Ritual Dust

Resume

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 00:00:00 EST

Lizbeth Poirier-Morissette

Selected clients

Disturbia
Hellebore zine
Library of the Occult
Voidxwitch
Aura Merlin
Girl Circles
Lyndsie Alguire
Ossuary Wraith
Inpathos
Swamp Lantern
Nicole Marxen
Nithgengan
Alvaro Arroliga
James Chip
Vacarme Hurlant

Training

2025 - online songwriting course wth A. G. Cook through the school of song
2022 - online music production course, led by Andrew Huang
2008-2011 - Visual and Media Arts Bachelor’s degree at UQAM

Artistic Works

Exhibitions

2017 - Marrow Tarot, Marrow PDX, Portland
2011 - Entre Deux Feux, New City Gas, Montréal
2011 - Prologue, Cégep du Vieux-Montréal, Montréal
2011 - Exhibit, Mtl Tattoo, Montréal
2011 - Passage à Découvert, Galerie de l’UQAM, Montréal
2010 - Première impression, ARPRIM, Montréal
2010 - Bibliomanes, Bibliothèque des arts de l’UQAM, Montréal
2009 - Prêt à Emporter 4, Galerie Circulaire, Montréal
2007 - Époque Indéfinie Librairie T.-A.-St-Germain, Saint-Hyacinthe
2007 - Arnaque, Centre Expression, Saint-Hyacinthe

Live performances

Sep 13, 2025 - Opening for Stoneburner as part of Voidxwitch, L’escogriffe, Montreal Canada
Mar 25, 2025 - Opening for Ultra Sunn as part of Voidxwitch, Cabaret foufs, Montreal Canada
Dec 6, 2024 - Appearance during Aliceffekt show as part of Voidxwich, Foufounes Electriques, Montreal Canada
Oct 18, 2023 - Album release party for Ecstasy in Darkness as part of Voidxwitch, Sottarenea, Montreal Canada
Oct 18, 2023 - DJ set as Ritual Dust, Sottarenea, Montreal Canada
Aug 9, 2023 - Opening for Output 1:1:1 as Ritual Dust, Casa del Popolo, Montreal Canada
Jul 30, 2023 - Debut live show as Ritual Dust, DIY venue, Montreal Canada
Aug 28, 2022 - Debut live show as part of Blood and Dust, Entrepot 77, Montreal Canada

Music releases

Jun 20, 2024 - Earthworks EP as Ritual Dust
Oct 13, 2023 - Ecstasy in Darkness EP as part of Voidxwitch

Community collaboration

Dec 2023 - contribued a track (as Ritual Dust) to Left/Folk compilation “The World As It Is” ()
Nov 2023 - contributed a track (as Ritual Dust) to the [“Elmet Brae” compilation] put together by the Merveilles community ()
May 2023 - contribued a track (as Ritual Dust) to “This Trembling Place” , a compilation by fallen lo-
Mar 2022 - contributed a track (as Blood and Dust) to the Left/Folk compilation “Haunting Ground”
Feb 2020 - contributed a track (as Blood and Dust) to Apostils Against Hegemony, Vol. 1: Transitive Properties

Videos

Apr 28, 2025 - Suffer Puppet music video
Feb 13, 2025 - Bitch on Bitch music video
Sep 13, 2024 - Beast of the Black Hill music video
Aug 13, 2023 - Kill the Pain music video
Jul 28, 2022 - Are You Ok? music video
Feb 1, 2020 - Ich Hab Die Nacht Geträumet music video

Awards

2014 - Best music award for my video “walk” at Dérapage

Publications and mentions

2026 - Strega zine
Dec 2025 - This is a test zine by No Gloss (page 3)
Oct 2022 - Fantômes zine - Issue 2
Oct 2021 - Fantômes zine - Issue 1
xxxx - Hellebore - No.4 (cover and page 2)
xxxx - Cvstomerservice zine - Volume V (page 24)
xxxx - Black Panels Only zine (Issue 1)
xxxx - Steampunk magazine
2011 - Passage à Découvert (page 68)

Public speaking

xxxx - “My illustration design framework”, Sketch Mtl
xxxx - “The web as a creative medium”, Concordia University

Arts and cultural work experience

I’ve worked as an art school technician, building woodworking shops, teaching woodworking, animation, 3D modelling, playing with 3D printers and helping students realize their creative ideas no matter what medium they required.
Taught branding to upcoming jewellers at l’École de Joaillerie de Montréal
I was teacher’s assistant in a printmaking class at UQAM

Way of life

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 20 Jun 2021 00:00:00 EST

This is in no way intended to be general advice or universal truth, it’s what worked for me in life so far. These are the result of a long distillation process, introspection, life experiences, therapy and meditation. It will definitely change in the future, like myself. It is written in that form as a message from present me to future me.

Listen to nature
Know your feelings
Trust your body
Set boundaries
Take accountability
Practice gratitude
Learn your privilege
Tend to your insecurities
Be honest with yourself
Commitments not tasks

Cultivate a relationship with nature

Nature is always there somewhere, even in the most brutalist city corners and we’re part of it. Taking time to notice and appreciate nature thought me a lot about life and myself and brought me a lot of joy and pleasure. Taking walks in the woods, tracing the paths left by termites on a dead log, playing with our cat, basking in the sun.

“Take your time as the mighty oak tree does, growing tall and strong and glorious in its own due course, fully confident that its great work is immune to the harrying of time. It grows its mighty bows where there is enough light, it puts forth leaves as it pleases and it’s acorns falls to the forest floor when they’re just heavy enough.“
- Steven Zapata

Learn to listen, name and express feelings

Especially as someone who was raised as a boy and who had very little guidance and examples of the wide range of human emotions, this one was a cornerstone of living a better life. Getting in touch with my feelings, noticing them without judgement and developing the language to talk about them and express them to others opened up doors that allowed me to connect more deeply with myself and the people close to me, develop more nuanced empathy and understanding towards others and myself and get to know what I really wanted for myself.

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I change.”
― Carl Rogers

Trust your body and learn to take care of it

While getting to know my emotional needs, I was also faced with how much stress and emotions were linked to the body, creating tension, pain and changing my posture and breathing. I learned that it doesn’t really work to force your body to relax, it has it’s own natural ways to do so and getting to know these and integrate them in everyday life seems to bring the more long-lasting change. What helped me in that process is yoga and meditation, starting with guided ones and then growing my own practice from what felt better.

“Listen to me, your body is not a temple. Temples can be destroyed and desecrated. Your body is a forest—thick canopies of maple trees and sweet scented wildflowers sprouting in the underwood. You will grow back, over and over, no matter how badly you are devastated.”
― Beau Taplin

Get confortable with setting and respecting boundaries

A boundary, soft or hard is never intended to harm, punish, or deprive someone else of something. It is an act of self-honesty and comes from knowing my own limits and respecting them. The more forward and clear I’m becoming with my boundaries and my availability - in terms of time, energy, or capacity - the easier it becomes to be present and to help and give to others without building resentment or overwhelming myself. The more I learn about my own limits the easier it becomes to recognize and respect the ones of others and also be considerate and check in with other about their boundaries in case they don’t express them upfront. Not everyone feels equally safe to express those.

Take accountability for your actions and feelings

I can, I have and I will cause harm or hurt other people. I need to keep this in mind as I navigate through life in order to be able to see it, to take accountability and learn from it when it happens. Depending in the people whom I have hurt for that only makes it worse so I am committed to integrate self-accountability to my mindfulness practice and explore the way my words and actions can affect others in un-intended ways. From there, if I realize I have hurt someone I will face the fear and the guilt and look into why I did it and how it hurt the person. Without understanding the why and naming clearly the harm perpetrated it’s almost impossible to take accountability without centering myself or avoiding parts of it and in the end healing the unconscious need which prompted the hurtful action.

“Accountability is about making a commitment to the people in our lives to work through destructive behaviors, toward healthier, more egalitarian relationships. Accountability is about the willingness to receive input from and be responsive to the people around us, prioritizing their needs, safety, and emotional health in our actions.” ― Crimethinc

Grow a practice of gratitude

An always present source of happiness comes from noticing and appreciating what’s already there. By training my mind to appreciate the moments I experience, the people I love, the things I have, and the things I create and noting it down every night it progressively made it easier to walk through every day noticing and appreciating the smallest things and feeling grateful for them. It also allowed me to accept parts of myself that were harder to reconcile with and notice my own growth in the things I do but as importantly in the things I don’t do anymore.

Develop an awareness of privilege and power dynamics

We live in an unfair society, and we’re born with different kinds of privilege - gender, age, race, class, etc - and those create power imbalances that affect most of our interactions with other people. Learning to identify those and name them is useful to counter-balance societal inequalities. The more I develop awareness of those the more I can avoid perpetuating abusive and hurtful patterns that I inherited the people and culture around which I grew. I can also more easily step aside and leave room for more marginalized voices who are often silenced by people and institutions in power.

Realize that insecurities comes from ignorance of self

Sometimes I react strongly when people point out things in myself that I’m either not aware of or haven’t accepted yet. This defensiveness is a sign of unexplored parts in myself. I learned that the more I look inside and tend to these hidden parts and heal the guilt or shame that is often attached to them the more these insecurities take a more background role and have less and less unconscious control over how I interact with others, how I perceive myself and what I’m capable of.

“It’s harder to be yourself than it is to be anybody else”
- Andrew Jackson Jihad

Challenge assumptions and false narratives about yourself

In the process of tending to my insecurities I had to question parts of my own constructed identify that were conflicting with my true values, feelings and commitments. This is scary and letting go of them can feel like losing myself, but the more I challenge those versions of me that aren’t compatible with who I really am the more I realize that I don’t need a large set of descriptors and immutable traits to have a strong sense of identity. The more I let go of the ones that don’t serve me anymore the more it creates space to grow.

Focus on commitments, dreams and goals instead of tasks

I have a natural tendency to rationalize, organize and do, which serves me in a lot of ways but can also become a trap. Creating expectations for myself to accomplish a detailed series of tasks in a day to take care of my mind and body is overwhelming and easy to procrastinate away from. It can also feel like work or chores really quickly. Instead I found that writing down and memorizing simple commitments is a lot lighter on the mind, leaves less room for self-disappointment and criticism and allow me to come up with ways that are more healthy to apply these commitments.

Readings

A piece on taking accountability
Settlers - white history from a non-white perspective
An intro to breathwork

Now

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

I’ve replaced my now page with a journal, read it here

See what I’m currently reading , watching , playing .

Desktop altar

Personal work

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 EST

A selection of works from own multi-disciplinary artistic practice, exploring the creation of contemporary folklore through a symbolist and animist lens.

End of years

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

This page is a collections of notes, ramblings and highlights for each year I pass through. I’m starting this at the end of 2021 with the intention of adding to it yearly. A good companion to this is the Timeline which retraces my projects and noteschronologically.

Highlights of 2025

Rescued 3 baby squirrels who lost their mother, nursed them for a while and then passed them on to other people for them to be released in the wild
Got married with Hex and got matching ogham tattoos for it
Did lights for my first trance show/rave at SAT and met some of my favorite artists in the process
Filmed our most elaborate music video yet for Suffer Puppet with Voidxwitch, which included a custom-built set, VFX, dolly shots, a custom video game, and much more
Finished putting together a circuit bent analog video glitcher and used it to make a music video
Finished the map of the North for Pious Rot
Started putting together a starter kit and adventure for Pious Rot
Wrote and recorded 8 edm-adjacent songs for my upcoming album under the name L1Zb3th, some of which will have vocals by me.
Illustrated by first book cover
Kept challenging myself with tattooing, doing some bigger pieces, lettering and precising my style
Designed and illustrated the full physical release of the new Aura Merlin album “Moon Gates”, which was the first vinyl package I did full design and illustration for
Re-kindled my love for 3d modelling and got my blender skills up to date
Dyed some of my hair green, started electrolysis

my favorite books of the year

Redwall by Brian Jacques
Something in the woods loves you by Jarod K. Anderson
Mausritter by Isaac Williams

my favorite movies (and series) of the year

Sinners (2025)
The Substance (2024)
Exhuma (2024)
Andor series (2022)
Fallen Angels (1995)
Alien Earth series (2025)

my top 10 songs of the year

Harvest sky (ft. underscores) - Oklou
Poplife - Umru & Underscores
Clipped Wings - Isla Den
Battery Death - Ninajirachi
She Went Astray - Brìghde Chaimbeul
Twilight Zone (Extended Mix) - Aaron Hibell
Where’s my Head At - Basement Jaxx & 100 gecs
Azimuth (Edit) - Danny L Harle & CAroline Polachek
Bientôt - Von Bikräv & Sidsid
Rocky Road to Dublin - Jack O' Connel, Brian Dunphy, & Darren Holden

Highlights of 2024

Filmed and edited a crazy music video in the backwoods of Ontario over five intense nights of shooting
Released my first album as Ritual Dust , which was also the first time I finish and release solo music that I’m really proud of.
Played a remixed version of Beast of the Black Hill on stage with Voidxwitch and Aliceffekt
Got a large back tattoo of my solar symbol
Deepened my practice of self-compassion
Challenged myself to draw characters and scenes, completing one complex illustration per month

my favorite books of the year

the Earthsea cycle by Ursula Le Guin
Listen to the Land Speak by Manchàn Magan

my favorite movies of the year

Human Traffic (1999)
Kneecap (2024)
The Boy And The Heron (2023)
Alien Romulus (2024)
Furiosa (2024)

my top 10 songs of the year

Better Way To Live (ft. Grian Chatten) - Kneecap
Interlocked - Danny L. Harle ft. DJ Mayhem
Yxguden (ft. Bladee) - Evian Christ
<3 Korean Girls (ft. Mega Mongoliad) - Alice Longyu Gao
gec 2 Ü (Danny L Harle)
Beast Of The Black Hill (Aliceffekt Remix) - Voidxwitch
FML - Zheani
Old Hag You Have Killed Me - The Bothy Band
Mineral Hool - Dj Ibon & Vilde Tuv
Satan Was A Baby Boomer - Brutalismus 3000

Highlights of 2023

Went on a pilgrimage to Ireland with my partner Hex and visited many sacred sites, stayed in old stone cottages and connected deeply to the land.
Made a series of pixel art illustrations for a small game accompanying an album by my friend Lyndsie.
Wrote a song for a compilation in support of palestinian liberation.
Filmed a cowboy/rave-themed music video for VOIDXWITCH
Assisted my partner through their recovery after top surgery.

