{work} – Page 66 – { feuilleton }

Resurgam variations

Another new page completed for my forthcoming Cthulhu Calendar, I decided to give this one another Latin title for maximum pomposity. “Resurgam” means “I shall rise again” which seems a fitting sentiment for the loathsome Spawn of the Stars. This piece was an improvised drawing which from the outset I wanted to leave incomplete. I’ve always liked pencil drawings which grade from detail to an insubstantial sketchiness, and most of the other representations in the calendar are already highly finished. I usually can’t resist filling every last centimetre so this should be regarded as a rare exercise in restraint.

This is the drawing in its original state. After scanning it and messing with various colour overlays I decided to go with sepia tones. The calendar is already heavy on the green so umber shades will vary things a little. Since it’ll be a CafePress product all the pages have to be square which presents a problem for non-square artwork. I dislike cropping a drawing to fill the page so the additional panels are samples from the drawing quartered and mirrored, a simple effect that always works well. The picture below is one of the earlier variations, the result of applying some Photoshop solarisation then inverting the image.

I now have one more page to fill then the calendar will be finished. (The cover is already done.) I’m hoping to have it completed by this time next week. Keep your tentacles crossed.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Lovecraft archive

De Profundis

De Profundis (2012).

The title is nothing to do with Oscar Wilde’s famous epistle from prison, but then that should be obvious looking at my latest piece of tenebrous artwork. “De Profundis” means “From the depths” which in this case is applied to another piece with a Cthulhu theme. I made a decision earlier this year that my calendar design for 2013 would comprise a collection of all my Cthulhu portraits to date, from The Call of Cthulhu on. I didn’t have 12 pictures, however, so I’m currently making up the numbers between other jobs. This is the first completed piece which steals a background from the illustrations by Alphonse de Neuville and Édouard Riou for Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1871). The voyagers in the Nautilus encountered some fearsome creatures but nothing quite like this. I can’t say at the moment when the calendar will be ready but I’m hoping to have it finished before the end of the month.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Lovecraft archive

Skull, 1983

Mention yesterday of pencil drawing prompted me to dig out this item from one of my old portfolios. It was drawn shortly after I was given a somewhat battered human skull by a student nurse (hello, Victoria, wherever you are), an object I sketched on a number of occasions before eventually making it into the finger-slashing fetish object below which appeared recently in the The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities. The drawing dates from 1983—I remember listening to the Art of Noise EP Into Battle whilst working—and it’s unusual for me in showing the drawn object alone on a sheet of paper with no attempt made to place it in a scene. It’s also a slightly misjudged rendering; this ink drawing from a year later shows a more careful representation of the skull’s proportions, spoiled a little by the pointless and unconvincing seascape I placed behind it.

The Bookman Histories

Now that Angry Robot books has revealed the cover design which kept me busy throughout July I can do the same here. The Bookman Histories is an omnibus reprinting of Lavie Tidhar‘s steampunk trilogy which comprises The Bookman, Camera Obscura and The Great Game. The stories are frenetic, crowded with incident and feature a huge range of characters that find real people such as Jules Verne and Harry Houdini encountering contemporaries—both human and non-human—from the fiction of the late 19th century. All the requisite steampunk boxes are ticked. David Icke will be thrilled to know that in these books the British royal family are a bunch of lizards from space…

My initial impulse when faced with far too much material was to cram every square centimetre of the cover with detail but if I’d have done that I’d probably still be working on it, and would also have run the risk of it turning into an incoherent mess. So this layout, which is crowded enough, is something of a compromise. I also wanted to save some space for the title design.

The main body of the title isn’t a font but was created from scratch based on letterforms and decorative elements from this fantastic set of fire insurance title pages. I’d been wanting to try something based on these hand-drawn designs ever since Mr Peacay posted them at BibliOdyssey last year. This particular design provided the basic letter shapes although I had to invent several of missing characters.

In the third part of the trilogy the Martians from HG Wells’ War of the Worlds invade, so I spent rather too much time fashioning a Martian tripod from lots of tiny bits of machinery. This is one of the earlier drafts. It was an odd thing finishing this cover (which includes the planet Mars in the background) whilst the world was getting excited by the real landing on Mars of the Curiosity Rover.

The Bookman Histories will be published in March next year. Meanwhile there’s more steampunk design on its way. Watch this space.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Aether Cola
• Crafting steampunk illustrations
• SteamPunk Magazine
• Morlocks, airships and curious cabinets
• The Steampunk Bible
• Steampunk Reloaded
• Steampunk overloaded!
• More Steampunk and the Crawling Chaos
• Steampunk Redux
• Steampunk framed
• Steampunk Horror Shortcuts

H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

Illustration by Sven Geier, design by Jo Obarowski and Rebecca Lysen.

HP Lovecraft would have been as surprised as anyone if he could have witnessed the tremendous posthumous triumph he and his work have achieved.

Thus leading Lovecraft biographer and scholar ST Joshi in the introduction to this suitably monstrous book. H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction was published in a new edition last year after first appearing in 2008 as part of Barnes & Noble’s Leatherbound Classics Series. My drawing of Dagon from 1999 adorns the silvered endpapers, and the reason for this belated mention is because I was only sent copies this week after moaning about not having seen a copy in a Tor.com post about the series. In truth the oversight was partly my own fault: one hazard of this line of work is that artwork is requested months (or even years) in advance of publication, so if the work in question is a reprint it’s easy to forget all about it as you get involved with other things.

So anyway, this is a handsome volume of over a thousand pages, not quite leather, it’s more of a leatherette with the design blocked into it. Sven Geier’s cosmic illustration has been given an iridescent finish, and the copies I was sent have metallic silver on the edges as well as a purple ribbon which makes a better match with the colour scheme. The contents comprise all of Lovecraft’s solo fiction (no collaborations, in other words) from the juvenilia through to the non-fiction of his Supernatural Horror in Literature essay. In addition to the introduction there’s a short note from ST Joshi for each story. Needless to say, I’m very pleased to be associated with Lovecraft’s work in this way.

Anyone considered buying a copy should note that the book is currently cheaper at B&N than at Amazon. Also, complaints about typos would appear to apply to the earlier edition although I’ve not had a chance to read any of the stories.

My Dagon picture below appears here larger than it has done before. The drawing was done with a Biro pen, something I’ve always liked using, then tweaked slightly in Photoshop to blur the lines a little and bring out the highlights. I’m not sure now the tweaking was necessary so I may dig out the original at some point to see how it compares.

Dagon (1999) by John Coulthart.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Lovecraft archive