Sometimes Things Don't Work Out II

Here's a few cover roughs for another recent H. P. Lovecraft-inspired project that fell apart.  Entirely my fault as I didn't clarify my contractual requirements  before digging in, but I enjoyed the little I did for what it's worth.  

~R

Devil Reef, Innsmouth

I've finished the first piece of promotional artwork for my adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

I'll have prints of this available at Wizard World Toronto this weekend.

~R

The Hills Rise Wild!

Another piece from the art cache!

I did some art for various sorts of non-computer games around 2000 or so; D&D, Call of Cthulhu variant and a really cool one called Unknown Armies. The publisher of Unknown Armies asked me to do some art for a Lovecraftian board game they were publishing.

Lovecraftian in that it was based on his stories, not that you'd realize we were all merely insignificant ants in the face of the ancient and uncaring powers of the cosmos. Felt I should clear that up.

Anyway, it was a bit of a goofy-riff on The Dunwich Horror where the monsters were all backwoods rednecks in addition to being genetically corrupt monstrosities. I think there's a redundancy in there. . .

So, the main image was a deep one in torn jeans with a shotgun.

Painted this in acrylics -- might be one of the last few things I did in that medium before going digital. I used gesso to build up the textures on the book -- the Cthulhu clasp is practically a relief sculpture.

The original is 14 x 20" on primed 140lb. watercolor paper.

Tempted to rework this a little, but that sort of thing is always a question of finding the time.

The deadline was approaching faster than I planned so I did the inserted images with markers on vellum -- no idea what happened to those pieces, but I expect they'll have faded to nothing by now.

I found a small jpeg of the game online -- apparently some outlets are still selling it. No idea how you play it since I can't recall ever seeing a copy of the game.

Tentacular!

Don't know where this one came from.
Maybe the China Mieville stuff I've been reading has dredged up some Lovecraftian imagery.
. . . Or maybe I just like drawing tentacles.
~Richard

Remade

Been a while -- sorry! Was waiting for a response from a person I did a piece for to post it here, and time kinda got away from me and I still haven't heard back.

So -- here's something from the sketchbook:

It's inspired China Mieville's New Crobuzon books; Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council. In these books, criminals -- both political and otherwise -- are punished by being remade in the punishment factories. These poor sods have bits from other creatures, people or even machines grafted into or onto their bodies, creating a permanent slave class.

The guy above is probably not a good example of the sort of remade you'd typically see in the books, but just shows where my mind wandered to after reading these most excellent books.

I read the above three books and his short story collection, Looking for Jake, in quite a short period of time. These fantasy books are overflowing with imagination owing far more to Lovecraft and Steinbeck than Tolkien. The short story, The Tain, is a remarkable modern fantasy-post-apocalyptic tale and probably my favourite thing the guy's written.

~Richard