Sketches 4

So there won't be any new posts for a week or two because I'll be in Portugal for ten days with Jeanne D'Angelo. Actually, I've set this to autopost so I'll be lurking around cobblestone streets in the shadow of mysterious Templar cathedrals while you read this. Unless of course my plane crashed on the way, in which case this post will be extremely sad and weird.

Anyway, here's some sketches in lieu of new drawings.


First of the sketches is the last dude I posted, the Land-Crustacean. I actually had a hard time figuring out what this guy was gonna look like. The sketch I went with still looks pretty different from the final version. The one of the left looks more like a crab, while the one on the right looks like a flea mixed with a lobster.


Next up is the Ithaqua sketch. I love this one. It's so adorable. Way cuter than how the actual creep turned out. I was looking at a lot of Don Kenn drawings for Wendigo inspiration.


Finally, we have this little slug beastie who appeared in From Beyond. This is actually a way more detailed sketch than I usually do, but I think it worked out considering how detailed this one is.

Ok, I hope that can hold you ravenous maniacs over for a bit while I explore Lisbon's hidden alleys. Stay tuned, because when I get back there's gonna be more bizarreness from the R.H. Barlow and C. M. Eddy collaborations!

LAND-CRUSTACEAN

LAND-CRUSTACEAN
"Other warnings and safeguards dealt with certain gaudy land-crustaceans, and with the deathly-sweet mists which arise at certain points until dispersed by heliotropism."
H.P. Lovcraft & R.H. Barlow, The Hoard Of the Wizard-Beast

LESS DESCRIBABLE THING

LESS DESCRIBABLE THING
"The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain."
H.P. Lovecraft, Dagon

LIVING HINDOO IDOL

LIVING HINDOO IDOL
"All the objects—organic and inorganic alike—were totally beyond description or even comprehension. Gilman sometimes compared the inorganic masses to prisms, labyrinths, clusters of cubes and planes, and Cyclopean buildings; and the organic things struck him variously as groups of bubbles, octopi, centipedes, living Hindoo idols, and intricate Arabesques roused into a kind of ophidian animation."
H.P. Lovecraft, Dreams In the Witch-House

"Makara: This is the name of a monster of the sea in the traditions of India, Thailand, and Indonesia. Indeed, the name may be translated as 'Sea Monster,' but this being is depicted variously as a gigantic and grotesque crab, or as part crocodile and part bird, or as part deer with the hindquarters of a fish. The name 'Makara' is often applied to any composite monster with elements of both fish and mammal and may often have parts of an elephant, especially the trunk, when depicted as a guardian on Hindu temple gateways. It is the steed of the gods Ganga and Varuna and, occasionally, of Vishnu. It is the equivalent of the Western zodiac sign of Capricorn in the Hindu calendar."

Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters and Dragons

GHOST WEREWOLF

GHOST WEREWOLF
"When he smiled a welcome he showed a magnificently even set of firm white teeth, and as he waved me to a chair I was struck by the fineness of his slender hands, with their long, tapering fingers whose ruddy, almond-shaped nails were slightly curved and exquisitely manicured."

"I noticed the huge hairy arms that hung at his side in such curious contrast with his delicate hands."

"Taking the lamp and turning in the hall to say good-night, I could see his eyes glowing almost phosphorescently in the darkened room I had left; and I was half reminded for a moment of the jungle, and the circles of eyes that sometimes glow just beyond the radius of the campfire."

That scream had roused me to action, and in a second I had retrieved my automatic and emptied its entire contents into the wolfish monstrosity before me. But I heard the unhindered thud of each bullet as it imbedded itself in the opposite wall."

