MONSTROUS BAT

 

MONSTROUS BAT 

 "She affirm'd, and her good neighbours likewise, that it had been borne to her, and took oath that she did not know by what manner it had come upon her, for it was neither Beast nor Man but like to a monstrous Bat with human face. It made no sound but look'd at all and sundry with baleful eyes. There were those who swore that it bore a frightful resemblance to the Face of one long dead, one Richard Bellingham or Bollinhan who is affirm'd to have vanished utterly after consort with Daemons in the country of New Dunnich. The horrible Beast-Man was examined by the Court of Azzizes and the which then burnt by Order of the High-Sherif on the 5th of June in the year 1788."
H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth, The Lurker At the Threshold

CHARON

 CHARON

"And mourning Satyrs sound the dismal reed; 

Taygetus repeats the gen'ral woe, 

Whilst Charon grumbles in the gulf below."

H.P. Lovecraft, Monody On the Late King Alcohol

"A grim ferryman watches over the rivers and streams,

Charon, dreadful in his squalor, with a mass of unkempt

white hair straggling from his chin: flames glow in his eyes"
Vergil, Aeneid

"At one end is Charun, winged, with a monstrous face, heavy brow ridges, and great tusks. His upper torso is nude."

"Charun appears much oftener; his name is evidently taken from the Greek Charon, the ferryman of the dead, but his appearance and personality are quite different. Often winged like Tuchulcha, he has a hooked nose, horrid tusks, snaky hair, and is generally armed with a hammer. He appears as the announcer of death and divider of families, the guide on the road to Hades, the porter at hell's gate. "
Emeline Richardson, The Etruscans Their Art and Civilization
 

"Most of the time, Vanth is an attractive female fiure, a welcome contrast to her ugly partner Charu. Here Charu, with his scowling, hook-nosed bestial countenance ( he even has donkey's ears in this case, is balanced by the beautiful Vanth."

"Their skin is quite revolting, bluish or greenish with one demon, Charun huths, having blisters or sores all over the skin, all are sporting wings."
Nancy Thomson de Grummond, Etruscan Myth, Sacred History, and Legend

"The Etruscans probably looked for a representable appearance for demons already existing in their concept of demonic power, guiding the deceased to the gates of the Netherworld, and they found it with some modifications, in Charon."
Nancy Thomson De Grummond, Erika Simon, The Religion of the Etruscans

"Not all the details fit by any means, and some of Tuchulcha's features are those of another Near Eastern underworld figure, the demoness Lamashtu - notably the ass's ears (which Charun also sports) and hand held snakes."
Graeme Barker & Tom Rasmussen, The Etruscans

HUMANOID CROCODILE

HUMANOID CROCODILE
"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

News...

Hey folks, I have a couple cool things to talk about before my next bummer news post about art theft.  First off, there will be a second edition of Illustro Obscurum Volume IV.  I'm not 100% on the timeline yet, but trust me it'll be soon.

Secondly, I'm also working on laying out Volume V.  Which won't be too long on the heels of IV. After that, I'll be taking a little zine break to work on a special project that I think most of you will really like.

I also would like to share two Kickstarter projects that I thought you'd enjoy. The first one is from my friend Trevor Henderson. He and Kathryn Bright have assembled a ton of artists to make an H.P. Lovecraft themed art zine titled Puffed Shoggoths.

PUFFED SHOGGOTHS KICKSTARTER PAGE

The artist list is amazing, the work is stellar, and you may remember, I did a Dreams In the Witch House piece for it!

 Anyway, they're really, really close to their goal, and they're are some bonkers incentives (check out Sam Heimer's insane $1,000 backer bonus!!)

Lastly, my friend Eden, has another Kickstarter where you can fund her mass producing BROWN JENKIN FIGURINES!! She's a really talented sculptor who's work you can see here. I own one of those Krampus heads and it's amazing.

EDEN'S BROWN JENKIN KICKSTARTER

She just started and is already a third of the way to her goal!

Anyway, there will be new monsters for the rest of the week except for Friday when I'll be ranting.

