Last night’s Midnight Monster Madness poll went well into the morning, with a lot of really good (and goofy) candidates for this week’s art drop. We had everything from a chupacabra to the elusive Gingersquatch suggested, but there was one clear winner in the, ahem, pack.
It seems people are crazy for werewolves. Very specific werewolves, in fact; you seem to like your lycanthropes in leopard print. At tea parties.
And this is why I love you.
Here are the pencils for this week’s art drop!
The finished piece will be 5×7 inches, inked on card. It will be hidden somewhere in Salt Lake City either Friday or Saturday this week, stay tuned for more details!
My Spectral Consultant whispered something into my ear last night.
“Regular content is a must if you are going to make it in this world..” it whispered. Then it licked my ear. CREEPY. I opened my eyes, and my dog was standing on my chest, staring at me. Could my chihuahua actually be my Spectral Consultant? Impossible.
I’m listening to my consultant, though. Dog, Daemon, or daisy, it was right. I need regular stuffs to keep the peeps coming back. I like monsters. YOU like monsters (please like monsters). So, let’s check out a monster!
This week, we’re going to travel to the middle of Olde Europe, and take a look at a rather twisted sort of vampire. It’s hungry. It’s dead. It likes the taste of pyjamas.
My fellow cognizants, please keep flash photography to a minimum. It’ll eat you. Please extend a hearty hello to the Nachzehrer.
“Get your own shroud!”
The Middle Ages were tough, folks. People were dropping off like flies, mostly due to diseases that simple hygiene and a lack of raw sewage could have helped prevent. But, if there is one constant in the human condition, we will look to the supernatural for the cause of a problem, even if the physical world is crawling with the answer.
Scared people were desperate to explain why so many friends and neighbors were wasting away. It couldn’t be the piles of trash and roving rat colonies, so it was most likely some sort of malevolent entity. Maybe someone who was already dead… Far easier to rationalize Uncle Peebo coming back to life than think too much about the river of poo you had to jump over to get to your job at the muck sorting factory.
This is pretty much the conclusion people in parts of Germany and Poland came to. Whole families were dying, and it was probably because someone in the family shuffled off this mortal coil, got bored, got hungry, then came back to eat mom and dad. If the first person in the family to die took their own life, that made the evidence even more damning.
The Nachzehrer would feast off the life energy of its victims, causing them to waste away. It was a lot easier for people to believe that a vampire was killing everyone in town than dysentery or plague, so the belief spread and people kept on dying.
The Nachzehrer was a bit quirky, even for this period of time. They really liked the taste of their funeral shrouds, so if you were hunting one, all you had to do was hold really still and listen; the Nachzehrer could be heard calmly munching away on its clothes. They also liked to sleep in their tombs, sucking on its shroud with one eye open, clutching its own thumb.
“munch…munch… munch”
The Nachzehrer was also a bit of a show-off, and liked to climb into church towers during the dead of night and ring the bells. Anyone who heard the bells ringing during the night was most likely to die. It’s also said that the shadow of a Nachzehrer would kill anyone it came into contact with, and something about them being able to turn into pigs, but that’s just goofy.
If you found a Nachzehrer, you could end its killing spree by placing a coin in its mouth then chopping off its head. The coin would paralyze the vamp for some reason, which we can just chalk up to Middle Ages Logic. There is even evidence that some overzealous hunter skipped the coin altogether; the remains of a woman in Venice were found in a plague grave with a brick shoved between her teeth. That’ll show her!
I will be featuring a Nachzehrer in an upcoming book; this drawing was the first coloring page, but I’m going to re-do it; something about the Nachzehrer’s passion for garment eating is too good to pass up!
Is there an old monster you would like to see highlighted here? Let me know in the comments section!
Ugh. I really, really hate Lootcrate. You never have any idea of what you’re going to get. You might get a cool Funko POP! figure, or a cool and unique Power Rangers shirt. There is usually a pretty nifty thing or two in each box, but the rest of the stuff? Pretty much landfill.
