FISHER FROM THE OUTSIDE

FISHERS FROM THE OUTSIDE

"The ancient Fishers from Outside—Were there not tales the high-priest told, Of how they found the worlds of old, And took what pelf their fancy spied?" 

H.P. Lovecraft, The Outpost

"One glimpse of the repulsive thing with its one leg and one glaring Cyclopean eye and hideous, hooked, fang-lined beak-"

Lin Carter & H.P. Lovecraft, Fishers From the Outiside

NEW FUNDRAISER

 

Hey everyone! While searching through drawings for last month's Many Lands Mutual Aid fundraiser I stumbled on the originals for Scott Nicolay's long out of print novella *after* published through Dim Shores. 

So I'm going to raffle off the lot as a new fundraiser for the Sameer Project. 

"A donations based aid initiative, led by Palestinians in the diaspora, working to supply emergency shelter and aid to displaced families in Gaza."

Each raffle ticket will cost $6 (a little more in Europe & the rest of the world) and will enter you in a chance to win this combo!

Included will be Sam's very last copy of *after*, three full color postcards of the interior art, the original inked pages for the cover art & all three interior illustrations and the original pencil drawings for two of the interior illustrations (sadly the pencils for the cover & the third interior are lost to time & my negligence). The raffle will end Friday May 9th, and I'll use a random number generator to choose the winner. 

Get a raffle ticket below or in the you-blogsoth store!

____________________________________________________

1 RAFFLE TICKET FOR A CHANCE TO WIN:

• The last remaining copy of Scott Nicolay's *after*.
• Full color postcards of interior art.
• Original inked drawings of cover & interior illustrations.
• Original pencil drawings of 2 interior illustrations.

Shipping incl.

USA $6.00 USD Canada $8.00 USD World $10.00 USD

DECATON

DECATON

"There are exactly 100 decatons, the lowest order of officials found in Nirvana, These creatures appear as 10-tentacled spheres on stumpy legs and are overseers of the physical welfare of the base modrons. One deeaton is assigned to each sector of Nirvana, while the remaining 36 serve with the hextons commanding the armed forces of the plane."

Gary Gygax, Monster Manual II

OCULON

OCULON

"The oculon is an enchanted monster created by a high-level magic-user to act as an assistant or guardian. The process of creating one is long and quite involved, but the resulting being is fairly powerful because of the many special skills it has. An oculon is humanoid in shape, though only vaguely so, and is 4 feet tall at the shoulder. Instead of a human head, the oculon has a flexible neck about 3 feet in length with a single large eye at the end. The neck is 2” in diameter and the eye is 4” across."

"The body of an oculon is light grey in color, and slightly glossy. The cornea of the eye is dark grey, and the pupil of the eye is black."

Roger E. Moore, Dragon Magazine #53

ROPER

ROPER

"Ropers inhabit subterranean caverns. They prey upon all forms of creatures, but humans are their favorite form of food. These monsters can stand upright in order to resemble a pillar or stalagmite or flatten themselves to full length upon the floor so as to look like nothing more than a hump. The roper has six strands of strong, sticky rope-like excretion which it can shoot from 2'-5'."

"This yellowish gray monster appears to be a mass of foul, festering corruption. The roper is cigar-shaped, about 9' long, with a diameter of some 3'."

Gary Gygax, Monster Manual I

DEATH SHEEP

DEATH SHEEP

"These deadly sheep roam the verdant hillsides where they live, ravaging anything in their paths. From a distance, they seem to be nothing more than wild, somewhat dirty sheep. Up close, however, the sheep can be seen to have an evil nature. Their large mouths are filled with long, sharp black teeth that drip vile ichor. These sheep attack any living thing that they can find, fearing nothing and fighting to the death."

Dragon Magazine #156

SKULLRIDER

SKULLRIDER

"A skullrider is a spider-like creature whose eight segmented legs grow out of a body the size and shape of a human skull. Its shiny exoskeleton is the approximate color and texture of human bone, supporting the illusion. Vicious mandibles are hidden inside the "jawbone" of the skull; these mandibles are retractable, as are the creature's eight short legs. The bony exoskeleton prevents body heat from emanating, thus making the skullrider 'invisible' to infravision. A skullrider with mandibles and legs retracted is thus 90% indistinguishable from a regular human skull."