"They never found the Count's mangled body, sonny, and a gaunt gray wolf hoverin over it with blood-slavering jaws."
H.P. Lovecraft & C.M. Eddy Jr., The Ghost-Eater

RED BIRD OF CELEPHAÏS

RED BIRD OF CELEPHAÏS

"Every year sailors with such a face came in dark ships from the north to trade their onyx for the carved jade and spun gold and little red singing birds of Celephaïs, and it was clear that these could be no others than the half-gods he sought."
H.P. Lovecraft, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath

HUMAN/DEEP ONE HYBRID

HUMAN/DEEP ONE HYBRID

'"You’ll notice a little in Sargent if you take his bus. Some of ’em have queer narrow heads with flat noses and bulgy, stary eyes that never seem to shut, and their skin ain’t quite right. Rough and scabby, and the sides of their necks are all shrivelled or creased up. Get bald, too, very young."'

'"At fust the things didn’t never go onto the main island, but arter a time they come to want to. Seems they hankered arter mixin’ with the folks, an’ havin’ j’int ceremonies on the big days—May-Eve an’ Hallowe’en. Ye see, they was able to live both in an’ aout o’ water—what they call amphibians, I guess."'

'“Wal, Sir, it seems by the time Obed knowed them islanders they was all full o’ fish blood from them deep-water things. When they got old an’ begun to shew it, they was kep’ hid until they felt like takin’ to the water an’ quittin’ the place."'
H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Over Innsmouth

WAMP

WAMP

"When it learned that Carter wished to get to the enchanted wood and from there to the city Celephais in Ooth-Nargai beyond the Tanarian Hills, it seemed rather doubtful; for these ghouls of the waking world do no business in the graveyards of upper dreamland (leaving that to the web-footed wamps that are spawned in dead cities), and many things intervene betwixt their gulf and the enchanted wood, including the terrible kingdom of the Gugs."

"Great was his dismay to see that docile beast stretched prostrate beside the curious pillar to which it had been tied, and still greater was he vexed on finding that the steed was quite dead, with its blood all sucked away through a singular wound in its throat. His pack had been disturbed, and several shiny knick-knacks taken away, and all around on the dusty soil were great webbed footprints for which he could not in any way account."
H.P. Lovecraft, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath

FUNGOID BEING

FUNGOID BEING

"You see there are four different sorts of beings presented in those cylinders up there. Three humans, six fungoid beings who can’t navigate space corporeally, two beings from Neptune (God! if you could see the body this type has on its own planet!), and the rest entities from the central caverns of an especially interesting dark star beyond the galaxy."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Whisperer In Darkness

MONSTROUS SALAMANDER

MONSTROUS SALAMANDER
"Over the fiery surface green monstrous salamanders slithered, eyeing the intruder with malignant speculation. And on the far side rose the stairs of a metal dais, encrusted with jewels, and piled high with precious objects; the hoard of the wizard-beast."

"Then Anathas the wizard-beast rolled fully out of the archway, mighty in necromantic horror, and jested with the small frightened conqueror before allowing that horde of slavering and peculiarly hungry green salamanders to complete their slow, anticipatory ascent of the dais."
H.P. Lovecraft & R.H. Barlow, The Hoard Of the Wizard-Beast

WYVERN-HEADED BIRD

WYVERN-HEADED BIRD

"This, he felt, would take him to that third and ultimate cavern where his business lay. As he progressed, he glimpsed ahead of him a curious glow; and at last, without warning, the walls receded to reveal a vast open space paved solidly with blazing coals above which flapped and shrieked an obscene flock of wyvern-headed birds."
H.P. Lovecraft & R.H. Barlow, The Hoard Of the Wizard-Beast

"This is the name of a fabulous creature in the legend and folklore of Europe. Images of the Wyvern were frequently to be seen in the bestiaries of medieval Europe, especially in England and France. The creature is described as having the body of a serpent, the head of a dragon, the wings of a bat, and just two legs, while its long serpent's tail was usually barbed."
Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters and Dragons

NEPTUNIAN

NEPTUNIAN

"You see there are four different sorts of beings presented in those cylinders up there. Three humans, six fungoid beings who can’t navigate space corporeally, two beings from Neptune (God! if you could see the body this type has on its own planet!), and the rest entities from the central caverns of an especially interesting dark star beyond the galaxy."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Whisperer In Darkness

LARVAE OF THE OTHER GODS

LARVAE OF THE OTHER GODS

"Never before had he known what shapeless black things lurk and caper and flounder all through the aether, leering and grinning at such voyagers as may pass, and sometimes feeling about with slimy paws when some moving object excites their curiosity. These are the nameless larvae of the Other Gods, and like them are blind and without mind, and possessed of singular hungers and thirsts."
H.P. Lovecraft, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath

Sketches 3

Something to tide you over until next week.