Highlights of 2022

Started a Patreon with a monthly print club
Started tattooing for real
Made a second edition of my collaborative zine Fantômes
Drew a series of black metal lettering pieces for Black Metal December

Highlights of 2021

Moved in with my partner Hex
Published the first issue of Fantômes zine with contributions from a lot of great folks
Travelled to Saguenay with some friends
Lost my job and found a way better one
Started painting again
started working on a small dungeon crawler game with Devine
started working on a new album for Blood and Dust
Made a card game for Treecrets
Made black metal logos for 6 bands/projects
made a whole lot more black metal logos for fun
Got my first big illustration contract which made me consider a path to live from my art
Learned a lot more about myself
Joined the Stone Club
Stayed inside a whole bunch

Highlights of 2020

Found my drawing style
Released the first Blood and Dust album
Turned this website into a more personal website
Joined Merveilles again on Mastodon this time

Fantasy art

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 EST

Fantastical worlds, dark dungeons, eldritch creatures and magical weapons. I take great pleasure into designing and illustrating characters, scenes and objects that bring fantasy and sci-fi worlds to life.

Ogham

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 00:00:00 EST

Ogham stone in a grassy field

Ogham is more recent than the old norse and germanic runes, it was developed during the middle ages to write the archaic Irish language and used mostly during the 4th and the 6th century CE.

Origins and history
Ogham alphabet
Links and references

Origins and history

The first archeological evidence of the use of ogham is around 300AD. Ogham stones are found in Ireland (mostly in the south), in Scotland and on the Isle of Man.

Ogham stones were used as territorial markers, memorials, and indicators of land ownership. The alphabet seving to mark the name of individuals and their parentage or tribal connection, it was also sometimes used to mark connection to mythical being such as the god Lugh.

It was also used for short message exchanges carved on wood or metal objects.

Ogham alphabet

The ogham alphabet known as Beith-Luis-Nin is divided in 4 main groups or Aicme. The first one made of bars coming out of the right side of the central line, the second one made of bars coming out of the left hand side, the third one made of bars crossing the central line at an angle and the fourth and last one of bars crossing the central line perpendicular.

I’ve made a table with all the ogham characters in relation to the irish language which you can use for reference.

When used vertically, it is read from bottom to top, like a tree is climbed. When used horizontally it is read from left to right.

When writing using ogham it is recommended to translate to irish first, then transliterate with the ogham alphabet. When I fist got into it as a kid i would use it to write in french and english directly but as I learned more about the history of Ireland and especially it’s relationship with England it just feels offensive to write in english with this writing system.

Links and references

The ghost is part of the earth now

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 00:00:00 EST

I no more feel like a ghost, i feel like the earth, the soil with it’s deep and complex network of roots and mycelium, with a whole ecosystem of bugs and living things crawling around. I can feel the cover of dead leaves and rotting fruit accumulated on top of me, not hindering my feelings but comforting like a blanket, protecting the bulbs and the nuts that fell on the ground at the turn of the seasons, allowing them to slowly get ready to bloom in the spring, feeding on this bed of decomposing remnants from the past. My body and my mind are my landscape now, a familiar place to roam and explore, with new things to notice during every walk. I accept and embrace the decay the rot and the mold slowly covering and transforming what is dead in my land. It is as important as the blossoming and growth of new and exciting forms of life. We feed and live amongst dying things.

And in that landscape is an old cemetery, complete with wrought iron gates, crumbling monuments and shadowy crypts. The main difference now is that i don’t haunt these parts as an immaterial being but became the very land and trees and wind that is the cemetery. The other ghosts living in the cemetery are part of me too, i can get to know them in a different way now. And deep inside this land that is myself lies many many layers of sediment, trees, plants and animals that died ages ago and were slowly covered by a new bed of rotting matter, compressed by the weight of time, some forgotten, some remembered but all contributing to the shape and composition of the top soil. Like the buried ruins of ancient temples affecting the growth of the crops growing over them centuries later.

Watching

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 00:00:00 EST

Still from the opening sequence of the wicker man

This is my movie watchlist, I keep it yearly and highlight the movies that really stayed with me.

“I don’t know why people expect art to make sense when they accept that life doesn’t make sense”
- David Lynch

2023: We went through a phase of 2000s horror movies and watched all of the Blair Witch movies, really enjoying going through all the seasons of Buffy and saw a couple of great new movies.

2022: Got a better pace of watching movies in 2022, went through an aliens and predator phase and was pleased to see all the good new movies that came out.

2021: I watched quite a bit of folk-horror movies in 2021 and the best documentary on the genre Ive seen so far, 2 movies Starring Nicholas Cage, some great TV movie adaptations of M.R. James ghost stories, my favourites are highlighted in the list below.

Reading

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 00:00:00 EST

The book of english magic, with some artifacts

This is my reading list, it contains the books, zines and long form articles I’ve read in the past (organized by year) or that I intend to read in the near future.

“He saw the Expriest stumbling across the bones and holding aloft a cross he’d fashioned out of the shins of a ram and he’d lashed them together with strips of hide and he was holding the thing before him like some mad dowser in the bleak of desert and calling out in a tongue both alien and extinct” – Cormac McCarthy in Blood Meridian

Druidism

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

Hand holding small boline

History
Celebrations
Links

History of druidism

Very few sources concerning the druids of the Iron age subsists to this day, most of the being accounts from Greek, Roman and christian sources. It can be interpreted from these texts that the modern image of the druid as a priestly figure presiding over sacrifices, rituals and the conservation and sharing of wisdom was mostly found amongst the druids of Gaul. Other druids existed in other Celtic societies during that period but often these sources generalize the traditions and culture of the Celts as a monolithic thing, which it very much wasn’t.

Later on, the early christian monks of the 4th to 6th century, the historians and antiquarians of the British Isles during the 19th century and even later on the New Age groups of the 50’s and 60’s developed and crafted a fantastical image and history surrounding the druids, often in order to either defend christianity in opposition to heathen practices, create a glorious historical past to justify a national identity or as a way to combat the uncertainty brought on by the drastic post-war changes in our ways of life.

My approach of druidism isn’t one that pretends to be the continuation of an ancestral tradition tied to a specific culture or country. It is purely a modern creation that borrows from older but still relatively recent sources and also integrates a lot of my own imagination, intuition and habits. Naming it druidism is a bit of a folly in itself (like the druid’s temple in Yorkshire, built in the 19th century) but it feels right to me and taken in it’s context I think leaves enough room for the historical truth of the iron age druids to coexist with the modern invention that is neo-druidry.

the 19th century druid's temple in Yorkshire

My practice

Druidism and magic for me are closely tied to the cycles of sprouting, growth, death and decay present in nature and how it reflects our own internal psychological cycles while going through moments of painful growth and also to societal cycles of progress and deep change. The more I become aware of my own cycles, the more i can live in a deliberate way with them and contribute more to societal growth. So in that sense druidry for me is more a frame of mind, a series of habits and personal traditions around nature and my relationship with it.

The three yearnings of druids according to the order of bards ovates and druids are also in alignment with how I perceive the practice:

To be fully creative in our lives,
to commune deeply with the world of Nature,
and to gain access to a source of profound wisdom

“If we wish to live in authentic cooperation with the planet and its host of spirits, de-centering our narratives and putting our ear to the ground to listen for instruction is the first step.”
– Melissa Madara

coligny calendar used to reconstruct the celtic calendar

Celebrations and important calendar dates

Developing an awareness of the cycles of the seasons and what they bring is a good guide for our own activities and it’s something that’s easy to fall out of synch with when living in the city. Here are the most common celebrations observed my modern druids and pagans.

Samhuinn/Samhain

The Druid festival of the Ancestors – a time for honouring those who have died, celebrated around 1st November in the Northern Hemisphere, 1st May in the Southern. It is that start of the Celtic year, where the wheel starts.

Yule (winter solstice)

Held on the shortest day of the year, a celebration of light and warmth in a time of darkness. It is celebrated on December 20th in the Northern Hemisphere.

Imbolc/Oimelc

The Druid festival of the Goddess, particularly Brighid, celebrated around 1st February in the Northern Hemisphere, 1st August in the Southern. It symbolizes the promise of the return of spring.

Ostara (spring equinox)

Marks the beginning of spring and all things coming back to life. It is celebrated on March 19th in the Northern Hemisphere.

Beltane/Bealteinne

The Druid festival dedicated to celebrating Spring and the union of God and Goddess. Meaning ‘The Good Fire’, Beltane celebrations usually include leaping over a bonfire. Celebrated around 1st May in the Northern Hemisphere, 1st October in the Southern.

Litha (summer solstice)

Celebrated on the longest day of the year, it marks the start of summer, it is a time of blessings for the crops and of unions and engagements. It is celebrated on June 19th in the Northern Hemisphere.

Lughnasadh/Lammas

The Druid festival of the Harvest, celebrated around 1st August in the Northern Hemisphere, 1st February in the Southern.

Mabon (autum equinox)

The arrival of autumn and the reaping of the harvest. It is a fest of abondance and preparation for the darker times to come. It is celebrated on Sept 21th in the Northern Hemisphere.

Links and resources

Music visuals

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 EST

I am currently available for hire for drawing band logos, illustrating album covers, desgining physical releases, making merch and just putting conjuring images from your music.

Playing

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 00:00:00 EST

This is the list of games I played or want to play, I keep it yearly and highlight the games that really stayed with me.

Bookmarks

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 18 Dec 2021 00:00:00 EST

My bookmarks of interesting / useful / beautiful websites. I’ve also included some links to my topic specific lists of resources at the end of this page. Most of the links on this page were first saved in my local notes on my computer then moved in one of those pages on here.

Castle ruins in Scotland, a reminder that nothing last forever, especially links

Websites
Publications
Bookstores
Artists
Art
Tattoo
Tattoo Studios
Design
Politics
Spirituality
Food
Tech & craft
Synths
Music Tools
Events
Resources

Personal websites and wikis

Zines and publications

Blogs

Bookstores and publishers

Occult books

Others

Lovecraftiana & cosmic horror

Artists

Art

Tattoo artists

Amandine Anyr larbaz (Montréal)
Empousai (Montréal)
Matt Chaos (Montréal)
Meagan (Montréal)
Alixe Cooper (Montréal)
Jeremy (Sherbrooke)
Christopher Jade (Los Angeles)
Micah Ulrich (Detroit)
Leaf (Brooklyn)
Liev (Trinket keeper) (Portland)
Alexander Grim (Prague)
살보 (Seoul)
Placide Aventia (Aix-en-Provence)
Jacko (??)
Lipa (Warsaw)
Sasha (Warsaw)
Fabian Staniec (Poland)
Kajetan (Poznań)
Muk (Korea)
Voziakova Aleksandra (Saint-Petersburg)
Leny Tusfey (Cannes)
Maldenti (Berlin)
Mishla (England)
B.Ignorant (Leipzig)
L’hérétique (Strasbourg)
Knive (Belgium)
Side Tattooing (Lyon)
Hugo Barbier (Lyon)
Laura Nahna (Berlin)
Sofa Oblina (Berlin)
Michael Cooper (UK)
Alberto Santi (Italy)
Philip Burok (???)

