Black box

 I've discovered a new toy :) Or rather, a new technique. If you read my last post you'll remember that I photographed something in a black mirror before drawing it. The results were fantastic so I've pretty much spent all my free time since stuffing things into the felt lined box I created to go with it and snapping away.

 There is a bit of an art to it - to photograph a reflection, you have to adjust your focus to cover the distance from your lens to the mirror - and back again. Then of course there's the issue of lighting the object without shining light on the mirror or towards the camera.

 The results are worth it though - I started with a deer skull and took two photographs of its reflection using different lighting. That completely transformed it as you can see from the resulting drawings here - they don't look like the same object in both at all.

I then drew the images out on Fabriano Artistico paper using charcoal pencil for the details and pure carbon stick to get that gorgeous velvety black background. You can buy the drawings framed and ready to go over in my Etsy shop.

In the bag

Following on from my last post, I did finally finish my illustration for Sean Walters story 'An Invited Guest'. It's now available to buy printed with the tale in my Etsy shop. 

This was an interesting piece to work on - featuring a non traditional representation of death as a dark figure, his features hidden beneath a sack. I wanted the image to have an overall recognisably human shape but with a touch of otherness so I built a foam skull, working from a deer skull I had. I added suitably pointed teeth and covered it with the sack.

 To create a dark image, I photographed the piece in a black mirror so only the highlights would show. A lamp picked out the fine details such as the wispy beard I had given him.

 The drawing itself was done in charcoal and carbon on watercolour paper. I got through a lot of carbon on that background :) The finer details were picked out with a knife blade.

Now framed, I'm quite pleased with the overall effect - I've also gone on to do a lot more photography using that mirror. More on that in my next post. The image itself reveals more the longer you look at it. I exhibited it at this years Dark Arts show as part of the Bram Stoker International Film Festival.

Monsters everywhere !

Total chaos here this week as I launched a new Kickstarter campaign for the monsters. I'm going to be showing them at Dark Arts again this year here in Whitby and after thinking how interested people were in their individual stories, decided to make something of it. In this case, more monsters and, if we do well enough, a book about them.

We wanted to the project to reflect what it's like to live with these things so made our own short video black and white movie style, complete with wibbly stop motion. You can see that here.

We also used the time to create an entire folder for our favourite monster, Stephen, including a map of the asylum where he lurks, newspaper cuttings and patient files.

We've also tried to explain what it's like dealing with these things day in, day out ( hence Rich in full monster wrangling outfit). We love what we do but it can be hard work, they come and go when they please and make working with children and animals look like a breeze. So, if you have a minute to do something fun, pop over to our page and if you can, support us - either by pledging or sharing on social media. It all helps :)

Something under the bed....

 Most of you will be familiar by now with the great and terrible Stephen. It's been a while since I had the time to work on a new nightmare so I'm especially pleased to announce the completion of the first picture of Stephen in his natural habitat.

 He's always clung to the shadows, I don't think he likes being around people so an abandoned building seemed the most appropriate hiding place for a shy monster. Given the uncertainty as to where and what he came from, an old asylum had the right combination of creepy and isolated.

 This is my biggest piece to date, worked in carbon pencil on watercolour paper. Rich and I made a scale model bed and set up photographs to get exactly the shot I wanted. Stephens shadow has always fascinated me and so we backlit the frame to reveal just his hands and the shadows reaching out toward the viewer.

I added in peeling wallpaper and a couple of objects for Stephen to play with - he's inquisitive and with all those hands, likes picking things up.  I'm hoping to have prints done of this one soon - in the meantime, you can buy the original Stephen drawing here.

Portrait of Stephen

 As promised, a follow up to my last blog post on Stephen - this time, a bit more about his fantastic face. 

One of the reasons he took so long to complete was the difficulty I had getting his head right. In my dreams, he was always coming out of a dark space and it was hard to see clearly because of the angle of his body.

 I also kept trying to make him too human but as you'll know if you read the last post, he only started out that way. It turns out his eyes and mouth had grown over, healed up if you like because he just didn't need them anymore. He moves like a spider so he gained a set of arachnid eyes which are somewhat creepily dotted around his jaw- when he has all eight hands on the floor that means they are looking forward and slightly down so he can see where he's going...or what he's eating. Not that we want to dwell to much on what that might be.

 He now has a soft mouth in his throat so those feeding arms can post things in easily. I've never heard him speak so am guessing he's lost his vocal cords too. In fact, the only sound I associate with him is the soft patting noise of clammy palms on the wall....

Stephen

After an awful lot of umm-ing and aaah-ing, I've decided to put one of my very favourite pieces up for sale.  Meet Stephen- the only one of my creations to ever give me actual nightmares until I got him out onto paper. I never knew you could be nagged by your own imaginings....if that's what he is of course :)

 He's worked as usual in charcoal pencil on watercolour paper but in this case, most of the hours went into working out how on earth he was put together in the first place. Sometimes I get an idea that comes through in such a very definite way that there is no arguing with it so it was more of an engineering project than anything.

He's named for the Alice Cooper track of the same name which I happened to be listening to when he first crept around the corner. That'll teach me.... To begin with all I had was the impression of something that had maybe once been a person but had become something else. Oh, and a lot of arms.

He has two sets of walking arms facing forward and two back but with an additional limb section so one of my first tasks was figuring out which joints went where and modifying bits as needed. I spent many days on good old google for that !

Then, it was choosing a position for that first drawing. I always do one of just the thing itself so I have everything clear in my head. Soon I hope to be keeping you all amused with pictures of him out and about. Are your windows shut by the way? :)

Just to give you an idea of the lengths I had to go to to get that one picture, here's a shot of my sketchbook page with the bones in each arm marked out and numbered to make sure I didn't get anything on backward. Possibly the most fascinating bit of Stephen is his face but as I already have a portrait of him I'll get into that in my next post along with a bit more about our new friends' habits....