“Mike Mignola drew me, which makes me cooler than most people will ever be.”
But this month Lootcrate has an anti-hero theme, and Hellboy has been promised as a featured item. I FREAKING LOVE HELLBOY. Mike Mignola is one of the Holy Three, guys. And there might be a super-cool Hellboy something or other. Or it might be Hellboy toilet paper. I am really super torn on this one.
Interested? Braver than me? Here is the link to the August Lootcrate. If I were a braver man, kids, this wouldn’t even be a hesitation on my behalf. I’ve been burned before on these things… The whole shebang shuts down at 9pm PST on August 19th.
Some day, just for fun, I will tell the story of when I met Mike Mignola. Seriously, one of three times in my life that words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. But that is a story for another day.
Guillermo del Toro has directed some of my favorite movies in the horror movie genre. His style blends iconic gothic imagery in the classic Hammer horror style with a vivid love of color and fairy tales. Pan’sLabyrinth, the Devil’s Backbone, and Crimson Peak all deliver plenty of scares, but immerse you in such beautiful landscapes that you almost forget to jump when the monsters come out.
Film Still from Crimson Peak, 2016 c Legendary/Universal
Guiellermo del Toro’s work has been a huge influence on me as an illustrator. His movies have an extraordinary visual narrative to them, and I swear visually creative people are seeing an entirely different movie than your standard film-goer. I have spent many hours in slack-jawed reverence over his Cabinet of Curiosities book, just studying a master at work. To be able to see the man’s work in person would probably reduce me to tears.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has collaborated with del Toro to showcase an assortment of artifacts from his personal collection; del Toro has been collecting memorabilia from horror movies made over the past century, as well as sketch pages and artifacts from his own films.
The layout of the exhibit is like a maze, with props from Hellboy displayed nearby wax statues of Frankenstein’s monster. Each section of the maze is laid out thematically, and del Toro’s personal touch is apparent throughout. Just thinking about this collection makes my head spin!
Picture from Makeupmag.com
Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters runs at the LACMA until November 27th, 2016. Look for me desperately trying to hide behind the Boris Korloff bust… I just want to live there…
For more pictures and information, check out this article on Make-Up Artist Magazine.
Capitalizing on popular culture again? Yup. My new book, Grimmleigh’s Beastly Oddities, is available now on Amazon. It’s pretty spiffy. It’s also wildly entertaining. Sure, I’m biased in my praise, but my mom says it’s pretty cool, too.
Yeah, that’s the Lone Rooster of the Apocalypse. He’s the first freaking page.
What makes this book different from all the other self-published coloring books out there? Well, I could go on and on about how I make it different, but if you know me that goes without saying. What makes this special, unique, and shiney is the stories. Yep, each and every creature in the book has a story. Sort of. Here’s the text for the Lone Rooster:
“There it was. The beast we had been tracking for nearly a week, just sitting, happy as can be on a rural fence post.I reviewed the team, and let out a heavy sigh of relief. I was surrounded by some of the finest men and women the Institute had to offer; our success was not only assured; it had been prophesied in at least seventy-two of the last eighty Outcome Rituals that had been performed prior to our departure.
I signaled the team; Vasquez was the first to jump into action. She made it about 30 feet towards the objective before it fixed its eyes upon her. And then? All hell broke loose. I stood stunned as my team broke formation, staggering about and screaming. The finest men and women I had ever served with were rendered useless in seconds, with just. One. Look.
I awoke some time later, wearing a gingham dress with a potato in my mouth. I glanced to my left, and there was Vasquez, dressed in denim coveralls and merrily hacking away at some weeds with a hoe. She looked up at me and smiled; a dead, vacant smile. She had a piece of straw clutched in her teeth.I ran. I’ll admit it. I ran faster than I had ever run before.”
That, my friends, is one chillingly terrifying rooster.
Grimmleighs Beastly Oddities is available now on Amazon.
Grimmleigh's Lab 