Tattoo studios

Black Circle Mtl (Montréal)
Tatouage Royal (Montréal)
Minuit Dix (Montréal)
Désolé maman (Montréal)
Les chochottes (Montréal)
COOP Crève-coeur (Montréal)
Studio l’arrosoir (Montréal)
War Tooth (Toronto)
Black Veil (Salem)
Black Circle Lyon (Lyon)
People’s Temple Tattoo (Lyon)

Comics

Mouse Guard

Miniatures and dioramas

Table-top Role playing

Historical replicas

Old craft workshop

Design, fonts

Politics

An anarchist FAQ

spirituality

Internet and code

Food and recipe blogs

Tech, low-tech, no-tech and craft

Music labels and distros

Synths and module-makers

Music tools and plugins

Klanghelm

events

Expozine

Resource and link pages

On being trans

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

I am powerful, fierce, resourceful, creative, weird, caring. I am so much more and also none of that, in my own way. I take some time here to write about womxnhood and encourage everyone to actively challenge how we perceive it. Let the womxn in your life expand your definition of it.

It’s been an incredible journey getting to know the trans womxn I am and coming to terms with how I want to live my life from this point forward. Identity is indeed a very politic thing as much as it is a personal thing and coming out as a trans womxn definitely affirmed my stances as much as my appearance. I stand with my sisters today and will fight for a more kind, inclusive and supportive society.

“Rejecting the idea of a natural basis to sexual difference allows us to see that it is always susceptible to new interpretations. Like other systems of meaning, it is less like a cage, and more like a tool: it constrains but never completely determines what one can do with it.”
– Mary Joe Frug

Also don’t forget that the gender binary is fucked and that all queerness is traumatized in a cis-hetero-patriarchal society.

“But by saying that trans people have an acknowledged past, trans people can better imagine a future.”
– M. W. Bychowski and Dorothy Kim in Visions of Medieval Trans Feminism

Body horror as a metaphor for dysphoria

The unnatural and graphic transformation, degeneration, or destruction of the body: the themes and images of body horror evoke visceral fear and repulsion, causing us to ask questions. What does it feel like to lose your identity? To become alien to the people around you? To feel severed from your own body? During the process of coming out as trans and transitioning, I’ve been faced with these questions often, and I wanted to step out for trans awareness week and express my support to all trans and non-binary folks. Many of us live with internalized horror and darkness—which too-often originates from outside forces that violently impose “normativity”—but compassion, both for ourselves and each other, is an act of resistance, as well as an irrefutable answer to those existential questions.

Go check the series of photos I did with Hex exploring this idea too and the song we composed on it.

On changing my name and symbol

A bit more than a year after changing my name to Lizbeth, I replaced my online pseudonym and sigil for something that better expresses the tools and philosophies that are resonating with me in the present moment. Ritual Dust is the new name I’ll be presenting as online. “Ritual” refers to my process of making, which is something I’ve started exploring using an alchemical approach; this approach has now been allowed to deepen, incorporating a more intuitive side to my practice—one that’s informed by feelings, emotions, and honesty. I include with it “dust” because of the dust that’s settling now as the sheet I’ve been wearing, hiding myself like a metaphorical ghost, finally falls off. Accumulating slowly, dust to me is a testament to the passage of time, an ode to patience and impermanence, but also a reminder of the beauty of a single mote of dust floating in a sunbeam—a quiet kind of beauty that I’m discovering in more and more places every day.

“I am haunted. All trans women are. Behind me stretches a line of ghosts-trans women, killed before their time by the hatred of a society that does not know how to love us. Perhaps this is why trans women’s words are so powerful, in those rare moments when we are allowed to speak: we speak with the voices of those who have come before.”
- Kai cheng Thom

Additional reading and resources

Here’s a good article on trans-inclusive design
The website of Trans care BC
The procedure to change your legal name and gender in Qc Trans and non-binary identities in ancient Mesopotamia

Hardware

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 13 Jun 2021 00:00:00 EST

A summary of the hardware tools I use for creating images, sounds and websites. Also what I use to enjoy different types of media.

Computing
Audio
Photo and video

Computing

Apple Macbook Pro 13" mid-2014 with 1TB OWC SSD drive
Raspberry Pi 4B+ (I plan to turn it into a resilient computer )
Keychron K6 with green keys

Audio

Synths

Korg Monotron
MakeNoise Strega
Modular synth

Controllers

Arturia keystep
Arturia beatstep
Korg SQ-64

Recorders

Tascam DR-40 (Really rugged and the battery lasts a long time, sadly cannot work as an audio interface and the interface isn’t really intuitive)

Audio players

Vintage Technics cassette deck
Audio Technica record player

Headphones

Steelseries headphones (got those from work)

Photo and video

I have often bought photo and video gear for specific projects or to explore new ways of making images. A lot of my choices were informed by my budget at the time too, there’s always a better tool but finding the one you can afford that you can learn to use in the most creative way is more important at the end of the day I think.

Photo camera

Sony A6300
Smallrig cage
Cheap Sony to Canon mount adapter

Video camera

Blackmagic cinema camera 2.5k
Blackmagic HDMI to SDI converter
Cinemartin 7" monitor
Manual follow-focus

Lenses

Canon EFS 24mm f2.8 with HOYA filter for protection
Rokinon 10mm f2.8

Tripods

Photopro X-4CN carbon fiber tripod
Davis & Stanford video tripod on wheels

Software

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 00:00:00 EST

Visual tools
Audio tools
Coding tools
Utilities
Links

Software tools for me are mostly a mean to an end, although I do enjoy building them if I have a specific problem and nothing is available that I find simple and efficient enough for the task. I’m currently migrating away from proprietary tools towards open source tools compatible with a wider range of OSes and that could run on my resilient computer . If you ever know of good tools that could replace some of the ones I’m using right now feel free to let me know!

Visual tools

Darktable for raw file editing
Krita for photo editing & digital painting
Noodle for low-resolution digital painting
Nasu for making pixel art and game tiles
Inkscape for vector
Blender for video editing and compositing
DaVinci Resolve © for video editing and color grading
Adobe InDesign ($) © for book layout (looking for an alternative)

Audio tools

Ableton Live ($) © as main DAW
Audacity for some simple audio file manipulation

Coding tools

Atom for code editing
Hugo for static site building

Utilities

Left for notes and todo lists
Google calendar for time management (looking for an alternative)
Working on my own tool for budgeting
Tagr for mp3 file tagging

Resources and links

Tapes

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 20 Jun 2021 00:00:00 EST

Just listing all the tapes from my collection here

Dark ambient
Synth music
Metal
Dungeon synth
Folk

Dark ambient

The search for the sulphurous well, Tommy Creep
Rites of blood and dust, Blood and dust
Sun of serpent, moone of cipher, Them Teeth
Auditory witchcraft, Them Teeth
Alkemisten & vansinnet, Them Teeth
Come, deathless, Surachai
Hinterpest, Mumbles

Synth music

Sortilèges, Potochkine
Potochkine, Potochkine
The devil rides out, Dream division
Surlendemain acides, Autmelodi
Careful, Boy Harsher
Glider 10 reworks, The Sight below
???, Cut Unconscious
The horizon kisses you until there’s nothing left, Lyndsie Alguire
???, Cosmic highness
a passage in time, Dead can dance

Metal

Henbane, Culte des ghoules
Herbal noise, Hadewijch
Thee opener of the way, Primitive knot
Postum, Lord Summerisle
No dawn for men, Feminazgul
Interrupt request, C:>

Dungeon synth

I, Fief
II, Fief
III, Fief
IIII, Fief
Bohollow, Autumn
A spectral mist on hallows eve, Witch Haunt
Op under fjeldet toner en lur, Neverlur
Duskhymns, Cimitir
Assorted mushrooms of new england, Mycologia
The song of a long forgotten ghost, Mortiis
Magical atavism, Book of skelos

Folk

Within, Geist and the sacred ensemble
Dig in sessions: III, Geist and the sacred ensemble

Talks

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

Here are the keynote presentations of the talks I have made in the past at design events

This website

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 00:00:00 EST

The why

This website is part portfolio , part digital garden and part recipe blog . It is where I collect and expand upon my thoughts and discoveries, and where I showcase what I create, craft and conjure.

See the whole structure in the Tree .

Explore projects over time in the Timeline .

Fonts

When selecting fonts for this website, I was looking to combine my love for 70’s psychedelia and gothic blackletter while keeping everything mostly legible and accessible.

Fonts used on this website:

Basteleur for the larger titles
Cooper Std is used for the second level of titles
Distro is used for the third level of titles
Wrenema is used for body text
Gaeilge is used for irish text

If you’re into cool fonts look up this directory of open source fonts by womxn , this crazy foundry making free fonts , this directory of free to use and free to modify fonts and the download foundry making really experimental stuff. Last thing, here’s a cool site with all the unicode characters handy .

Color theme

This website changes color theme every season. For doing so I’m using a theming system based on the one built by Devine Lu Linvega in their older JS apps, see the code and find other themes here . It uses an svg file to store the color values. By default, the first time you load the website it will apply this season’s theme, but you can also change it by dragging and dropping a theme svg file onto it. Once you do so, it will save your preferred theme in local storage so you’ll see it when you visit again. Also note that these themes are compatible with the older hundred rabbits apps like Left , Orca or Dotgrid feel free to use them for that too!

Here are the themes I’ve made so far

Spring

Summer

Fall

Camo

Winter

Fall Redux

Fall 2024

Winter 2024

Images

By default it loads low resolution dithered images (generated with Ditherit.com ) to reduce the loading time and the bandwidth needed to view the website. A toggle on the top right allows to switch to high resolution images. This feature was based upon Nate Steiner’s imageswap .

Technology

This website is basically a collection of html files in folders, generated by Hugo . It does not require javascript to run. The files are hosted on DigitalOcean and the domain on Gandi .

If you’re interested in better markup and more accessible websites, go take a look at this little guide:
Html tips by Thomasorus

“Technologies aren’t created in isolation. They are imprinted with the ghosts of their past.”
– Jeremy Keith in Resilient web design

TODO

[ ] write end of year review
[-] Add commissions banner on home page
[ ] add link to l1zb3th website

[-] use built in image processing tools to resize and dither images
[-] style cart and checkout better [ ] add nb items in cart button [ ] add some of the visuals i did for voidxwitch in music visuals

[ ] finish ktp props post
[ ] add voidxwitch cd in layouts
[ ] add voidxwitch zine in layouts

[ ] rewrite the description of the sections on the home page
[ ] fix previous themes for light/dark

DONE

[x] remove poducer secton on music page [x] fix style theme switch button [x] write end of year review
[x] note recipe pages should have standard layout
[x] add diablo song in music
[x] finish beast mask post
[x] add photos to journal entries
[x] fix timeline page in dark mode
[x] put max length on excerpts on notes page
[x] fix tag for pages without sections in timeline
[x] add toc on timeline with years
[x] add play section
[x] add movie count per year
[x] add a separate footer menu
[x] add a page for my print club inspired by https://palomakop.tv/zine-club/
[x] fix styling on large screens
[x] make winter theme
[x] find a way to have dark and light theme with one theme file
[x] add a play section with game stuff
[x] improve mobile menu and footer
[x] find a way to display side nav on mobile
[x] fix home page on mobile
[x] add a pious rot banner on the home page
[x] put earthsea illustration on home page banner
[x] keep images on product pages full color
[x] add prefers dark mode thingy in css
[x] remove redundant single templates
[x] fix about page not loading good sidebar and spacing missing
[x] move my monthly recaps from patreon to website
[x] update style mini table of contents
[x] adjust mobile version with new spacings and layouts
[x] make optimisations for dark themes (bg of low res images)
[x] make active menu link work
[x] add reset at beginnng of css to clear some basic padding and margins
[x] move ingredients to their own field in recipes
[x] keep image to the right column in recipe
[x] add images on artwork page
[x] try having images in grayscale and multiply by default, and become full color on hover on list pages
[x] add about pages to tags
[x] hide artwork from works sidebar
[x] switch playing page to media format
[x] Improve design tree page
[x] use baseline grid for vertical spacing
[x] use vw units for margins
[x] make little piano
[x] Add code blocks
[x] change music sidebar
[x] reverse order of media pages
[x] add details of media in to watch list on hover
[x] improve design tags page
[x] show recipe cards in tag list page
[x] Add commissions link to menu
[x] Fix dictionnary entries
[x] Change names of festivals in menu
[x] Add commissions page
[x] Redesign media pages
[x] move songs i produced in data folder
[x] Make new fall theme

Irish pagan blessing print

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

A pagan blessing inspired by old Irish ones, with an illustrated frame depicting elements of folklore and myths.

