enough to talk with me last night about his work, movies, and the creative process.

Gwen

Hey, Tony! Thanks so much for taking a few minutes to chat with me tonight! I know you have a lot on your plate with Comic Con coming up, and your show at Watchtower starting in a couple of days…

Thanks for asking. Truly. I always tell Jimmy (one of my co-panelists on the Geekshow Podcast) when I see him (which is often recently) that GEEKSHOW is definitely fuel for creativity. Fun as shit and honestly like my younger years with my friends chit chatting about geek stuff (sadly mostly all those friends “like” the same stuff, but aren’t as entrenched like I am).

You have a show starting at Watchtower Cafe this week, why don’t we start with what you do artwise for the people who aren’t familiar with you yet?

Since getting into Comic Con 3+ years ago I created a series called Hand Over the Hero.  I take classic and current characters and literally draw them being handed over by their friends, counterpart, etc.  It was an accidental idea from a greeting card I created for my wife ages ago.  She’d always joke about wanting to take a kitty with us on a date (back then we only had one, Gypsy, and now we have a stampeding herd…for realz).  I drew a confused cat being handed over and said “here, take your damn cat” on the inside.  The card sat on a shelf for 4 years before I turned the same concept into this series.

Working on this tonight after my conversation with Cori and Mike (at Watchtower Coffee)  

El1

 

Is that El?

Yep

Nice! I love it!

Thanks! Gotta add the waffle.

Hahahaha!

You work primarily with markers, and I envy that. Markers can be unforgiving… What is your process like? Are you the “concept, execute” type, or do you have 50 plates spinning at the same time?

I love the process of laying down some color and moving on. Don’t get me wrong I dick up here and there and even get the dread bleed through onto other colors, but you work with it and you get good at covering up. I started with Markers in high school and honestly don’t recall why I picked them out of everything in the art store (insert awesome story here about rescuing a princess from utter death and her bestowing a set of the kingdom’s finest art supplies here).

Well, now that I think of it, Kat Martin and I used the most intoxicating markers in high school when we drew the school’s massive weekly calendar during my term as a student body artist. Yep, that was it. Markers were also easy to transport and “setup” anywhere I could carry my bag of supplies (unless you ask the TSA in Denver who had to shut down their screeners and call every available supervisor to check my suspicious bag of art supplies after Denver Comic Con…I mean it only looked like a homemade bomb the way i stack my paper and markers). I also love pairing them with Prismacolor pencils and a few highlight pens to give the whites the POP they need. And yes, I have an ungodly amount of projects going on at the same time.

Pika

I’ve always loved the way you sling color. One of the first things I saw of yours was some Star Wars art you did, with Yoda at a bar. It was so elegant, yet simple, yet intricate… That can be really hard to pull off!

I see your dad helping you out at your booth during shows. Who’s the better salesman?

Him for sure.  He’s the life of the Con.  73 years old and the man will stand for 3 days straight, never complain, and talk to anyone and everyone. It’s so fun to be with him selling something… he’s been my #1 fan of for all these years. I used to go to trade shows with him so it’s cool to see it come full circle

Tony and Pops

I call this the “Gwen Stacy” question: All of your art is being dangled over the George Washington Bridge, and you can only save ONE piece. Which one is it?

MY art or what we own in our collection?

BOTH.

I’d say I’d save my Silvia Ji Original piece because it was the real first art piece I purchased and as far as my own work – GRAB THE HARD DRIVE – I don’t know what to save.  I’d say I’d pick my piece from that Star Wars show you actually had at Frisch – it was my first group show, the first time I cut out and mounted my art, and it’s C-3PO and R2 being denied at the Star Bar because of the oldest rule in the book “no shirt, no shoes, no droids, no service.”

I was really blown away by them (the Star Wars pieces). I almost bought them about a thousand times!

Thanks for sharing the Eleven sketch with us! Stranger Things was awesome, and a great throw-back to some classic movie moments. What is you favorite classic horror or sci-fi movie? (at this point, Tony says “waffle is go” and posts this pic:

El2

Now that is hard to pinpoint – but, not so much sci-fi, but Big Trouble in Little China is one of my all-time movies. Netflix suggests I watch it since recently viewing from the night before. No joke.

OH MY GODS. I adore that movie more than both of my kids. I love that Jack Burton is actually the idiot sidekick. It’s my favorite Carpenter movie.

I recall you loving that film.  Also, Swamp Thing.  I remember watching that on TV in my parents house back in the 80’s and remembering how disturbing it was when everyone starts to turn into crazy creatures.  Practical effects still make me all giggly inside because it’s fucking real!!! Bubbling skin is literally bubbling skin (well make-up skin), but still!!

Who are your favorite illustrators working today?

My friends, Jake Parker and Alex Solis.

Jake is so good! I fanboy so hard whenever I see his stuff. I really love the Society of Visual Storytelling site, he does a lot of great classes on there.

I can truly say I pay $15/month and have only watched 1 class. wtf is wrong with me???

I have a subscription, too. I was about an hour into the comic book class, and Jake says “you’ll learn a lot from just drawing, too.” and I was gone. Still pay the sub, because I know I’m going to dive back in head first when I run out of steam on these 15 projects.

Thanks for talking with me about your work, Tony! Other than the Watchtower show, where can people check out your art?

Instagram will give you the live stream @thetonus and my site has most of my current work for sale thetonus.com.  I also have apparel available at thetonus.threadless.com and that is always a work in progress to get the right print on the right product.

Flash

Seriously, Tony! Thanks so much for talking with me tonight. Have a good one!

Hold on one sec…

whatcha think?? (final pencils for El drawing pop up on screen)

El3

Hahaha! That is so great!

Suddenly, Tony and I both realize that Art Drop Day is two weeks away and panic. Well, I panicked. I think Tony kept drawing and fired up Big Trouble in Little China again!

Tony Poulson’s Hand Over the Hero series can be seen at Watchtower Cafe’s Gallery of Rogues (1588s State Street) from August 19th through September 9th!