Jonathan Richards, Dragon Magazine #198

MISSHAPEN FAUN

MISSHAPEN FAUN 

"Incubi and succubae howled praise to Hecate, and headless moon-calves bleated to the Magna Mater. Goats leaped to the sound of thin accursed flutes, and aegipans chased endlessly after misshapen fauns over rocks twisted like swollen toads." 

H.P. Lovecraft, The Horror At Red Hook

"These beings are the offspring of the classical Greek demigod Faunus, which resembled him in their semihuman form with the legs, hooves and horns of a goat but the torso and head of a human male. They are likened to the Satyrs and are guardians of the wild life of the woods and fields they inhabit."

Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters and Dragons

MONSTROUS FROG

MONSTROUS FROG

"There, squatting in the midst of the tumbled bedding from that long-abandoned bed, sat a monstrous, leathery-skinned creature that was neither frog nor man, one gorged with food, with blood still slavering from its batrachian jaws and upon its webbed fingers - a monstrous entity that had strong, powerfully long arms, grown from its bestial body like those of a frog, and tapering off into a man's hands, save for the webbing between the fingers..." 

H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth, The Shuttered Room

TOAD-THING

TOAD-THING

"On the roof, as it were one on each side of him, were two toad-like creatures which seemed constantly to be changing shape and appearance, and from whom emanated, by some means I could not distinguish, a ghastly ululation, a piping which was matched only by the shrill choir of the frogs, now risen to an truly cacophonous height."

H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth, The Lurker At the Threshold

WORM PERSON

WORM PERSON

"Amid these hushed throngs I followed my voiceless guides; jostled by elbows that seemed preternaturally soft, and pressed by chests and stomachs that seemed abnormally pulpy;"

"It was a silent, shocking descent, and I observed after a horrible interval that the walls and steps were changing in nature, as if chiselled out of the solid rock. What mainly troubled me was that the myriad footfalls made no sound and set up no echoes."

H.P. Lovecraft, The Festival

FUNGUS VAMPIRE

FUNGUS VAMPIRE

"Out of the fungous-ridden earth steamed up a vaporous corpse-light, yellow and diseased, which bubbled and lapped to a gigantic height in vague outlines half human and half monstrous, through which I could see the chimney and fireplace beyond. It was all eyes - wolfish and mocking - and the rugose insect-like head dissolved at the top to a thin stream of mist which curled putridly about and finally vanished up the chimney."

H.P. Lovecraft, The Shunned House

MANY LANDS MUTUAL AID

Thanks so much to everyone who bought an original to help raise over $400 for Many Lands Mutual Aid in Palestine. 

I have a few other art fundraisers coming up so stay tuned!

VAN EYCK DEMON

VAN EYCK DEMON

"Just as Christ reigns over the heavenly sphere, Saint Michael, with his sword and shield at the ready, rules over the damned in hell. Death spreads his wings and skeletal appendages to encompass a scene of writhing figures enduring horrific tortures, their bodies being torn apart by terrifying beasts. Between heaven and hell are the souls emerging from their graves and from the sea to be judged."

The Met

*This demon is inspired by the painting Crucifixion and Last Judgment (1430) by Jan van Eyck.

PROVOST DEMON

PROVOST DEMON

"At the lower right, those unfortunates who have already been found unworthy are subjected to a variety of torments, some inflicted by beasts of the artist’s invention. The scene contains droll details — for example, one wide-eyed monster has seized the leg of a hapless human and pulls eagerly — that suggest that Jan Provost brought a certain humor to this richly detailed, colorful, and dramatic composition."

Detroit Institute Of Art

*This demon is inspired by the painting The Last Judgment by Jan Provost (1525).

REICHLICH DEMON

REICHLICH DEMON

"The demons dragging them away have odd anatomical arrangements. At the bottom center one of the demons even gives the viewer a toothy grin."

The Chrysler Museum

*This demon is inspired by the painting The Last Judgment (1490) by Marx Reichlich.

LUTTRELL DEMON

 

LUTTRELL DEMON
"The lively, vibrant and sometimes humorous illustrations also include, rather bizarrely, a number of ‘grotesques’, curious figures combining animal and human parts."
Ellen Castelow, Historic UK

*This demon is inspired by the marginalia in the Luttrell Psalter (1320–1340)

LAST DAY OF FUNDRAISER!