Size: 8" x 10", including borders
Medium: archival giclée art print
Edition: open edition, signed
Shipping: ships flat; plastic-free packaging

The Wizard of Earthsea print

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Art print of an original ink drawing, colored digitally depicting the departure of Ged from Roke at the pursuit of his shadow in the book The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin.

See more about the making of this print on this page .

Size: 8" x 10", including borders
Medium: archival giclée art print
Edition: open edition, signed
Shipping: ships flat; plastic-free packaging

Color out of Space print

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 00:00:00 EST

Art print of an original ink drawing inspired by the H.P. Lovecraft short story “Color out of Space”

Size: 8" x 10", including borders
Medium: archival giclée art print
Edition: open edition, signed
Shipping: ships flat; plastic-free packaging

Shadow over Innsmouth print

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 00:00:00 EST

Art print of an original ink drawing inspired by the H.P. Lovecraft short story “Shadow over Innsmouth”

Size: 8" x 10", including borders
Medium: archival giclée art print
Edition: open edition, signed
Shipping: ships flat; plastic-free packaging

Mountains of madness print

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 02 Sep 2024 00:00:00 EST

Art print of an original ink drawing inspired by the H.P. Lovecraft short story “At the Mountains of Madness”

Size: 8" x 10", including borders
Medium: archival giclée art print
Edition: open edition, signed
Shipping: ships flat; plastic-free packaging

Dunwich horror print

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 00:00:00 EST

Art print of an original ink drawing inspired by the H.P. Lovecraft short story “The Dunwich Horror”

Size: 8" x 10", including borders
Medium: archival giclée art print
Edition: open edition, signed
Shipping: ships flat; plastic-free packaging

Nightmare print

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 00:00:00 EST

Art print of an original ink drawing inspired by victorian depictions of sleep paralysis demons.

Size: 9" x 12", including borders
Medium: archival giclée art print
Edition: open edition, signed
Shipping: ships flat; plastic-free packaging

Winter Lantern print

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 EST

Art print of an original ink drawing inspired by the world of Bloodborne.

Size: 8" x 12", including borders
Medium: archival giclée art print
Edition: open edition, signed
Shipping: ships flat; plastic-free packaging

Amongst the burning ruins print

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 EST

A pagan blessing inspired by old Irish ones, with an illustrated frame depicting elements of folklore and myths.

Size: 8" x 8", including borders
Medium: archival giclée art print
Edition: open edition, signed
Shipping: ships flat; plastic-free packaging

Pious Rot North print

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 12 May 2024 00:00:00 EST

Art print of an original pencil drawing done for the cover of the Pious Rot fantasy setting northern region showing different types of characters and the tools of their craft.

Size: 8" x 10", including borders
Medium: archival giclée art print
Edition: open edition, signed
Shipping: ships flat; plastic-free packaging

Goblin shield print

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 02 May 2024 00:00:00 EST

Art print of an original pencil drawing of a goblin shield inspired by old-school warhammer miniatures.

Size: 8" x 8", borderless
Medium: archival giclée art print
Edition: open edition, signed
Shipping: ships flat; plastic-free packaging

Treecrets card game

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 EST

Meditative animist card game that allows you to converse with trees, to be played alone or with a friend in a quiet spot of forest.

Game designed by James Henderson with illustrations and layout by me.

Nb players: 1 or 2
Shipping: ships flat; plastic-free packaging

Cliffs original painting

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 17 May 2025 00:00:00 EST

Original acrylic painting on wood of shores with high rocky cliffs and a blue moon in the distance, done as album artwork.

Size: 8" x 8" x 1"
Medium: acrylic painting on wood panel
Edition: unique
Shipping: ships as parcel

Forest original painting

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 17 May 2025 00:00:00 EST

Original acrylic painting on wood of dense woods with a stream going through it, the background fading to fog, done as album artwork.

Size: 8" x 8" x 1"
Medium: acrylic painting on wood panel
Edition: unique
Shipping: ships as parcel

Mountain pass painting

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 17 May 2025 00:00:00 EST

Original acrylic painting on wood of a mountain pass with steep cliffs and some mountains in the distance, a branch crosses the path we’re on and storm clouds are gathering overhead, done as album artwork.

Size: 8" x 8" x 1"
Medium: acrylic painting on wood panel
Edition: unique
Shipping: ships as parcel

Mountains original painting

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 17 May 2025 00:00:00 EST

Original acrylic painting on wood of the snowy peak of a mountain lost in the clouds, done as album artwork.

Size: 8" x 8" x 1"
Medium: acrylic painting on wood panel
Edition: unique
Shipping: ships as parcel

Falcon

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 EST

Lady Passion Lady Pride

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 EST

Diablo Axe

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 00:00:00 EST

Woodcut Crow

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 00:00:00 EST

Chainmail filler

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 00:00:00 EST

Moon Gates illutrations

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 00:00:00 EST

Series of 9 pencil illustrations for the 9 songs of the “Moon Gates” album by Aura Merlin.

I also did a painting for he cover of this album which you can see here: Moon Gates Cover Art .

Wizard in a spiral stone staircase

Detail of the moondial with a glare and some tall coniferous trees

Metamorphosis of the wizard into an owl

The wizard resting in their study surrounded by books

A human shape with an open eye in their chest

An owl in a large orerry

A grimoire filled with occult text and symbols with a measuring device

An owl flying towards us over two carved standing stones

The wizard walking down a seaside path under an ornate arch

Within the House of Darkness Cover Art

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 00:00:00 EST

Album art for “Within the House of Darkness” by The Eternal Returns.

I really tapped into gothic horror classics for this one. I also included the pencils and the initial sketch to show how I develop my illustrations. It’s always crazy to see how much the thumbnail defines the final piece.

Final ink illustration

Completed pencils

Initial sketch

Pomegranate

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 00:00:00 EST

Moon Gates Album Cover

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:00:00 EST

Painting for the cover of the third Aura Merlin album, “Moon Gates” .

I also did some illustrations for this album which you can see here: Moon Gates Illustrations .

This painting reference 90’s fantasy art and new age visuals quite a bit, and expands upon the visual world that I’ve been building for Aura Merlin since her first album.

A blue-tinted painting of a garden with a moon dial in the center, a tower is visible in the distance and an owl is flying into the scene carrying a lantern, we see the scene through a circular stone gate

Top of the moondial with symbols around the edge

Beast of the Black Hill - Aliceffekt Remix Visualizer

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 00:00:00 EST

Credits and details

Director / Producer / Editor / Performer / Costumes

Hex Evans

Cinematographer / Co-producer / Lighting / Colorist / FX and glitch

Lizbeth Poirier

Additional Costumes

Le Grand Costumier

Shot on a modified infrared trail camera with a fisheye lens
Edited and color graded in DaVinci Resolve

Shot of the beast with their arms raised processed through a crt and an analog glitcher

Shot of the witch character in the woods with a blurry overlay effect

Shot of the witch character with a spiked collar animation overlay, processed through a crt and an analog glitcher

Nazgul Flail

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 00:00:00 EST

Ghoul Hand

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 00:00:00 EST

Pious Rot Starter Kit Illustrations

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Here are some of the illustrations I did for the starter kit and ready-to-play adventure we’re making for the Pious Rot TTRPG .

Full page illustration of a sheep taking shelter in an old hollowed out tree covered in carvings

Portraits for the pre-generated characters included with the adventure

Tree with a face and carved staves hanging from its branches

Large stone with divots holding smaller stones and large stave with humanoid design carved into it

Woodcut Flail

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Knee Thorns

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

About

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Ancient Forests of Ireland

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Cover illustration for a fictional book on the ancient forests of Ireland.

Ink illustration in a digital layout
Design by Lizbeth Poirier

At the Mountains of Madness

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Title Page illustration for a fictional edition of At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft.

Ink illustration
Design by Lizbeth Poirier

Burning Castle Illustration

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Cover illustration for a fictional book on the ancient forests of Ireland.

Design by Lizbeth Poirier

Eel Monster

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Fantasy weapon designs and illustrations for Pious Rot .

Pencil illustrations colorized digitally

Fantasy Battle Axe Design

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Cover illustration for a fictional book on the ancient forests of Ireland.

Design by Lizbeth Poirier

Fantômes Issue 2

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Wrap-around cover illustration for Fantômes a zine of ghost stories.

Ink illustration
Design by Lizbeth Poirier

Feral Child

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Cover illustration for a fictional novel.

Pencil illustration colorized digitally
Design by Lizbeth Poirier

Ghost Lantern

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Cover illustration for a fictional gothic horror book.

Ink illustration

Goblin Shield

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Fantasy weapon designs and illustrations for Pious Rot .

Pencil illustrations colorized digitally

Irish Pagan Border

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Border illustration with symbolic elements of Irish paganism and celtic knotwork.

Ink illustration, colored digitally

Medieval beekeepers

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Linocut illustration for a fictional fine edition hardcover book.

Ink illustration

Nightmare

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Illustration inspired by turn-of-the-century depiction of nightmares.

Ink illustration

Pious Rot - Weapons of the North

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Fantasy weapon designs and illustrations for Pious Rot .

Pencil illustrations colorized digitally

Rewilding Book

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Linocut illustration for a fictional fine edition hardcover book on rewilding.

Hand-carved linocut

Student Resistance

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Cover illustration for a fictional book on Student Resistance and campus organizing.

Pencil illustration, colored digitally
Design by Lizbeth Poirier

The Colour Out of Space

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Title Page illustration for a fictional edition of The Colour Out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft.

Ink illustration
Design by Lizbeth Poirier

The Shadow over Innsmouth

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Title Page illustration for a fictional edition of The Shadow over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft.

Ink illustration
Design by Lizbeth Poirier

The Wizard of Earthsea

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Illustrated end papers for a fictional edition of The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Ink illustration colored digitally

Town of Godrindell Illustration and map

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 EST

Cover illustration for a fictional book on the ancient forests of Ireland.

Design by Lizbeth Poirier

Witch Knot

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 00:00:00 EST

No kings poster

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 14 Jun 2025 00:00:00 EST

Pencil illustration done as an offering for no kings day.

May this day be a reminder to all that we will not tolerate any king, old or new, dictating and controlling the people, the land and all living things. Every day I see more people waking up, standing up and fighting back, from the streets of countless cities and towns on turtle island, aboard boats and convoys headed to Gaza, in the forests of my own province where the indigenous elders are shutting down illegal logging. Every little bit helps grind down the empire and its machines.

Pencil illustration on a green background with no kings repeated as a background motif. On top of that a small standing stone with an inverted crown with a downpointing triangle is carved. On the stone is a crow with its wings open and in from of the stone is a maga hat with a celtic sword stabbed through it. hanging from the guard of the sword is a string with tesla logos torn from cars that have been destroyed.

Flails

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 00:00:00 EST

This Wenche thikke

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:00:00 EST

North map for Pious Rot

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 20 May 2025 00:00:00 EST

The first of a series of maps that cover the main areas of Thiusland, the world of Pious Rot . This is the northern region, a mountainous, cold and ragged landscape dotted with small cities and villages along the coast of the great north sea.

The complete map of the North

Corner detail of the map of the North showing a great eel

Detail of the south east, around teredell and the darkwoods

Detail of the highlands of the east with their tall mountains and fjords

Compass with mo-koon face and directions in runes

Vampire Castle

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 03 May 2025 00:00:00 EST

Bowers ablaze

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 01 May 2025 00:00:00 EST

Ink illustration for the Versteckt EP “Bowers Ablaze”, depicting a garden in a ruined medieval castle slowly consumed by flames.

Illustration showing large arches made of small trees in the foreground with a ruined wall of a medieval castle in the back, flames are coming in from the right and a dead knight is lying in a door in the center of the wall.

Moon Gates cassette and vinyl

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 00:00:00 EST

Art direction and design for the physical release of the “Moon Gates” album by Aura Merlin.

The concept for this album revolved around the journey of a wizard through the lands and their magical transformation. The cover depicts the garden that sits at the base of the wizard’s tower with the moondial at its center.

The moondial is a recurring motif throughout the design, from the back of the booklet, to the illustration legend of the insert that comes with the vinyl.

In addition to the design, I also did the painting and the illustrations for this album.

Front of the tape

Back of the tape]

Inside of the J-card and cassette

Full inside of the J-card

Front of the vinyl sleeve

Back of the vinyl sleeve

Insert with illustrations

Vinyl with painted stickers

Detail of the vinyl stickers

Suffer Puppet Poster

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 00:00:00 EST

Movie poster for Voidxwitch’s music video Suffer Puppet

suffer puppet poster showing the puppet on a bed with arm attached to strings aganst a strong light and lots of haze

Suffer Puppet Video Game

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 00:00:00 EST

This game is still very early in development, lots will change and there is no release date yet.

Suffer Puppet started as a fictionnal game I made for the music video of the song with the same name by Voidxwitch. Our concept for the music video involved a character playing a PS1 game in which they would beat up predators and creepy dudes in a silent-hill inspired town and at some point, the protagonist of the game would come out of the TV to come in the real world.