VAPOROUS BRAIN

VAPOROUS BRAIN
"It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have whispered of as YOG-SOTHOTH, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable Sign—yet in a flash the Carter-facet realised how slight and fractional all these conceptions are."
H.P. Lovecraft & E. Hoffman Price, Through the Gates Of the Silver Key

PAN

PAN
"From the brook a shape arose 
Half a man and half a goat. 
Hoofs it had instead of toes 
And a beard adorn'd its throat 

On a seat of rustic reeds 
Sweetly play'd this hybrid man 
Naught car'd I for earthly needs, 
For I knew that this was Pan"
H.P. Lovecraft, To Pan 

"Pan, like other gods who dwelt in forests, was dreaded by those whose occupations caused them to pass through the woods by night, for the gloom and loneliness of such scenes dispose the mind to superstitious fears. Hence  sudden fright without an visible cause was ascribed to Pan, 
and called a Panic terror."

"As the name of the god signifies all, Pan came to be considered a symbol of the universe and personification of Nature; and later still to be regarded as a representative of all the gods and of heathenism itself."
 Thomas Bullfinch, Bullfinch's Mythology

"because she had seen Pan the dangerous lover with 
a face like some shaggy goat"
Nonnus, The Dionysiaca 

"Pan, the great god of nature, was not a handsome god. He had goat's legs, pointed ears, a pair of small horns, and he was covered all over with dark, shaggy hair. He was so ugly that his mother, a nymph, ran away screaming when she first saw him."
Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire's, Book Of Greek Myths 

"In works of art Pan is represented as a voluptuous and sensual being, with horns, puck-nose, and goat's feet, sometimes in the act of dancing, and 
sometimes playing on the syrinx." 
Sir William Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology 

 

News...

Quick bit of news. I just did an interview for the awesome, metal-themed website, Lurker's Path.

It's about my art but more specifically my H.P.L. bestiary project (this blog and my zines). 

And lastly...there are now only THREE copies of the second edition of Illustro Obscurum Volume III  in the Yog-Blogsoth store!

MINERVA

MINERVA

"But now another bard insisten call; 

Blest Hellas' train, each from his pedestal;

See Venus and Minerva spiteful vie 

To have the new arrival settled nigh."

H.P. Lovecraft, On Receiving a Portraiture Of Mrs. Berkeley, ye Poetess

"Minerva (the goddess of wisdom) was the offspring of Jupiter, without a mother. She sprang forth from his head completely armed. Her favourite bird was the owl."

"Minerva depicted herself with helmed head, her Aegis covering her breast." 

"He (Perseus) cut off her (Medusa) head and gave it to Minerva, who fixed it in the middle of her Aegis." 
Thomas Bullfinch, Bullfinch's Mythology 
 

"The serpent, the symbol of perpetual renovation, was sacred to her."

Sir William Smith, Dictionary Of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
 

KNYGATHIN ZHAUM

KNYGATHIN ZHAUM
"He had seized a respectable seller of djongua-beans, and had proceeded instantly to devour his victim alive, without heeding the blows, bricks, arrows, javelins, cobblestones and curses that were rained upon him by the gathering throng and by the police. It was only when he had satisfied his atrocious appetite, that he suffered the police to lead him away, leaving little more than the bones and raiment of the djongua-seller to mark the spot of this outrageous happening."

"When the criminal re-appeared, it was obvious not only to me but to everyone that his physical personality, in achieving this new recrudescence, had undergone a most salient change. His mottling had developed more than a suggestion of some startling and repulsive pattern; and his human characteristics had yielded to the inroads of an unearthly distortion. The head was joined to the shoulders almost without the intermediation of a neck; the eyes were set diagonally in a face with oblique bulgings and flattenings; the nose and mouth were showing a tendency to displace each other; and there were still further alterations which I shall not specify, since they involved an abhorrent degradation of man's noblest and most distinctive corporeal members. I shall, however, mention the strange, pendulous formations, like annulated dew-laps or wattles, into which his knee-caps had evolved. Nathless, it was Knygathin Zhaum himself who stood (if one could dignify the fashion of his carriage by that word) before the block of justice."

Clark Ashton Smith, The Testament Of Athammaus

Be sure to check out the second half of my guest appearance on the excellent Clark Ashton Smith themed podcast The Double Shadow!

NAMELESS THING

 NAMELESS THING

"Black monstrous bridges across oily rivers,
      Cobwebs of cable by nameless things spun;
Catacomb deeps whose dank chaos delivers
      Streams of live foetor, that rots in the sun."

H.P. Lovecraft, The Cats