My sketch of Lloigor and Zhar. You can't really tell from this pic what the scale is but that thumbnail is maybe the height of a quarter. Super tiny.

The Resurrected Human sketch is really rough but I got the potato body, yawning mouth and trailing entrails down.

And finally the sketch for Oorn. Apparently he was "cute" from the get-go.

ZHAR

ZHAR
"Lloigor, Zhar and Ithaqua shall ride the spaces among the stars and shall ennoble those who are their followers, who are the Tcho-Tcho; Cthugha shall encompass his dominion from Fomalhaut; Tzathoggua shall come from N'kai..."
H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth, The Lurker At the Threshold

'"And I, Eric Marsh, have for years been helping these little people, directing them to penetrate the deep and unknown caverns beneath the Lake Of Dread and the surrounding Plateau Of Sung where Lloigor and Zhar, ancient evil ones, and their minions await the day when they can once more sweep over the earth to bring death and destruction and incredible age-old evil."'

'"But they were followed by those who had been their slaves on the stars, those who had set up opposition to the Elder Ones-the Evil followers of Cthulhu, Hastur the Unspeakable, Lloigor and Zhar, the twin Obscenities and others."'

"For the thing that crouched in the weird green dusk was a living mass of shuddering horror, as ghastly mountain of sensate, quivering flesh, whose tentacles, far-flung in the dim reaches of the subterranean cavern, emitted a strange humming sound, while from the depths of the creature's body came a weird and horrific ululation. Then I fell back into Fo-Lan's arms. my mouth opened to cry out, but I felt the doctor's firm hand clapped across my lips, and from a great distance I seemed to hear his voice.
"That is Lloigor!"'

"Yet this I know: the remains on the Plateau of Sung are those of what must have been gigantic animals, apparently boneless, and utterly unknown to man."
August Dertleth & Mark Schorer, The Lair Of the Star Spawn

OORN

OORN
"Oorn, though a creature of extremely doubtful nature, was the virtual ruler of Zeth. It obviously belonged somewhere in the outer abyss, but had blundered into Zeth one night and suffered capture by the shamith priests. The coincidence of Its excessively bizarre aspect and Its innate gift of mimicry had impressed the sacred brothers as offering vast possibilities, hence in the end they had set It up as a god and an oracle, organising a new brotherhood to serve It—and incidentally to suggest the edicts it should utter and the replies It should give."

"For a moment—as the ritual prescribed—he stayed in this abased position, and when he arose the dais was no longer empty. Unconcernedly munching something the priests had given It was a large pudgy creature very hard to describe, and covered with short grey fur. Whence It had come in so brief a time only the priests might tell, but the suppliant knew that It was Oorn."

"Having tidily finished Its food, Oorn raised three small reddish eyes to Yalden and uttered certain words in a tone of vast decisiveness: “Gumay ere hfotuol leheht teg.” After this It vanished suddenly in a cloud of pink smoke which seemed to issue from behind the curtain where the acolytes were."
H.P. Lovecraft & R.H. Barlow, The Hoard Of the Wizard-Beast

LLOIGOR

LLOIGOR
"Lloigor, Zhar and Ithaqua shall ride the spaces among the stars and shall ennoble those who are their followers, who are the Tcho-Tcho; Cthugha shall encompass his dominion from Fomalhaut; Tzathoggua shall come from N'kai..."
H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth, The Lurker At the Threshold

"For the thing that crouched in the weird green dusk was a living mass of shuddering horror, as ghastly mountain of sensate, quivering flesh, whose tentacles, far-flung in the dim reaches of the subterranean cavern, emitted a strange humming sound, while from the depths of the creature's body came a weird and horrific ululation. Then I fell back into Fo-Lan's arms. my mouth opened to cry out, but I felt the doctor's firm hand clapped across my lips, and from a great distance I seemed to hear his voice.
"That is Lloigor!"'
August Dertleth & Mark Schorer, The Lair Of the Star Spawn

VENUSIAN

VENUSIAN
"I reached the main landing on Venus March 18, terrestrial time; VI, 9 of the planet’s calendar. Being put in the main group under Miller, I received my equipment—watch tuned to Venus’s slightly quicker rotation—and went through the usual mask drill. After two days I was pronounced fit for duty."