But as I worked on the 3D scenes and characters I started to wonder how hard it would be to turn it into a real game instead of just some animated scenes. Turn out it’s quite a bit of work, but I was able to set the bases quickly enough to want to commit to making it a reality.

Suffer Puppet is inspired by old-school survival horror games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil, Souls games and games like What Remains of Edith Finch.

dirty motel room

in a foggy alleyway

In Suffer Puppet you will fight enemies, solve puzzles, explore a familiar yet unsettling world and slowly uncover memories in order to be able to get revenge and free yourself from those who controlled and abused you.

As I develop the game more I’ll update this page and share more in-depth devlogs on my patreon .

end of the road

the club bathrooms

Suffer Puppet Music Video

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 00:00:00 EST

Credits and details

Director / Producer / Editor/ Performer / Costumes

Hex Evans

Cinematographer / Co-producer / Editor / Colorist / VFX artist

Lizbeth Poirier

Gaffer / Grip

Sedge Hoffart

Set designer / Prop master / Game designer

Lizbeth Poirier

Best boy / On-set carpenter / On-set dresser

Tariq

Hair / Production Assistant

Sara (Sad) Drainville

Additional Costumes

Le Grand Costumier

Filmed at : Studio Usine

Shot on the Blackmagic cinema camera with the Rokinon 10mm and the DZOFilm 50-125mm
Edited and color graded in DaVinci Resolve

Hex sitting in the corner of a set that is made to ressemble a 90's basement looking creepy with fully white eyes, the frame gets blurry and distorted around the edges

Hex as the puppet sitting on an old beat up bed wearing a straightjacket and with their arms attached to strings coming from the ceiling

Suffer Puppet Lyric Video

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 00:00:00 EST

Credits and details

Director / Producer / Editor/ Performer / Costumes

Hex Evans

Cinematographer / Co-producer / Editor / Colorist / VFX artist

Lizbeth Poirier

Gaffer / Grip

Sedge Hoffart

Set designer / Prop master / Game designer

Lizbeth Poirier

Best boy / On-set carpenter / On-set dresser

Tariq

Hair / Production Assistant

Sara (Sad) Drainville

Additional Costumes

Le Grand Costumier

Watch the music video for this song

Filmed at : Studio Usine

Shot on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera 2.5k with the Rokinon 10mm lens
3D assets made in Blender
Video game made with Godot
Edited and color graded in DaVinci Resolve

Hex sitting on the ground playing suffer puppet on a PS1 and large CRT tv in a set that is made to ressemble a 90's basement

Suffer Puppet Visualizer

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 EST

Credits and details

Editor

Hex Evans

Editor / Colorist / Game Designer

Lizbeth Poirier

Watch the music video for this song

Shot on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera 2.5k with the Rokinon 10mm lens
3D assets made in Blender
Video game made with Godot
Edited and color graded in DaVinci Resolve

CRT TV surrounded with VHS cassettes, a PS1 controller and other trinkets, showing the start screen of the Suffer Puppet game

Skeleton key

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 00:00:00 EST

Verdant

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 01 Mar 2025 00:00:00 EST

Ink illustration for Hunter’s Dream single “Verdant”, depicting two medieval beekeepers tending to their beehives in a field, one of them being made from the remains of a king displayed as a scarecrow.

Illustration showing medieval beekepers, beehives, a field, a tree in the foreground and a cathedral in the distance. The main subject is the remains of a king displayed as a scarecrow with a beehive inside it.

Bitch on Bitch Music Video

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 EST

Credits and details

Director / Producer / Editor / Performer / Costumes

Hex Evans

Cinematographer / Co-producer / Editor / Colorist

Lizbeth Poirier

Lighting Technician / Production Assistant

Sedge Hoffart

Hair

Sara (Sad) Drainville

Watch the lyric video for this song

Filmed at the Earthbound wrestling ring , Montreal Qc.

Shot on the Blackmagic cinema camera with the Rokinon 10mm and the Canon EF 8-15mm fisheye.
Edited and color graded in DaVinci Resolve

In my restless dreams, I see that town

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 00:00:00 EST

Wandering the streets and parks of Westmount like it’s Silent Hill.

A foggy path with some tree and stone wall

Looking across a frozen pond with naked branches reaching overhead

A squirrel looking at us from a tree branch

A stout stone steeple with a layer of branches, fading in the fog

A tortuous branch and a distant group of trees

Tall leafless trees in the glowy fog

A rounded stone wall and some trees in the fog

A victorian greenhouse

A towering stone building with small turets

Empty streets fading into the distance

Houses behind a wall of trees

Single tortured tree disapearing in the fog

Faintly visible steel structure

Dark Gift

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 00:00:00 EST

Hand-drawn logo for the necromantic ttrpg game Dark Gift .

Dark Gift logo in white

Dark Gift logo in black with noise glow

Kickstarter banner

Bitch on Bitch Lyric Video

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 00:00:00 EST

Credits and details

Director / Producer / Editor / Performer / Costumes

Hex Evans

Cinematographer / Co-producer / Editor / Colorist

Lizbeth Poirier

Lighting Technician / Production Assistant

Sedge Hoffart

Hair

Sara (Sad) Drainville

Watch the music video for this song

Filmed at the Earthbound wrestling ring , Montreal Qc.

Shot on the Blackmagic cinema camera with the Rokinon 10mm and the CAnon EF 8-15mm fisheye.
Edited and color graded in DaVinci Resolve

Sad Goblin

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 25 Jan 2025 00:00:00 EST

The only goblin I found the time to draw for goblin week 2025.

Sad goblin looking longingly in the distance leaning on a stone wall with a bow and arrows

On book and zine layout

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 EST

Document setup

Document size

my standard for zines is:

Binding

Margins and bleed

Typography

columns
baseline grid

Creating templates

layers:

text
art
bg

use paragraph styles for most things

toggle style override highlighter to see all the text that doesn’t just have a paragrah style to clean up things

Links and Resources

Practical typography https://type-ed.com/resources/rag-right/2015/10/01/secret-setting-balanced-block-copy

Command line tools

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 EST

// move to a folder (change directory):
cd /Users/Liz/photos/
// list files in current folder:
ls

Image manipulation

These snipets use image magick to manipulate, convert and dither images

convert png to jpg

// single image:
magick image.jpg image.png
// batch process all images in a folder:
magick mogrify -format jpg *.png

resize and dither

// single image:
magick convert  image.jpg  -colorspace Gray  -ordered-dither o8x8  image-low.jpg
// batch process all images in a folder:

Resources

Image Magick

Irish Language

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 00:00:00 EST

I'm building up this page as I'm learning, it will change and grow quite a bit over time

Alphabet
Resources

Irish alphabet

The traditional Irish alphabet consists of 18 letters a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u. It doesn’t include the letters: j, k, q, v, w, x, y, z although these can be used for loanwords.

Vowels can be accented with a fada like so á, é, í, ó, ú to indicate a long vowel.

Consonnants can be accented with a dot bh, ch, dh, fh, gh, mh, ph, sh, th which means their sound is softened, the equivalent of following the letter with an h in the roman type.

letter	name	tree name	ogham
Aa	á	ailm (pine)	ᚐ
Bb	bé	beith (birch)	ᚁ
Cc	cé	coll (hazel)	ᚉ
Dd	dé	dair (oak)	ᚇ
Ee	é	eadhadh (poplar)	ᚓ
Ff	eif	fearn (alder)	ᚃ
Gg	gé	gort (ivy)	ᚌ
Hh	héis	uath (hawthorn)	ᚆ
Ii	í	iodhadh (yew)	ᚔ
Jj		jé	ᚔ
Kk		cá	ᚔ
Ll	eil	luis (rowan)	ᚂ
Mm	eim	muin (vine)	ᚋ
Nn	ein	nion (ash)	ᚅ
Oo	ó	onn (gorse)	ᚑ
Pp	pé	ifín (gooseberry or thorn) peith (dwarf alder)	ᚘ ᚚ
Qq	cú		ᚊ
Rr	ear	ruis (elder)	ᚏ
Ss	eas	sail (willow)	ᚄ
Tt	té	tinne (holly)	ᚈ
Uu	ú	úr (heather)	ᚒ
Vv	vé
Ww	wae
Xx	eacs
Yy	yé
Zz	zae		ᚎ

Resources

RNAG - Irish language radio
Bitesize irish youtube channel

Mordheim Game Board

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 28 Dec 2024 00:00:00 EST

I am currently building myself a small game board representing a ruined city with a system of sewers to play skirmish games like mordheim on, this page will grow a i make progress on it.

Pious Rot Fantasy Setting

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 28 Dec 2024 00:00:00 EST

Pious Rot is a system-agnostic world setting for fantasy roleplay steeped in folk traditions and the common folks strife against uncaring gods. It is a passion project that I share with my friend Sedge who does most of the writing for it.

My main intention in creating this world is inspring people to tell new and different stories. Stories that can entertain and bring joy to the players and storytellers but also stories that allow us to envision a different future, a future in which power-hungry and extractive powers that drain the life out of the land are being toppled. A future in which violence and combat are not the primary mode of problem-solving (even though they have a place). A future in which the is important roles in society for disabled, queer and neurodivergent folks, where old and young folks are treated with respect and seen as wisdom holders.

The world of Pious is called Thiusland, and the continent we ware currently exploring is divided in regions with no borders in between. We are currently working on the Northern region first, which will have it’s own booklet of lore, locations, people and more.

Occult Correspondence Print Club

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 26 Dec 2024 00:00:00 EST

I run a monthly print club on patreon through which you can send me a monthly donation of 45$ cad and in exchange receive an art print (sometimes accompanied by extra paraphernalia) from me every month in the mail. Every subscription helps me dedicate more time to my art.

How does it work?

Once you join the print club on patreon , you’ll get access to my posts on there. Every month I post some progress pictures of the upcoming print. At the end of the month or a bit later, once the print is finished, I print and ship them to all the people subscribed to my Occult Correspondence tier.

Prints are usually 8" x 10" in terms of dimensions, printed on heavy acid-free paper and packaged in a plastic-free protective sleeve with a backing board to make sure it gets safely to you.

The prints are shipped as letter mail without tracking. International shipping can be pretty slow so please be patient if you are not located in canada.

Subscribe to the print club

Can I buy a past print?

All the prints of the previous months are available to purchase on my shop . Sometimes the color tint will vary (like for my lovecraft inspired series) or the extra paraphernalia are not available, but all the print themselves are made available at full price once the corresponding month is passed.

Shop past prints

Past prints and paraphernalia

Pious Rot Northern Lands

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 00:00:00 EST

In collaboration with my friend Sedge, I’m illustrating a TTRPG fantasy setting called Pious Rot . It takes inspiration from bronze and iron age europe with plenty of fantastical elements, creatures and myths. I’m illustrating the different areas as we create them and the North is the first one we got to a complete enough level to share.

Most of the illustrations are drawn in graphite and some in ink, and colorized digitally.

large decrepit wood and iron gate with symbols carved on it

flail with wooden handle and head made out of a large knot of rope with spikes

small bag made out of strips of seaweed of alternating tints of green

adze with a blade made out of a green transluscent mineral

small scythe with a red serrated blade

ember burning in a glass jar held by a metal ring and ropes

small wooden chest with seashells, ropes, trinkets and a top handle

shield made out of the shell of a large crab with some crystal growing on it

two small white and brown birds in a nest covered with moss

small scene with a cauldron over a fire, mortar and pestle, some clay jars and an alambic on a wooden stool with a leather bag leaning against it

Pious Rot Northern Lands Booklet

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 00:00:00 EST

Together with my friend Sedge, I’ve been working on a fantasy setting called Pious Rot inspired by bronze and early iron age and the life of common folks pitted against the will of morally bankrupt gods.

The idea is to build a large part of the world in regions and that each region would have it’s own booklet of lore, items, weapons, characters and creatures allowing DMs to run campaigns and shorter games in the world of Pious Rot, and making as immersive and rich as possible.

In addition to making illustrations and contributing to the world-building, I’m also doing the design and layout of the booklets and having a great time at it.

Spread with an llustration on the left and the title page on the right, with a runic border around the pages

The booklets use a 2 or 3 columns layout, most pages have corner details and some pages have an additional frame filled with a runic poem. The document is typeset in Storybook, Hohenzollern, Romic Std and Minipax with everythng aligned to a baseline grid.

Spread for a town with an illustration and information on the left and a top view map on the right

Creature spread with an illustration, details about the creature and stats

Spread of potions with three columns and an illustration at the bottom of the second page

Notes

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 00:00:00 EST

A collection of notes from all the sections of this website

Desecrated Cathedral

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 00:00:00 EST

A Tribute to Diablo by SPECTRAL EPOCH RECORDS

Originally recorded for “A Tribute to Diablo”, a compilation put of music inspired by the first Diablo games, put together by some of my friends over on mastodon.