 Hey folks! Today is the last day to grab the items I added to my shop. I already shipped the first batch on Thursday, all remaining orders will ship tomorrow. All the proceeds will be donated to Many Lands Mutual Aid in Palestine. 

Some of the items include original drawings, zines with original drawings and books with original drawings. 

Head over to the store to grab some art and support Many Lands Mutual Aid.

BERMEJO DEMON

BERMEJO DEMON

"From its red eyes, horns and gaping mouth to its armoured and reptilian body, it forms a hideous echo of the warrior-angel, reminding the viewer that devils were once angels. Its contorted limbs are half snake and its whole torso is another face, with eyes for nipples and snakes slithering from a mouth in its belly. Its clawed tail even curls around the saint’s armoured leg. Composite demons – those with bodies made up of parts of many creatures – were a traditional way of visualising evil in medieval art."

The National Gallery, London

*This demon is inspired by the painting Saint Michael Triumphs over the Devil (1468) by Bartolomé Bermejo.

THE SLIME

THE SLIME

"It was a great gray-black hood of horror moving over the floor of the sea. It slid through the soft ooze like a monstrous mantle of slime obscenely animated with questing life. It was by turns viscid and fluid. At times it flattened out and flowed through the carpet of mud like an inky pool; occasionally it paused, seeming to shrink in upon itself, and reared up out of the ooze until it resembled an irregular cone or a gigantic hood. Although it possessed no eyes, it had a marvelously developed sense of touch, and it possessed a sensitivity to minute vibrations which was almost akin to telepathy. It was plastic, essentially shapeless. It could shoot out long tentacles, until it bore a resemblance to a nightmare squid or a huge starfish; it could retract itself into a round flattened disk, or squeeze into an irregular hunched shape so that it looked like a black boulder sunk on the bottom of the sea.

Joseph Payne Breannan, Slime

Read Scott's essay about The Slime here

MOP-HEAD

MOP-HEAD

"The thing called Mop-Head was not an animal or plant or rock, although, by now it was a little of each. It had no definite body, and it longed for one. A scrap of elemental force that had drifted down over the field from far-off places, and settled long ago in the forgotten well, it had gradually build itself a body and consciousness over the years."

"From darkness and silence and damp, out of earth-mold and wet leaves and blown dandelions, of scum and spiders' legs and ants' mandibles and the brittle bones of moles it formed a shape and a sentience."

"The rising moon glistened on its fuzzy grayness, glittered in its many eyes. Its antenna waved in the warm air and the thing whimpered a little."

"Barndollar though he saw something run out of the dead mouth— 'like a big curly-haired mole, or a kind of shaggy spider,' as he described it later."

Leah Bodine Drake, Mop-Head

Read Scott's essay about Mop-Head here

SPAWN OF ANCIENT EVIL

 SPAWN OF ANCIENT EVIL

"The structure was festooned and enwrapped by wriggling, climbing shapes, none of which he could see in their entirety, for they were so entangled in their climbing that no one of them could be see in in their entirety. There was about them a drippiness, a loathsomeness, a scaliness that left him gulping in abject terror. And there were, as well, he saw, others of them on the ground surrounding thd well, great dark, humped figures that lurched along until they crossed the track."

"He could see no eyes, but he could feel them looking."

"Heads, if they were heads, moved back and forth. There was the sense of twitching tails, although he could see no tails."

Clifford D. Simak, The Whistling Well

Read Scott's essay about The Whistling Well here

BUBBLES & OTHER

BUBBLES

"'It's curious, we are much more afraid of the Others, who aren't very dangerous, than of the bubbles. I suppose it's because the horror of the Others upsets us whereas the bubbles have a sort of perfect beauty.' It's true, bubbles are rather pretty. I often watch them float outside."

Julia Verlanger, The Bubbles

OTHER

"The Others change. Instead of being dissolved by the slime from the bubbles, they rise a moment later, apparently unharmed. But, some days later, things grow on them! Many arms, like the woman who looks like the goddess in the old book. Or loads of legs, or eyes everywhere, or two heads, or an assortment of mouths on their neck and chest. It's horrible!"

"I wonder if he is maybe outside, with lots of arms or legs, or if all his hair has fallen out and many eyes have sprouted on his head, or if... But I don't want to think about it."

Julia Verlanger, The Bubbles

Read Scott's essay about The Bubbles here