"I doubt if they even have a real language—all the talk about psychological communication through those tentacles down their chests strikes me as bunk. What misleads people is their upright posture; just an accidental physical resemblance to terrestrial man."

"When they drew nearer they seemed less truly reptilian—only the flat head and the green, slimy, frog-like skin carrying out the idea. They walked erect on their odd, thick stumps, and their suction-discs made curious noises in the mud."

H.P. Lovecraft & Kenneth J. Sterling, In the Walls Of Eryx

UBBO-SATHLA

UBBO-SATHLA

"Ubbo-Sathla is that unforgotten source whence came those daring to oppose the Elder Gods who ruled from Betelgueze, the Great Old Ones who fought against the Elder Gods; and these Old Ones were instructed by Azathoth, who is the blind, idiot god, and by Yog-Sothoth, who is the All-in-One and One-in-All, and upon whom are no strictures of time or space, and whose aspects on earth ar 'Umr At-Tawil and the Ancient Ones."
H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth, The Lurker At the Threshold

"There, in the grey beginning of Earth, the formless mass that was Ubbo-Sathla reposed amid the slime and the vapors. Headless, without organs or members, it sloughed from its oozy sides, in a slow, ceaseless wave, the amoebic forms that were the archetypes of earthly life. Horrible it was, if there had been aught to apprehend the horror; and loathsome, if there had been any to feel loathing. About it, prone or tilted in the mire, there lay the mighty tablets of star-quarried stone that were writ with the inconceivable wisdom of the pre-mundane gods."
Clark Ashton Smith, Ubbo-Sathla

DOG-FACED HOWLER

DOG-FACED HOWLER

"In an instant every moving entity was electrified; and forming at once into a ceremonial procession, the nightmare horde slithered away in quest of the sound—goat, satyr, and aegipan, incubus, succuba, and lemur, twisted toad and shapeless elemental, dog-faced howler and silent strutter in darkness—all led by the abominable naked phosphorescent thing that had squatted on the carved golden throne, and that now strode insolently bearing in its arms the glassy-eyed corpse of the corpulent old man."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Horror At Red Hook

HORRIBLY DISTORTED BIRD

HORRIBLY DISTORTED BIRD

"He dreamed of great birds that fought and tore, birds with horribly distorted human aspects; he dreamed of monstrous beasts; and he dreamed of himself in strange roles."
H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth, The Lurker At the Threshold

POSSESSED HAND

POSSESSED HAND

"7-Horror Story. The sculptured hand—or other artificial hand—which strangles its creator."

H.P. Lovecraft, Commonplace Book

ALIEN POLYP

ALIEN POLYP

"They search the sea for marks of their old shore—
For the tall city, white and turreted—
But only empty waters stretch ahead,
So that at last they turn away once more.
Yet sunken deep where alien polyps throng,
The old towers miss their lost, remembered song."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Fungi From Yuggoth

CAT OF ULTHAR

CAT OF ULTHAR
"But all agreed on one thing: that the refusal of all the cats to eat their portions of meat or drink their saucers of milk was exceedingly curious. And for two whole days the sleek, lazy cats of Ulthar would touch no food, but only doze by the fire or in the sun."