Art Prints

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 30 Nov 2024 00:00:00 EST

Games

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 30 Nov 2024 00:00:00 EST

Originals

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 30 Nov 2024 00:00:00 EST

The Wizard of Earthsea

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 30 Nov 2024 00:00:00 EST

Illustration inspired by the Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin, the first in a series of scenes from the Earthsea cycle. This moment is pivotal in the first book, Ged, then a young wizard has to leave Roke in pursuit of the shadow which he brought into the world from the world of the dead in a moment of arrogance.

At this point I’ve been doing these more elaborate ink scenes every month for a little while and wanted to try something new. I felt like this piece especially needed some subtle color to bring the world to life and also set the moody tone of the scene.

Ink and digital color illustration of a dark skinned wizard on a boat with an eye painted on the bow, sailing away from city of white towers

Detail showing the bow of the boat with the eye and the city in the background

“Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life’s sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.”

The Wizard of Earthsea print

Art print of an original colored illutration inspired by the Wizard of Earthsea bu Ursula K Le Guin

Buy a print

Finished inked illustration without the colors

Base pencil drawing

Music theory

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 00:00:00 EST

This page is still very much a work in process and some stuff is definitely wrong on there, use at your own risk.

Intervals
Scales
Keys
Modes
Chords
Rhythm
Composition and structure
Resources

This little keyboard will follow us along, hover the notes to see their names

Intervals

In western tonal music, the musical range of instruments is subdivided into 12 equal parts separated from each other by a half-step (which on a keyboard is the jump from one note to the next). Each of these representing a note in the chromatic scale. The difference between different of these notes are called intervals and are measured in half-steps (semitones) or whole steps (tones).

Scales, Keys and Modes

Scales

A scale is a sequence of notes following a certain pattern of half-steps and whole steps between the notes. Scales generally span a single octave since the pattern repeats with higher or lower octaves.

Scales can have different number of notes in them, the chromatic scale has 12, a heptatonic scale has 7, a hexatonic scale has 6, and a pentatonic scale has 5. More ancient forms of music used even smaller scales of 4 (tetratonic), 3 (tritonic) or 2 (ditonic) notes.

The most central and stable note in a scale is called the tonic, usually in a common scale the tonic will be the starting note, for example in the C major scale, the tonic would be C and often in song composed in that key, the first and last notes will be this tonic.

The chromatic scale is a scale with 12 notes, all eqally spaced by a half-step, one of it’s functions is to add color or embellish the major and minor scales.

C      C#     D      D#     E      F      F#     G      G#     A      A#     B
T
|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|

The chromatic scale

The major scale

I      II    III     IV     V      VI    VII
C      D      E      F      G      A      B
T
|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|

The C major scale

The minor scale, sometimes referred to as natural minor

I      II    III     IV     V      VI    VII
C      D      Ef     F      G      Af     Bf
T
|‑[ws]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[ws]‑|‑[ws]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[ws]‑|

The C minor scale

The harmonic minor scale is a variation of the minor scale in whch the degree VII has been raised by a half-step, allowing to create a dominant seventh chord from the ffth degree of the scale.

I      II    III     IV     V      VI    VII
C      D      D#      F     G      G#     B
T
|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|

The C harmonic minor scale

The melodic minor scale is a variation of the harmonic minor scale made to make melodies of ascending and descending consecutive notes more harmonious. When the melodic minor scale s played in an ascending pattern it’s degrees VI and VII are increased by a half-step and when played in a descending pattern it’s degrees VI and VII are decreased by a half-step.

------ ascending ------> <------ descending ------ I II III IV V VI VII | I II III IV V VI VII C D Ef F G A B | C D Ef F G Af Bf T | T |‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑| | |‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|‑[hs]‑|The C melodic minor scale

Ascending

Descending

Keys

A key is the combination of a tonic or central notes, a scale and a set of chord progressions. These are all the keys in the western classical musical tradition, which are the most commonly used in contemporary electronic music.

A major

A, B, C♯, D, E, F♯, G♯

joyful and pastoral

A minor

A, B, C, D, E, F, G

tender and plaintive

pop

edm

A# major (B♭ major)

B♭, C, D, E♭, F, G, A

magnificient and joyful

A# minor (B♭ minor)

B♭, C, D♭, E♭, F, G♭, A♭

obscure and terrible

B major

B, C♯, D♯, E, F♯, G♯, A♯

harsh and plaintive

B minor

B, C♯, D, E, F♯, G, A

solitary and melancholic

C major

C, D, E, F, G, A, B

gay and warlike

pop

C minor

C, D, E♭, F, G, A♭, B♭

obscure and sad

edm

C# major (D♭ major)

C♯, D♯, E♯, F♯, G♯, A♯, B♯

feeling?

C# minor (D♭ minor)

C♯, D♯, E, F♯, G♯, A, B

feeling?

D major

D, E, F♯, G, A, B, C♯

cruel and hard

D minor

D, E, F, G, A, B♭, C

serious and pious

D# major (E♭ major)

???

cruel and hard

D# minor (E♭ minor)

D♯, E♯, F♯, G♯, A♯, B, C♯

amorous and plaintive

E major

E, F♯, G♯, A, B, C♯, D♯

feeling?

E minor

E, F♯, G, A, B, C, D

feeling?

pop

F major

F, G, A, B♭, C, D, E

furious and quick-tempered

F minor

F, G, A♭, B♭, C, D♭, E♭

obscure and plaintive

F# major

F♯, G♯, A♯, B, C♯, D♯, E♯

feeling?

F# minor

F♯, G♯, A, B, C♯, D, E

feeling?

edm

G major

G, A, B, C, D, E, F♯

serious and magnificient

pop

G minor

G, A, B♭, C, D, E♭, F

serious and magnificient

edm

G# major (A♭ major)

G♯, A♯, B♯, C♯, D♯, E♯, Fdouble sharp, G♯

feeling?

G# minor (A♭ minor)

G♯, A♯, B, C♯, D♯, E, F♯

feeling?

Modes

Alternatively to a key, a mode represent different ways to use a specific scale to compose music. Scales can have different modes, which are the same sequence of notes as the note’s major scale but starting on a different note.

Ionian
starting note: I
tonality: major

Dorian
starting note: II
tonality: minor

Phrygian
starting note: III
tonality: minor

Lydian
starting note: IV
tonality: major

Mixolydian
starting note: V
tonality: major

Aeonian
starting note: VI
tonality: minor

Locrian
starting note: VII
tonality: half-diminished

Chords and progressions

For every note in a key, a chord can be made by adding a note a 3rd and a 5th above the root note. These chords can be referred by a number, corresponding to the position of the note in the key.

I II III IV V VI VII C - Dm - Em - F - G - Am - BdimChords of C major key and their number in roman numerals

A chord can be inverted by moving it’s 3rd or 5th up or down an octave, this is useful when makng chord progressions and wanting to keep the different chords in a similar pitch range.

chord progressions refer to a sequence of chords, usually from the same key, but that can also include chords and notes from outside the key. They can be referred to by their numbers, for example: I - II - VI - V.

Rhythm

Composition and structure

The Five Arrangement Elements

It’s helpful to break an arrangement down into these five main elements, bearing in mind that some instruments may do different jobs at different parts in a song, or even fulfill multiple roles at once:

Foundation: This is usually the rhythm section - drums providing the major pulse of the song that you would feel and count along to, and bass providing harmonic context for all other pitched instruments. The rest of the arrangement is built upon the foundation.
Pads: Long sustained sounds - often chords, notes, or atmospheric effects which are held to fill some of the background space.
Rhythm: Rhythm is any instrument that plays off of the Foundation’s pulse, adding movement and excitement to the track.
Lead: What you would sing along to and probably pay the most attention to when listening.
Fills: Fills occupy the spaces in between Lead lines to maintain interest when it’s natural for the main melody to take a break.

Tension and Release

Harmonic tension: The root chord of the key of your song is the most stable and resolved harmonic position. Tension is introduced as you move to other chords, as well as by accompanying them with some lead or bass notes which fit in less “expected” ways, i.e. notes that are outside of the current chord.
Rhythmic tension: A lot of fun and interest comes from accentuating “weaker” beats - mainly, ones that don’t fall on the quarter note “1 2 3 4” that you would typically count along to most songs with. Think about rhythmic tension not only for typical “rhythm” parts like percussion, but also the rhythm of your main melody or the rhythm of the chord changes. As you’re working, consider how tension and release play out across every aspect of your song - the impression of the introduction, the quantization of notes, the length of a buildup, contrasts in volume or brightness…

Melody aspects

phrase - repetition of bunch of notes with same rythm but can change in pitch chords - multiple notes played together, often accompanying melody range - range of notes on scale applied to a melody higher notes towards the end keep the phrase length the same overall insérer des breaks dans un rythme de drums

Arpegios

Arpegios are a series of notes played in succession following a certain pattern. Arpegios are usually built using chord progressions. It is useful to start by just playing the chords in succession to get the right mood and the arpegiate them to create the rythmic part.

An interesting approach to using arpegios is starting by taking only one note per chord and then, as the song progresses, adding more notes, like unfolding the chords over time.

When using an arpegiator, in order to break the monotony of a constant arpegio, we can remove some notes from some chords, or change chords earlier or later than it normally would, changing how the pattern sounds and creating intersting variations.

Another fun thing i like to do in a DAW is when I have an arpegiated sequence that is boring, I turn it into mdi and add ornaments or notes in between the existing ones or remove some of the ones that were already there to change up the rythm.

One other way to add variation is varying the volume or character of some notes to accent them, like for example opening a filter more on some notes thans others. On a synth, this can also be done by using an LFO or a sample and hold to randomize this change.

Resources

Work with me

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 00:00:00 EST

Professional Commissions
Personal Commissions
Sliding scale
Contact

Professional commissions

I am happy to work with bands, artists, writers, publishers, event organizers and small businesses for projects of small size (like the artwork for an upcoming album) or larger size (multiple illustrations and layout for a publication).

I can create work suitable for editorial, publishing, merch, packaging and website projects and provide the appropriate digital files for printing if need be.

Note: All prices on this page are in CAD

Illustration

Small size (spot illustration)

Pencil

100$ (75$)

Ink

180$ (125$)

Painting

300$ (200$)

Medium size (half-page)

Pencil

180$ (125$)

Ink

375$ (250$)

Painting

525$ (350$)

Large size (full page or cover)

Pencil

600$ (400$)

Ink

825$ (550$)

Painting

975$ (650$)

Lettering

I have quite a bit of experience doing lettering work and logos for bands of a good range of genres but mostly black metal, doom, dungeon synth, noise and experimental music.

Hand-drawn symbol

180$ (125$)

Hand-drawn text logo

375$ (250$)

Hand-drawn text logo + symbol

525$ (350$)

Hand-drawn text logo + symbol + extra small illustrations

750$ (500$)

Design

Show flyer

150$ (100$)

Show poster

260$ (175$)

Cassette J-card

200$ (125$)

CD sleeve

200$ (125$)

I am also open to work on other design projects like the layout of small books, zines and other publications, the conception and design of vinyl jackets and booklets and other more complex projects that can vary greatly in terms of time and price, reach out to discuss the details of these with me.

Personal commissions

If you want a DnD character illustrated, a stylized portrait made of you or someone you care about, or if you want to offer a drawing as a gift to someone (or yourself). I prefer looser themes and ideas leaving room for me to interpret them in my style.

Illustration

Character

Pencil

75$ (50$)

Ink

115$ (75$)

Drawn on 4" x 6" paper

Portrait

Pencil

115$ (75$)

Ink

200$ (125$)

Drawn on 8" x 10" paper

Scene

Pencil

260$ (175$)

Ink

400$ (275$)

Drawn on 8" x 10" paper

Sliding scale

I offer sliding scale pricing based on your financial situation, the two prices matching with the two levels of the sliding scale. Note that these prices are a guideline, depending on the specifics of the project, the planned usage, the amount of work and detail these can vary.

For every item on this page the price on the left is the full price and the price on the right in parentheses is the reduced price.

full price —> 100$ (50$) <— reduced price

Here are some guidelines to help you pick the price that is best based on your situation

Full price

I am confortable enough to meet all my basic needs
I may have some debt but it doesn't prevent me from meeting my basic needs
I have expandable income
I have access to financial savings

Reduced price

I frequently stress about meeting my basic needs
I have debt that sometimes prohibits me from meeting my basic needs
I have very limited expandable income
I have little or no savings

I also extend a genuine invitation for BIPOC clients & trans folks to request lower rates, in recogition of structural wealth inequality created by white supremacy & transphobia.

Contact me

You can write to me at lizbeth.poirier.m@gmail.com to discuss about your project or ask any question relating to my commissions.

