Workbench

Tis the Season (for Shameless Plugging)

The wonders of the internet, folks. Seriously. I have been slogging through Shopify for the last few days, uploading art files for shirts and other goodies. When I got to this one, though, I just had to share! I am actually buying this for my own phone… I LERVE IT.

cutethulhu-iphone-mock

It’s already one of my favorite pieces that I have done, and being able to protect my super-sweet iPhone with it? SOLD.

Anywho, Shopify is pretty cool. It might be the smoothest, easiest to set up, goofball proof system I have played around with. I would seriously recommend it to anyone who is looking for a good plug and play e-Commerce solution. I’ll break it down a little more in a later post.

If you’re interested in this item, or some pretty cool Gorinka shirts, please feel free to click the “Grimmleighs Custom Tees” link on the right. I will be posting new stuff there weekly!

monsters, Theater Macabre

The Wax Statue

During the earlier part of November I was able to fulfill a long-standing, bucket-list level personal wish and spend a few hours wandering through Guillermo Del Toro’s collection of monster and comic book ephemera. It was, to put it mildly, a life changing experience.

We arrived at the LACMA early on a Saturday morning, and were greeted by a statue of this fellow:

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That was just the beginning. A whole wing of the museum had been set aside to showcase the collection of my absolute favorite director. I saw props from movies going back to the beginning of the art form. Wax statues wearing actual costumes from movies like the Bride of Frankenstein, Crimson Peak, and Hellboy.

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I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. It was like something was following me around the building, but I couldn’t put my finger on it…

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There where original pages from comic books going back to the 1960’s, and statues of genre giants like Ray Harryhausen, H.P. Lovecraft, and Edgar Allan Poe. The Poe statue was pretty cool, and the room he was in was full of Victoriana. And a really weird wax of someone I couldn’t place. He was propped up against the wall, like some sort of diminutive, vaguely Asian Tor Johnson wannabe. He was also one of the few standing waxes, and the only one propped against a wall.

poe-wax

I got a little closer to the Poe, trying to figure out who the dude against the wall was. I needed to be a little sneaky, since there were super cool film nerds all over the place, and the last thing I wanted to do was let on that I didn’t know who this guy was. Just look at him, though: He had to be someone…

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I got closer to the guy, and right when I was about 5 inches away, he reached up, scratched his nose, and went back to sleep. I choked back a scream, and tried to act like my sudden ability to levitate was perfectly natural.

My wife pointed out his ID badge, and really, it should have been a pretty strong clue to his being a real, live human being. Then again, he looks like a freaking wax statue, and if there is anything I have learned from Westworld, I really shouldn’t take any chances, right?

Regardless, it was the visit of a lifetime. I wish we had more time, and that the building had been empty. It was really hard to stand and gawk at everything for the appropriate amount of time. I could have spent an hour looking at these guys alone:

toothsome

Workbench

The Gift of a Stylish Gorilla

I am an unabashed fan of anything Simian. My formative years as an Anthropology major were derailed by my near-constant distraction from primatology, and to this day I can rattle off more info about Pan Troglodyte than I can about the Vinca burial mounds. Etruscan civ was my jam, kids. But the migratory routes of the Silverback gorilla was my bread and chunky peanut butter.

So, it shouldn’t come as any sort of surprise that I draw a lot of apes. And monkeys, sure, but APES, man! They grace everything. And this year, they can grace YOU. Two designs are available, the first is this stylish Bizness Chap:

bizrilla

He’s a classy champion of corporate finesse, and can grace your stylish torso by following this link: CLICK HERE TO BUY A SHIRT!

Space Explorer Gorilla should be up and available later today, or perhaps tomorrow. I would never dictate a person’s holiday shopping preference, but this would look great on your weird-ass nephew or niece. You know, the one that gave Caesar’s address his ape followers from Conquest of the Planet of the Apes at Thanksgiving dinner.

