{ feuilleton }

Transfiguration (1952) by Sulamith Wülfing. • Observatory posted photos of its Lovecraft art exhibition; see if you can spot my pics. Related: Write Club has more photos. Also, A Word From Our Sponsor. • Taking the broooooaaaaad view of things: A Conversation with James Grauerholz on William S. Burroughs and Magick. Related: Beat Memories—The Photographs [...]

Artist Alex CF makes beautifully detailed—and very authentic—cases for cryptozoological specimens. I think I’d seen examples of these before but not the Lovecraft exhibits like this collection which presents samples and studies retrieved from the Mountains of Madness. Among other Lovecraftiana there’s also a case devoted to artefacts from R’lyeh. These would have been ideal [...]

Painting by Matthew Buck. I’ve linked in the past to previous shows at Observatory, an arts and events space in Brooklyn, NY, so I’m very pleased to be contributing to their forthcoming exhibition, A Love Craft: Art Inspired by Monsters, Madness and Mythos, which takes HP Lovecraft’s work as its theme. Other participants will include [...]

Conan the Adventurer aka The Barbarian (1965). How to appraise Frank Frazetta? In November last year I wrote about this Conan portrait for an SF Signal Mind Meld feature on favourite book covers: The covers that launched a thousand imitators. Lancer’s series of Conan books in the 1960s were the first appearance of Howard’s barbarian [...]

A T-shirt design by artist Daryl Vocat. • Tove Jansson: Out of the Closet. The unorthodox life and work of the woman who gave us the Moomins. • Submissions are now open for PANK’s October special online issue featuring Queer prose, poetry & art. • More new magazines: Zeus and Made in Brazil Magazine, the [...]

A poster design by Yusaku Kamekura. More here, via A Journey Round My Skull. First of all this week, there’s a new interview posted which I gave last year to Crows ’n’ Bones magazine. The replies skate around the usual subjects (Cthulhu et al) and you also find out why I don’t think design and [...]

A satellite view of snow across Great Britain on January 7, 2010. Walking the snow-laden streets this week felt like a considerable novelty when we rarely have snowfalls of any depth here and what there is never lasts much longer than a day. The current low temperatures which began just before Christmas may be inducing [...]

The final post of an exceptionally productive year arrives with 2010 already shaping up to be just as busy and stimulating work-wise. In 2009 I designed at least 12 books (or was it 13? I’ve lost count…), 8 or 9 book covers, several CDs and many one-off commissions, as well as producing that calendar. If [...]

Yes, it’s these again, and no, I’m not posting them because it Christmas (although you probably don’t believe that). This is the first opportunity I’ve had to add the designs to CafePress after letting them sit for a while seeing as they’re all still available on Modofly’s book range. I’ve had queries recently for the [...]

It’s that thing again… There’s much to loathe about this time of year—the short and dismal days whose appalling weather will persist until mid-March, the trees denuded at last of their leaves, the Chinese Water Torture of Xmas trivia—but the post this week at least brought some compensations. As well as the copies of Dodgem [...]

One of my Cthulhu portraits as it appears in Image Swirl, a new Google feature-in-search-of-a-purpose. Yes, I own a portion of the Googleverse, or the Googleverse owns a portion of me; the latter seems more likely. As well as being the cover of my Lovecraft volume, that picture appeared earlier this year on a reprint [...]

Today is Outer Alliance Pride Day so let’s begin with a statement: As a member of the Outer Alliance, I advocate for queer speculative fiction and those who create, publish and support it, whatever their sexual orientation and gender identity. I make sure this is reflected in my actions and my work. Various members of [...]

Steampunk: Life in Our New Century! I’m behind on work updates again. Still being very productive on a range of different fronts—mostly book and CD design as usual—but the workload means that site updates tend to suffer. Anyway… This new Steampunk illustration was a quick piece done at the weekend to accompany an article Jeff [...]

In Spaces Between from The Great Old Ones (1999). Some noteworthy pieces of news as the month draws to a rain-sodden and dismal conclusion. • Frank Woodward was in touch this week to let me know that his excellent HP Lovecraft documentary, Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown, will at last be appearing on DVD in [...]

Las Meninas (1656) by Diego Velázquez. The sight of one of Picasso’s many versions of Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour) by Velázquez earlier this week prompts this post. An endlessly fascinating painting whose influence runs through three hundred years of art history. That influence isn’t so surprising if you consider this as a painter’s [...]

Along the shore the cloud waves break, The twin suns sink beneath the lake, The shadows lengthen In Carcosa. Strange is the night where black stars rise, And strange moons circle through the skies But stranger still is Lost Carcosa. The King in Yellow, Act i, Scene 2. Rearranging the bookshelves this week had me [...]

L’Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l’infini from A Edgar Poe (1882). Another decently thorough Symbolist website covers the life and work of Odilon Redon (1840–1916), an artist whose pastels and prints were strange even by the standards of his contemporaries. His giant eyeballs and other floating figures are always startling and point [...]

Unveiling another new piece of work, this is a T-shirt design for metal band Cyaegha whose Steps of Descent album I illustrated and designed last year. They asked for something based on HP Lovecraft’s god Nyarlathotep so I thought I’d take the opportunity to rework from scratch the version of this I created in 1999 [...]

Another work-related update. This HP Lovecraft collection is published by Barnes & Noble next month and features my colour rendering of the rising monstrosity on its cover. Nice to have something decorating an actual Lovecraft book, the second time this has happened (first time was for a French volume). B&N also sell my own book, [...]

Top 10 grimoires | The Necronomicon at #9. Hail Yog-Sothoth!