HP Lovecraft – Page 39 – { feuilleton }

Hanging in Lovecrafton

Lovecrafton.

I’ve had online art exhibitions in the past but this month some of my work can be seen inside a virtual space. Lovecrafton is a Lovecraft-themed town in Second Life created by illustrator John Aardema. As is evident from the screenshots, the atmosphere is suitably autumnal with the requisite Colonial architecture. I was slightly surprised by these views, almost everything I’d seen of Second Life in the past looked overlit and underdeveloped, giving the impression of a crude computer game.

Carter Family Homestead.

I’ve not visited Lovecrafton but if you have a Second Life account you can access it via this link. Lovecraft-derived artwork by several artists will be displayed in the art gallery there throughout October, all of it annotated and linked to the websites of each artist.

The art gallery.

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Tentacles #4: Cthulhu in Poland

Several months ago Polish publisher Vesper asked to use some of my Lovecraft art for a Polish collection of the author’s work. Their weighty paperback just happened to arrive during this tentacle-themed week, an event which also gives me an opportunity to mention again (how could I not?) that two of these pieces can be found in the new Cthulhu Calendar. An ideal Halloween gift! Breaks the ice at eldritch parties! Etc. By coincidence I also received a book this week about vampire squid but I’ll say more about that after I’ve had a chance to read it.

Despite Cthulhu being on the cover, the title of the book is (according to Google) The Dunwich Horror and Other Scary Stories which is no doubt a better sell with “horror” being up front. There are only fifteen stories but the page count runs to 792 since most of them are the later, longer works, including the entirety of At the Mountains of Madness and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. A number of my illustrations are used within, one of which—the drawing of Advocates’ Close in Edinburgh which first appeared in The Haunter of the Dark—gets repurposed as an illustration for The Music of Erich Zann (above). Quite a fitting use, I think.

In addition you also get my widescreen view of R’lyeh as a spread on the inside of the French flaps. And my copy came with a nice R’lyeh bookmark. Those interested can order the book here.

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Cthulhu Calendar

So here it is at last, the stars are right, etc. I had the idea for a Cthulhu calendar after I finished the Cthulhoid piece in January and realised I had about eight or more different representations of everyone’s favourite dreaming alien monstrosity. In gathering them together I’ve alternated between old and new works to avoid the front of the run being all black-and-white drawings. I could have coloured the black-and-white pieces, of course, but since they were never intended to be seen that way I prefer to leave them alone. The main alteration has been the adding of side panels or borders in order to help rectangular artwork fill out a square space. As usual this calendar is available through CafePress, priced at $19.99 / £15.00 / €18.50.

Before making a purchase please note: CafePress recently added a completely unnecessary feature to their calendars whereby purchasers can choose to have the pages start in late 2012 instead of January 2013. They don’t give me any way to disable this option, hence the warning. If you want a calendar beginning in January 2013 you have to select that option yourself.

Examples of the pages follow. See the artwork at a larger size here.

JANUARY: Title page from The Call of Cthulhu (1987).

The opening page from my comic strip adaptation of the story.

FEBRUARY: Resurgam (2012).

MARCH: Cthulhu Arisen from The Call of Cthulhu (1988).

Cthulhu’s appearance from the comic strip adaptation.

APRIL: De Profundis (2012).

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S. Latitude 47°9′, W. Longitude 126°43′

Then, driven ahead by curiosity in their captured yacht under Johansen’s command, the men sight a great stone pillar sticking out of the sea, and in S. Latitude 47°9′, W. Longitude 126°43′, come upon a coastline of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth’s supreme terror—the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh, that was built in measureless aeons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults and sending out at last, after cycles incalculable, the thoughts that spread fear to the dreams of the sensitive and called imperiously to the faithful to come on a pilgrimage of liberation and restoration.

HP Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu (1928)

“Great Cthulhu and his hordes…” People never mention the hordes, do they? I’m pleased to say that the loathsome horde gathered in my forthcoming Cthulhu Calendar are in situ at last, since I’ve found the time this week to get everything finished. I still need to write a couple of new web pages then upload all the images to CafePress. I’ll be doing that over the weekend so Monday will be the launch day.

For the final piece I decided against doing another portrait in favour of a picture of an attack at sea as it might have appeared in a 19th-century newspaper. This kind of imagery will now make many people think of the Kraken scenes in the second Pirates of the Caribbean film but it predates cinema, of course, as it also predates Lovecraft. Despite Lovecraft’s indelible association with monstrous tentacles there are a lot more incidents of this nature in William Hope Hodgson’s stories and novels than in the Cthulhu Mythos. In which case this scene, which will be the page for December, can be regarded as a tip of the hat to William as much as to Howard.

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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.

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