Seriously, though. This shirt is, as the kids say, dope as hell.

monsters, Workbench

the Lionfish

I was working on a mermaid concept for the mythology book last night, and realized that I didn’t want your standard fish lady to represent the Undersea Realms. So, I looked up a bunch of different fish and got really into the lionfish. They are pretty amazing to look at, and have some really neat spines, patterns, and colors. I decided that the lionfish would be the basis of my mermaid design, and here she is:

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I still need to work out a background image for her, it’ll probably be a shipwreck of some sort or another. My grandfather loved old sailing ships, and I inherited a little of that. I love the haunted mystique of a wrecked ship on the sea floor.

Uncategorized

The Lemonade Stand is Open

Well, that was a thing.

On October 9th, 2016, at approximately 10:16 am, my wife took a spill and fell hard on her left arm. She was in terrible pain, and didn’t even hesitate when I suggested we go to the clinic to get it checked out. My wife is tough. Seriously. So, if she says she’s willing to see a doctor, I know it’s serious.

Two hours later, we knew she had broken her ulna, right about where it connects to the wrist. A few days later, yet another doctor informed us that she had a spiral fracture at the impact, so the bone had a lot of mending to do.

We own a restaurant. We run it together, and between the two of us we manage to keep a vegan diner running in a town known for meat and potatoes. With her unable to use her left arm and hand, it was up to me to make sure our tiny little kingdom didn’t sink. Well, seven weeks later, we haven’t sunk. Her arm is healing, and she’s just now able to help out around the restaurant. Life is returning to normal, and I have a little time to spare for my passion project again.

Many apologies to those of you who follow this page, it was never my intention to go Full Houdini… but life has its ways of keeping you humble, and I return to you humbled in many ways.

mollsandbruiser-card

 

 

 

Workbench

Making a Splash

Water is hard. I don’t mean in the jump-from-too-high-go-splat sort of way, either. It’s hard to draw. Fluid, in general, doesn’t like to be constrained to two dimensions.

The latest pages from the Miller’s Daughters see the ultimate demise of poor Ophie, and that meant some water needed to find its way to paper. It turned out pretty nicely, and will be even better when I add shading later this week!

The second page shown is the Rake, sauntering off out of the woods, his murderous mischief quite managed.

monsters

the Vodyanoy

A friend of mine recently remarked that some plumbing problems we were having were due to Vodniks; my confused, vacant-eyed response led to a really fun story about some Czech friends of hers that blamed Vodnik on any plumbing problems that came up.

It’s been a few months now, and as the resident Cryptozoologist of Salt Lake City, I decided to do a little digging on my drippy little house guests.

The Vodnik is the Slavic cousin to the Russian Vodyanoy, a far more sinister fellow (they are all males) that haunts lakes and rivers. The Vodyanoy are frog like creatures, with aged bodies, froggy faces, fish tales, and long, stringy beards and hair. They paddle about on half sunken logs with their webbed hands, looking for unwary locals to drown. They seem to like wandering about without any clothes, too. Sound familiar?

gollum

The Vodnik, by contrast, seems more human like in features, although they are a greenish tint and tend to be covered in moss. They wear tattered, cast off clothing, and also loiter about lakes and rivers. Unlike the Vodyanoy, which are mostly malevolent, Vodniks can be beneficial or dangerous, depending on their mood.

One area that Vodyanoy and Vodnik overlap is that they keep little ceramic containers with them, in which they store the souls of people who have drowned in their domain. The crockery is considered currency to these folk, and a large collection of souls is a sure sign of wealth and influence. If the crockery is opened, however, the soul escapes in the form of a bubble, leaving the vessel it was in worthless.

Fishermen and people who make their living on the water will leave offerings of tobacco to the vodnik, in hopes that they will leave them alone or help them in their industry. A vodnik who feels slighted may attack local water features, such as dams, well, (possibly plumbing) and locks. This behavior has also been reported with Vodyanoy.

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artwork ©2016 L.G. Kade
Morbid Tales

The Angel

As I was proofing earlier pages of the Miller’s Daughters, I realized I had made a pretty big mistake. I had missed an introduction of the Miller himself, and went from a nice scenery page to a page detailing the family dynamic of the Miller and his children. Oops. Over the weekend I put together a new page to introduce the poor old chap, and thought I would share. Here are the finished inks for the page, followed by the same art with shading.

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I’ll be adding text to the bottom of the page, and amending the text that was on the original second page of the story!