November 2024

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:00:00 EST

Somehow this September saw me slowly emerging from the darker period I’ve been going through. I still crave the sunlight so much that I turn all the lights in the house on to compensate but life’s been pretty good. I’ve been drawing a lot, going back to working on Pious Rot and took part in the filming of a metal music video in a huge abandoned church. Website updates

As the end of the year approaches, I usually look back at the work I’ve done during the year, document it and spend some time on maintaining the tools I use most regularly. One of these is my personal website, which hold all my work and a ton of notes on a wide range of subjects that i use as reference.

In addition to adding some new drawings on there I’ve been working on a music theory page , that I use as a motivation to learn more about it and a future reference when I work on music. Doing the little interactive keyboard thingy was especially fun.

I’ve also updated my watching and reading pages to display the information better on there and allow me to rate the books and movies and leave notes if i feel like it.

Unreleased Voidxwitch stuff

Me and Hex have also been keeping ourselves busy working on their project, we filmed a music video and are putting the final touches on the next single release. My friend Devine (Aliceffekt) also invited Hex to perform some vocals live at their upcoming show for a remix of Beast of the Black Hill. I can’t share much more about all that for now, but soon i will be able to ;)

Reading:

The tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin
Epitath by Brendon Burton

Listening to:

Harvest Sky / Obvious by Oklou
alleswirdgut (Underworld Remix) by Brutalismus 3000
Diablo Tribute Tape by a collection of artists and friends

Watching:

The Creep Tapes, Patrick Brice, Mark Duplass - 2024

Color out of Space Illustration

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 00:00:00 EST

Illustration inspired by the story The Color out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft, the fourth in a series of Lovecraftian scenes. This story has always been a favorite of mine and one of the best depiction of an alien life-form that doesn’t follow any of the rules of life on earth. The story also evokes really well the effects of what could be some kind of radiation exposure as it mutates and decays everything surrounding the source of the color.

A fish human hybrid creature in front of a pier at low tide with a dilapidated village in the background

Color out of Space print

Art print of an original ink drawing inspired by the H.P. Lovecraft short story Color out of Space

Buy a print

Black Metal Knees

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 05 Oct 2024 00:00:00 EST

October 2024

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 EST

October was a month of rest for me, I’ve been dealing with quite a lot of health and personal stuff. I broke a finger and manage to cut the ligament inside of it and I’ve been battling the health system of Quebec to get it treated properly ever since (it’s in a much better place now). Apart from the color out of space print, the only other project i had the capacity to work on was the pre-production of the next music video we’re shooting in November for voidxwitch. That should be pretty fun and will be an opportunity for me to try shooting with a jib, pulling focus away from the camera and use an easy rig to make handheld shots easier. More details on that after the shoot ;)

I did manage to read, watch and listen to quite a bit of stuff, which has been a good change of things and has been inspiring me. Looking back at this month of October reminds me that creativity isn’t only about output but operates more like breathing, from time to time we have to take some art in to feed our creative selves.

Reading:

Portfolio by Mark Schultz
Radical Compassion by Tara Brach
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Color out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft

Listening to:

Dieu Protège Les Miens by Von Bikräv
Just like we never said goodbye by SOPHIE
harvest sky ft. underscores by Oklou
Tranceport by Paul Oakenfold
Mineral Hool by Dj Ibon & Vilde Tuv
The Spiritual Meat Grinder by Zheani

Watching:

An Cailín Ciúin, Colm Bairéad - 2022
Human Traffic, Justin Kerrigan - 1999
Hellboy: the crooked man, Brian Taylor - 2024
The Abyss, James Cameron - 1989
Dagon, Stuart Gordon - 2001
Cassandro, Roger Ross Williams - 2023

Shadow Over Innsmouth Illustration

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 00:00:00 EST

Illustration inspired by the story Shadow over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft, the third piece in a series of Lovecraftian scenes. I just love the shunned and decrepit town of Innsmouth with it’s strange and fishy inhabitants, secret cult to Dagon and ominous reef looming a short distance from the coast. For this illustration I depicted one of the inhabitants in the final stages of their transformation, now well beyond the rumoured “Innsmouth look”.

A fish human hybrid creature in front of a pier at low tide with a dilapidated village in the background

Shadow over Innsmouth print

Art print of an original ink drawing inspired by the H.P. Lovecraft short story Shadow over Innsmouth

Buy a print

Close-up photo of the print showing the details of the face of the deep one

Photo of a print of the illustration alongside a pamhplet and a postcard of the town, a bottle of whiskey and a hook

Close-up photo of the front of the postcard showing old buildings

Close-up photo of the back of the postcard with old style text

Close-up photo of the pamphlet from the Esoteric Order of Dagon announcing a new cycle ritual

Beast of the Black Hill Music Video

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 00:00:00 EST

Credits and details

Director / Producer / Editor / Performer / Costumes

Hex Evans

Cinematographer / Co-producer / Editor / Lighting / Colorist / Props

Lizbeth Poirier

Additional Costumes

Le Grand Costumier

Filmed on location at Screaming Heads and other locations

Shot on the Blackmagic cinema camera with the Rokinon 10mm lens
and a modified infrared trail camera
Edited and color graded in DaVinci Resolve

Shot of Hex in from of the stage with smoke

September 2024

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 EST

September has been pretty much a continuation of August in terms of how fucked and chaotic my life has been. A lot of things are up n the air and uncertain now, I’m trying to hold on to the rest to weather the storm. We’ve also been raising money for our cat Callie in order to be able to afford the care she needs as she approaches the end of her life.

Props for Shadow over Innsmouth

The man project I was able to find energy for this month was the monthly print and two props to accompany it. For the postcard I revisited the photos I took when I traveled to Massachussets and Rhode Island on a Lovecraft themed adventure many years ago and found a suitable picture to illustrate the derelict town of Innsmouth.

In order to recreate the look of a lot of postcards from the 1920’s that used a black and white photograph that was then colorized I desaturated the original photo and adjusted the contrast to get a good base and then recolorized it in photoshop with flat color shapes in slightly garish tones like they used to do.

The Esoteric Order of Dagon pamphlet was based on some research I did of old leaflets distributed by churches at the time, a good selection of fonts and the newsprint paper I’ve been using recently to add variation and a different feel to the paper I use for these props.

Reading:

Warlike, Howling, Pure by Aerïon

Listening to:

The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We by Mitski
Apokalypsys by PAX
False Lankum by Lankum

Went to see live:

Zheani

Watching:

The Neverending Story (1984)
Kneecap (2024)

Förgjorninger

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 00:00:00 EST

Design for the cassette release of Förgjorninger by Girl Circles

The J-card is a small poster folded which on one side shows a photo we took of the result of the recreation of an old heathen curse, and on the other side has the written instructions of the said curse, printed, cut up and scanned again like an old zine. The rest of the J-card is filled with film photographs taken by the artist to accompany the music.

Front of the cassette

Back of the cassette

Spine of the cassette

Cassette with pad print

Outside of J-card

Outside of J-card unfolded

Inside of the J-card

Detail of the inside of the J-card

J-card poster details

Time is but the drawing of a sword

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 00:00:00 EST

Design for the tape release of “Time is but the drawing of a sword”, by Lyndsie Alguire . The album is an epic journey through emotional landscapes and internal worlds.

The cover of the album is a beautiful painting by Naomi Nowak .

Front of the cassette

Back of the cassette

Spine of the cassette

Outside of the J-card

Inside of the J-card

A-side of tape

B-side of tape

Detail of tape pad print

August 2024

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 00:00:00 EST

The month of august have been especially chaotic and challenging for me with interpersonal and emotional troubles piling up. It feels like one of those moments in life when a bunch of shitting things happen at the same time and you have to focus your energy on solving them and getting through while hoping thing get better on the other end.

I’ve also been having a lot less tattoo clients this summer and practically no client work for illustration or logo work, which makes some things harder but also freed some mental space and time to figure out the hard stuff.

Beast of the Black Hill music video

After spending 5 nights in the woods shooting the music video in July, me and Hex at down at the editing table to put the whole thing together in August. Once again, like we did for the Kill the Pain music video, the storyboard and animatic were super helpful as a base to put down the structure and the main shots of the edit. And this time I went even further and planned some transitions using matching camera movements in the storyboard and the shotlist so when we would get to the editing we would have shots that match for the key transitions. Some of those ended up working and some didn’t but it was fun to try it out and it allowed me to see what was missing in the planning stage to really nail those.

The place where I think I’ve progressed the most is the color grading. In preparation for color grading this music video I went down a deep dive in getting to know Davinci Resolve better and understanding better how to work with raw log footage, color spaces and all that and I think it really paid off. I was able to get much more saturated and moody looks and also figured out how to use gradient masks to apply a color shift on just parts of the image, like the still above where the red tint accentuates the red lights that we put in the background.

I also got to do some composition for the first time, combining the two harbinger characters. For this we did a test prior to going out and shooting the actual music video to see if we could do it in a way that’s convincing, which allowed us to learn about the best way to light a scene like that to hide the seam in the middle.

And lastly I played quite a bit with the infrared trailcam footage in order to find a treatment that would retain it’s eerie quality but still blend well with the footage from the other camera. I ended up using two gradient adjustments, one darker at the top and and one lighter at the bottom and some tilt-shift blur that brings the focus in the middle of the shot and create an even more surreal feel.

Diablo tribute tape

This project that started almost as a joke on Mastodon with some friends became a whole thing pretty quickly, with 10 musicians pitching in one or more Diablo inspired song to create a whole compilation. I used the opportunity to craft a really intricate j-card for the cassette release with a full scene of Tristram on the inside and plenty of small illustration referencing the original game all around. These are currently in production and I’ll update all of you when they’re up for grabs :)

Reading:

Warlike, Howling, Pure by Aerïon

Listening to:

Revanchist by Evian Christ
Harlecore by Danny L. Harle
Time is but the Drawing of a Sword by Lyndsie Alguire
Positive Delusion by Clouds

Watching:

The Boy and the Heron (2023)
Alien: Romulus (2024)

Tristram

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 00:00:00 EST

Pencil drawing of a town in isometric view with a cathedral, a cemetery and a couple houses

Mask for the Beast of the Black Hill

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 00:00:00 EST

I made this mask out of leather for Voidxwitch, initially for a music video but also for live performances. This mask represents the character of the Beast of the Black Hill, a kind of werewolf summoned from the forest-covered hill from behind their childhood home.

The design of it was based on bdsm puppy masks, I made it fully adjustable for comfort and made the muzzle removable to make it easier to sing while wearing it. The final touch is all the piercings and studs that decorate it.

Watch the Beast of the Black Hill music video

leather mask with ears and snout on a manequin head

close-up of piercings on one of the ears

detail of how the straps come together on top of the head in an o-ring

detail of the snout and nose with studs for whiskers and a nose piercing

leather mask on manequin head without the snout on

Two maces

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 00:00:00 EST

Diablo tape illustrations

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 00:00:00 EST

Ink illustraton of the demon diablo from the game of the same name

Spot illustrations to accompany the demon face for the cassette j-card

Available flash designs

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 00:00:00 EST

Chainmail Fear the old blood Diablo-inspired Artefacts Grim Dark Dark fantasy Armory

Chainmail

Chainmail fillers made to fit different parts of the body.

Fear the old blood

Ongoing series of flashes inspired by the blood-soaked streets of Yarnham and their underlying eldritch horrors. All pieces 8" minimum except the ones labelled small.

9 (small)

10 (small)

11 (small)

12 (small - repeatable)

13 (small - repeatable)

14 (small - repeatable)

15 (small - repeatable)

16 (small - repeatable)

17 (small - repeatable)

Demon slaying and brimstone

Series of flashes inspired by old school Diablo games. All pieces 8" minimum except the ones labelled small.

1 (small)

2 (small)

4 (small)

Dark Fantasy

An ongoing series of pieces inspired by old-school DnD, dark fantasy and sword and sorcery. All pieces 6" minimum except the ones labelled small.

8 (small)

19 (small)

Wood, stones and artefacts

Series of designs inspired by nature, sacred stones and ancient artefacts.

Woodcuts

Flashes inspired by medieval bestiaries and folklore in a woodcut style, all pieces 6" minimum except the ones labelled small.

Grim Dark

Relics and weapons from a dark future

2 (small)

The Armory

The armory is an ongoing series of flash of imagined fantasy and historical weapons, from ornate ceremonial weapons to makeshift ones created from farm tools, magical swords and brutal weapons crafted by mysterious creatures of the woods. Minimum size for tattooing is 6", can be bigger too.

Book an appointment

Fill this form with your contact information and the flash you want. When you’ve completed it, hit the submit button and then send the email that it will generate for you. I will answer your request by email at the address you provide as soon as possible.