"and when they had broken down the frail door they found only this: two cleanly picked human skeletons on the earthen floor, and a number of singular beetles crawling in the shadowy corners."
H.P Lovecraft, The Cats Of Ulthar
"It was a stupendous sight while the torches lasted, and Carter had never before seen so many cats. Black, grey, and white; yellow, tiger, and mixed; common, Persian, and Manx; Thibetan, Angora, and Egyptian; all were there in the fury of battle, and there hovered over them some trace of that profound and inviolate sanctity which made their goddess great in the temples of Bubastis. They would leap seven strong at the throat of an almost-human or the pink tentacled snout of a toad-thing and drag it down savagely to the fungous plain, where myriads of their fellows would surge over it and into it with the frenzied claws and teeth of a divine battle-fury."
H.P. Lovecraft, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath

STRANGE AND IMMORTAL BIRD

STRANGE AND IMMORTAL BIRD
"120-Talking bird of great longevity—tells secret long afterward."

"127-Ancient and unknown ruins—strange and immortal bird who speaks in a language horrifying and revelatory to the explorers."
H.P. Lovecraft, Commonplace Book

ATLACH-NACHA

ATLACH-NACHA

"The dark form ran toward him with incredible swiftness. When it came near he saw that there was a kind of face on the squat ebon body, low down amid the several-jointed legs. The face peered up with a weird expression of doubt and inquiry; and terror crawled through the veins of the bold huntsman as he met the small, crafty eyes that were circled about with hair."
Clark Ashton Smith, The Seven Geases

"I found names and familiar ones, awful descriptions and mere hints of terror unimaginable in accounts of Yig, the terrible snake-god, of Atlach-Nacha of the spider-shape, of Gnoph-Hek, the "hairy thing" otherwise known as Rhan-Tegoth, of Chaugnar Faugn, the vampiric "feeder", of the hell-hounds of Tindalos, which prowl the the angles of time, and again and again of the monstrou Yog-Sothoth, the "All-in-One and One-in-All", whose deceptive disguise is as a congeries of iridescent globes concealing the primal horror beneath."
H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth, The Lurker At the Threshold

WHITE APE

WHITE APE

"In a rational age like the eighteenth century it was unwise for a man of learning to talk about wild sights and strange scenes under a Congo moon; of the gigantic walls and pillars of a forgotten city, crumbling and vine-grown, and of damp, silent, stone steps leading interminably down into the darkness of abysmal treasure-vaults and inconceivable catacombs. Especially was it unwise to rave of the living things that might haunt such a place; of creatures half of the jungle and half of the impiously aged city—fabulous creatures which even a Pliny might describe with scepticism; things that might have sprung up after the great apes had overrun the dying city with the walls and the pillars, the vaults and the weird carvings."

"Most of the Jermyns had possessed a subtly odd and repellent cast, but Arthur’s case was very striking. It is hard to say just what he resembled, but his expression, his facial angle, and the length of his arms gave a thrill of repulsion to those who met him for the first time."

"Just what the white ape-like creatures could have been, Mwanu had no idea, but he thought they were the builders of the ruined city."
H.P. Lovecraft, Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family

NIGHT-GAUNT

NIGHT-GAUNT

"Out of what crypt they crawl, I cannot tell, But every night I see the rubbery things, Black, horned, and slender, with membraneous wings, And tails that bear the bifid barb of hell."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Fungi From Yuggoth

"But Carter preferred to look at them than at his captors, which were indeed shocking and uncouth black things with smooth, oily, whale-like surfaces, unpleasant horns that curved inward toward each other, bat wings whose beating made no sound, ugly prehensile paws, and barbed tails that lashed needlessly and disquietingly. And worst of all, they never spoke or laughed, and never smiled because they had no faces at all to smile with, but only a suggestive blankness where a face ought to be. All they ever did was clutch and fly and tickle; that was the way of night-gaunts."
H.P. Lovecraft, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath

THE REANIMATED

THE REANIMATED
"Holding with Haeckel that all life is a chemical and physical process, and that the so-called “soul” is a myth, my friend believed that artificial reanimation of the dead can depend only on the condition of the tissues; and that unless actual decomposition has set in, a corpse fully equipped with organs may with suitable measures be set going again in the peculiar fashion
known as life."

"A few persons had half seen it in the dark, and said it was white and like a malformed ape or anthropomorphic fiend."

"There was no sound, but just then the electric lights went out and I saw outlined against some phosphorescence of the nether world a horde of silent toiling things which only insanity—or worse—could create. Their outlines were human, semi-human, fractionally human, and not human at all—the horde was grotesquely heterogeneous."
H.P. Lovecraft, Herbert West-Reanimator

HUMANOID BIRD

HUMANOID BIRD
"32-As dinosaurs were once surpassed by mammals, so will man-mammal be surpassed by insect or bird—fall of man before the new race."
H.P. Lovecraft, Commonplace Book

MAGAH BIRD

MAGAH BIRD
"Around him he wrapped another blanket, for the nights are cold in Oriab; and when upon awaking once he thought he felt the wings of some insect brushing his face he covered his head altogether and slept in peace till roused by the magah birds in distant resin groves."
H.P. Lovecraft, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath

YOG-BLOGSOTH IS THE GATE

I have a two items to post before the weekend. One, is that I have 2 weeks worth of drawings to go up starting Monday. That means two weeks of uninterrupted posting (that hasn't happened in a while). There will be some really odd creatures from the Commonplace Book as well as some staples that I've missed up until now and even some redrawings of old monsters. A certain spider god may be in the mix too...it's been a while since there were any Great Old Ones posted.


The second thing is that I just opened a store at Indiemerch. It's an experiment of sorts. There's only one of each print available and if they sell, we may make every single piece available as I post them. Check it out here.

The pieces available right now are Cthulhu, Ghatanothoa, Deep One, and Byakhee.

BAT-WINGED DEVIL

BAT-WINGED DEVIL

"There were legends of a hidden lake unglimpsed by mortal sight, in which dwelt a huge, formless white polypous thing with luminous eyes; and squatters whispered that bat-winged devils flew up out of caverns in inner earth to worship it at midnight."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Call Of Cthulhu

RESURRECTED HUMAN

RESURRECTED HUMAN

"There, where quaint old cottages climbed the hill from the rustic bridge, and fishing-smacks lay anchored at their sleepy docks, a vague report went round of things that were floating down the river and flashing into sight for a minute as they went over the falls. Of course the Pawtuxet is a long river which winds through many settled regions abounding in graveyards, and of course the spring rains had been very heavy; but the fisherfolk about the bridge did not like the wild way that one of the things stared as it shot down to the still water below, or the way that another half cried out although its condition had greatly departed from that of objects which normally cry out."

"What the thing was, he would never tell. It was like some of the carvings on the hellish altar, but it was alive. Nature had never made it in this form, for it was too palpably unfinished. The deficiencies were of the most surprising sort, and the abnormalities of proportion could not be described."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward

BRAINLESS MONSTER

BRAINLESS MONSTER

"90-Anencephalous or brainless monster who 
survives and attains prodigious size."
H.P. Lovecraft, Commonplace Book

INTERDIMENSIONAL CENTIPEDE

INTERDIMENSIONAL CENTIPEDE

"All the objects—organic and inorganic alike—were totally beyond description or even comprehension. Gilman sometimes compared the inorganic masses to prisms, labyrinths, clusters of cubes and planes, and Cyclopean buildings; and the organic things struck him variously as groups of bubbles, octopi, centipedes, living Hindoo idols, and intricate Arabesques roused into a kind of ophidian animation."
H.P. Lovecraft, Dreams In the Witch-House

HUMANOID HIPPOPATOMUS

HUMANOID HIPPOPATOMUS
"I would not look at the marching things. That I desperately resolved as I heard their creaking joints and nitrous wheezing above the dead music and the dead tramping. It was merciful that they did not speak . . . but God! their crazy torches began to cast shadows on the surface of those stupendous columns. Heaven take it away! Hippopotami should not have human hands and carry torches . . . men should not have the heads of crocodiles. . . ."
H.P. Lovecraft & Harry Houdini, Under the Pyramids

CAT FROM SATURN

CAT FROM SATURN
"It was one of the army’s outposts, stationed on the highest of the mountains to watch the one foe which earth’s cats fear; the very large and peculiar cats from Saturn, who for some reason have not been oblivious of the charm of our moon’s dark side."
H.P. Lovecraft, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath

WILBUR WHATELEY

So, for the last few weeks I've been behind on posting new work. This is the reason. An acquaintance of mine, Sam Heimer, is organizing a group show based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft here in Philadelphia and asked me to be a part of it. He even plans on doing a graphic novel formatted book of all the illustrations with sketches and bios from all the artists. I chose to do a portrait of Wilbur Whateley as an infant...and here it is. I usually don't post my other art on here, but I thought the subject matter made it pertinent.

WILBUR WHATELEY

"Above the waist it was semi-anthropomorphic; though its chest, where the dog’s rending paws still rested watchfully, had the leathery, reticulated hide of a crocodile or alligator. The back was piebald with yellow and black, and dimly suggested the squamous covering of certain snakes. Below the waist, though, it was the worst; for here all human resemblance left off and sheer phantasy began. The skin was thickly covered with coarse black fur, and from the abdomen a score of long greenish-grey tentacles with red sucking mouths protruded limply. Their arrangement was odd, and seemed to follow the symmetries of some cosmic geometry unknown to earth or the solar system. On each of the hips, deep set in a kind of pinkish, ciliated orbit, was what seemed to be a rudimentary eye; whilst in lieu of a tail there depended a kind of trunk or feeler with purple annular markings, and with many evidences of being an undeveloped mouth or throat. The limbs, save for their black fur, roughly resembled the hind legs of prehistoric earth’s giant saurians; and terminated in ridgy-veined pads that were neither hooves nor claws."

H.P. Lovecraft, The Dunwich Horror

Sketches 2

Here's a very rough sketch for the my "lazy" Cthulhu. I basically used this to get the position and basic anatomy of the creature down before I start the final produce. Much of the detail comes after I've already begun the final piece.

And here's a really funny sketch of Chaugnar Faugn. He looks very surprised in the sketch and much more refined in the final piece. And by refined, I mean like he could be holding a martini glass.

Ok, I'll see if I can dig up some more of these because I may not be able to finish the 2 Great Old Ones I'm working on for next week. The piece for the Dead and Dreaming show is taking way longer than I thought but looks really cool.

Sketches 1

While I'm working on new stuff, I thought I'd post some sketches next to their finished counterpart so you could see how I work.

The first one is my Noth Yidik sketch. It's super rough and way more of a thumbnail than anything. I wanted to get the two headed "worm" idea down on paper so I just scribbled this really fast.

The Nyarlathotep sketch is way more detailed. Basically, the only thing that changed was the position of the right arm and the addition of the acid dripping from under its eyeball.

I'll see if I have any more of these to post, but I usually just go for it and don't even sketch. That's probably why I redo so many, haha...

INTERDIMENSIONAL OCTOPOD

INTERDIMENSIONAL OCTOPOD
"All the objects—organic and inorganic alike—were totally beyond description or even comprehension. Gilman sometimes compared the inorganic masses to prisms, labyrinths, clusters of cubes and planes, and Cyclopean buildings; and the organic things struck him variously as groups of bubbles, octopi, centipedes, living Hindoo idols, and intricate Arabesques roused into a kind of ophidian animation."
H.P. Lovecraft, Dreams In the Witch-House

INCUBUS

INCUBUS

"In an instant every moving entity was electrified; and forming at once into a ceremonial procession, the nightmare horde slithered away in quest of the sound—goat, satyr, and aegipan, incubus, succuba, and lemur, twisted toad and shapeless elemental, dog-faced howler and silent strutter in darkness—all led by the abominable naked phosphorescent thing that had squatted on the carved golden throne, and that now strode insolently bearing in its arms the glassy-eyed corpse of the corpulent old man."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Horror At Red Hook

"According to many Church Fathers, an incubus is an angel who fell because of lust for wemen. Essentially the incubus is a lewd demon or goblin which seeks sexual intercourse with women. The corresponding devil who appears to men is the succubus."
Rossel Hope Robbins, The Encyclopedia Of Witchcraft & Demonology