About you

First name (required)

Last name (required)

Preferred name

Pronouns

Birthdate (required)

Email (required)

Phone number

About your tattoo

Which flash do you want? List the collection name and drawing number (required)

Where do you want it on your body? (required)

What size do you have in mind? (required)

Consent and acknoledgements

I AM 18 AND OVER (If you fail or do not provide a valid ID to check on day of, you'll lose your appointment/drawing/deposit)

YES

Before the appointment can be finalized, I will require a non-refundable deposit to be put toward the final price of the project; any rescheduling or cancellation must be made no closer than 48hrs from the appointment time. Deposit will be forfeit if you fail to do so. YES

Please be aware that my studio is a LGBTQIA+, Anti-racist, Pro Sex-Work, Intersectional Feminist, Body Positive space, meant to be safe for artists and other clients alike; please be respectful & mindful of this with words & body language. If you fail to do so, a ban will be issued. YES

July 2024

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 EST

July was brutally hot, the cicadas got out of the ground way too early and I definitely took that as a sign to slow down on some stuff. I’ve still been putting a pause on client work, trying to find a balance that’s more sustainable. That allowed me to work on some projects on a slower pace with less urgency like the Diablo tape project which has been super gratifying.

Music video shooting for an upcoming voidxwitch single

Most of July for me and Hex was spent on planning and shooting a music video for one of their upcoming singles. Our plan was to make something that would combine the aesthetics of the Blair Witch project and werewolf movies from the 90’s and 2000’s. Things were a bit different this time around since we didn’t got funding for it and we had to figure out a way to do it on a really tight budget and with just the two of us. We settled on 2 locations in the small Ontario town from which Hex comes from, one in the woods and the second one at screaming heads, a wild sculpture garden of giant screaming heads erected in fields and in the woods by an old hippie in the area.

Like we did for the Kill the Pain music video, I did extensive storyboarding and put together a very crude animatic with them to the music to figure out all the key shots, the camera movements and the transitions beforehand. From there we did some lighting and shot tests for the more challenging ones to see if our plan was achievable and to limit the amount of stuff we would have to figure out on the spot. The main technical shot we had in mind was one where hex plays two characters in the same shot, lip-synching and dancing on both sides of a tree. Our test for that shot allowed me to realize that the best way to light that scene without making the compositing really hard was to try to get the two lights on the subjects but barely lighting the tree in the middle, which would be our line where to cut the footage.

Additionally to the planning of the shooting, I also made / sourced a couple of props and accessories for the video; an old rusty shovel, a breakable chain, symbols made of sticks à la blair witch and the key element: a best mask, a leather mask and harness with a snout and ears that would be the statement piece for one of the characters. When the song and music video is out I’ll be able to develop further on the making of all this and share pictures of the process with you here :)

CD version of Earthworks

After the release of my album, the launch party and it’s distribution on all platforms (i caved in, it’s now on spotify, apple music and all other streaming platforms) I wanted to take a break to celebrate the achievement. Since then I’ve been thinking about what the physical release of it could look like. My conclusion is that a CD with a booklet in a digipack would be the best option, it allows the cover art to be a good size, the booklet will contain extra illustrations to accompany each track and the CD itself will allow a really crisp reproduction of the music in all it’s detail.

I’m currently finishing the design files for the digipack and CD and working on the illustrations on the side. They’re probably gonna take me a while to complete but it will be totally worth it in the end i feel. Depending on how much interest there is, I might do a special edition that includes a print of one or a couple of the illustrations with the CD too, we’ll see!

I also had the great surprise of being contacted by the local CKUT radio station that wanted a copy of my album since they’ve been playing it on the air :)

Reading:

A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine by John K. Nelson

Listening to:

No help for the mighty ones by Subrosa
Four Phantoms by Bell Witch

Watching:

Ghostrider (2007)

Dragon

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 EST

Waking the night

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 EST

Eerie night photos taken on and around a swamp on the Bizard island with a powerful flashlight.

Dead trees and tall grasses in a swamp at night

Stump in a swamp surrounded by lilypads

Small dead tree turned almost all white

Hole in some dense woods

Plenty of tall dead trees framing a distant moon

Tall grasses in a bog fading into darkness in the distance

Spider web between branches with some canopy

Isolated very tall white dead tree in a swamp with an eerie blue glow

Frogs and carnivorous plants

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 EST

Photos from a weekend at lake rouge in Quebec, to the sound of the bullfrogs, green frogs and spring peepers.

Small green frog in a pond

Small scene with living and dried out purple pitcher plants

Detail of the cone leaf of the living plant

Small drosera plants on a log

Close-up of the sticky hairs of the drosera

Large cluster of purple pitcher plants

Branches in the light

Extreme close-up of a dragonfly

Extreme close-up of a dragonfly wing

Custom tattoo project form

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 EST

Fill this form if you have an idea for a custom tattoo that you’d like to have done by me. When you’ve completed it, hit the submit button and then send the email that it will generate for you. I will answer your request by email at the address you provide as soon as possible.

About you

First name (required)

Last name (required)

Preferred name

Pronouns

Birthdate (required)

Email (required)

Phone number

About your project

What subject matter apply to your tattoo? (required)

Dark fantasy
Folklore and myth
Symbols and sigils
Occultism and magic
Medieval-style woodcut
Lettering

Describe your tattoo idea (required)

Where do you want it on your body? (required)

What size do you have in mind? (required)

Consent and acknoledgements

I AM 18 AND OVER (If you fail or do not provide a valid ID to check on day of, you'll lose your appointment/drawing/deposit)

YES

I understand that under no circumstances will another artist's work be copied, and the artist reserves the right to deny work on pieces that they don't feel is appropriate(IE designs that can be considered appropriation by other cultures). EXCEPTIONS: historical painting/sculpture/artifact, direct permission from an artist allowing fair use of a design of their creation, cultural piece that's from your ethnicity/religion/nationality/etc (please bring in all the details that your artist would need to know in order to create the design accurately and respectfully).

YES

Cancelling or rescheduling a tattoo

If for any reason you need to reschedule a tattoo appointment you should let me know 2 days or more in advance, otherwise you will lose your deposit.

Changes to a drawing

I will send the drawing of your custom tattoo a couple days in advance of your appointment, if you request small changes I will do them right away and get the final drawing for the session, if you request big changes (the kind that necessitates re-drawing big parts or the whole design), I will ask for another deposit and reschedule the date of the tattoo so I can make the changes. It is best for you to really make sure you give me all the information and references that you can before I start drawing your design to avoid delays and extra fees.

Earthworks

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 EST

Earthworks by Ritual Dust

Fight for the land that feeds you and hold you
Fight alongside its original guardians and spirits
Fight alongside the water and the wind
Fight to keep this sacred land from burning

After more than 5 years spent collecting field recordings and photographs, composing, and performing embryonic versions of these tracks at live shows, Earthworks, the first album from Ritual Dust (aka Lizbeth Poirier), had emerged from the ground, trembling and pulsing to the sound of drums echoing off the carved and painted walls of sacred caves.

Earthworks is a tribute to the Irish landscape and its inhabitants, as well as the many spirits, sacred trees, stones, fields, and rivers and the knowledge they hold. It is pagan folk electronic music, in which old tools converse with the new. Sampled folk strings, Irish bones, uilleann pipes, and a bodhran interplay and coalesce with synthesized drones, heavy techno rhythms, and field recordings taken at ancient sacred sites and bogs in Ireland. The songs vary from deep and subterranean to psychedelic and uplifting.

So crawl out of Oweynagat cave, covered in dirt and transformed. Climb the hill to the Keshcorran Caves and join in a chant as the shadows of ancestors dance on the walls. Walk the green fields of the Boyne Valley as the sun rises on winter solstice. Take part in a ritual sacrifice in the Carrickynaghtan bog. Listen to the land, allow it to speak through you. We are standing here, us together, ready to build new trackways over this treacherous ground to lead us into the new world.

Not back to the land
Give the land back
Not back to the past
Bring the past forward

Credits

Performed and recorded by Lizbeth Poirier
Mastered by Lyndsie Alguire

Many thanks to Hex Evans, Fae Sirois, Fey Hart, David Graeber, David Wengrow, Manchàn Magan, Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen and Tyson Yunkaporta for supporting and inspiring this work.

May and june 2024

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 EST

I’m combining may and june because these two months have been mostly dedicated to re-centering, resourcing and figuring out some shit. Solstice was definitely a peak in energy and excitement as I released Earthworks. Most of my time and energy not spend on other things ended up directed to that project leading on to the release and I’m really of how the whole thing turned out, the album, visuals and videos.

Visuals for the Earthworks launch

That was an idea that I had a bit last minute when preparing my release, I though it would be cool to have the songs on youtube with some kind of visual matching each song for people to listen to the album there since i wasn’t doing the whole distribution thing for that album. I had quite a bit of fun revisiting my ireland photos and combining them in trippy ways for that.

The whole playlist is over here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bRLcr2PHpw&list=PL01XwI4lbIITbFpQRVaRpOV7O9uiT-AfB

Nature photos from Lac Rouge

In may i had the pleasure of escaping the city to go spend a weekend beside a lake with my coworker from black circle, the tattoo studio I work at. It was really relaxing and grounding and i got to know better some of the great people i work with. It was also an opportunity to spend lot of time really close and connected with nature, with the carnivorous plants growing on logs on the low parts of the lake, with golden eagles flying close to us while approaching a clearing in a swamp, with tons of green frogs, bull frogs and spring peepers. I took some photos of the whole thing which you can see here: https://ritualdust.com/works/photo/frogs-carnivorous-plants/

I also recorded a choir of frogs at night with my field recording setup and I’m pretty excited to use that in a song :)

Videos and photos for voidxwitch

Beside all that, me and Hex are still grinding at the new Voidxwitch album and doing some short form video and photo stuff for promotion as we slowly prepare for the first single release. We bought a huge 50k lumen flashlight second hand for those and damn, it’s so much fun, and creates the most eerie images. We got the inpiration for that from https://www.instagram.com/briscoepark/ and also from needing a strong light but not having the money to get a big cinema light. We got some photos we took with it coming up, otherwise you can see some of the short videos i filmed (including one shot with our modified trailcam) over here in the shorts section: https://www.youtube.com/@voidxwitch

That’s about it for now, I hope you’re all doing great, I’m really looking forward to my album launch party on the 27th and to have the time / headspace to draw more :)

Reading:

A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine by John K. Nelson

Listening to:

100 gecs and the tree of clues by 100 gecs
Fine Art by Kneecap
Wild Silence by Seàn Ronayne
Death Rave by Violent Magic Orchestra
LIFA Iotungard by Heilung
Ruins by Stick in the Wheel

Watching:

Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)
Twister (1996)
Honeymoon (2014)
Godzilla minus one (2023)

Playing:

Silent Hill 3

Emergency kits

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 EST

General tips
EDC Kit
Emergency Bag
Car Emergency Kit

General tips

Adapt the different kits to their uses and the climate in which you live in.

Only put stuff in your kits that you know how / have the skills to use.

Check your emergency kits at least one a year and replace anything that’s expired, corroded or broken. That way when you need it you’ll know the stuff in it will work.

EDC Kit

Knife
Flashlight
Multitool

Emergency Bag

Food Water

- Lifestraw bottle - Water filtration tablets - Collapsible water container Shelter

- Tarp - Paracord - Blankets - Duct tape - Shovel - Mylar blankets - Garbage bags Fire

- 2 x Lighter - Matches - Bunch of batteries - Fresnel lens - Candles - 2 x Flashlight - Heat packs Knife

- 2 x knife Safety

- First aid kit - Masks - Gloves - Cafeine pills - Iodine pills - Ibuprofen - aspirin - acetaminophen - Trauma shears

Car Emergency Kit

Food

- Canned food - freeze-dried food - Can opener - 2 x utensils - Portable stove - 2 x metal mugs Water

- Water bottles Shelter

- Tarp - Paracord - Blankets - Duct tape - Shovel - Mylar blankets - Garbage bags Fire

- 2 x Lighter - Matches - 4 packs of batteries - Fresnel lens - 2 x Flashlight - Tampons (for kindling) - Candles - Heat packs Knife

- 2 x knife Safety

- Masks - Gloves - 2 x First aid kit - Window breaker / belt cutters Car related

- Auxiliary battery + booster - Snow brush - Electrical tape - Road flares - Quebec map - Wire coat hangers - Siphon for gaz

Stones for Liberation

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 EST

Dolmen camp for palestine

We are writing the folklore of the future. The power and knowledge to bring in a new world lives in the land. Palestine will free us all.

Trailcam rig

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 EST

Completed trailcam rig

As someone fascinated by haunted forest photography, the blair witch project and night photography it was only a matter of time before I got into infrared photography. There is a couple ways to do this, either using infrared film in a film camera, or getting a digital camera modfied in order to allow it’s sensor to capture only infrared light. But instead of these I thought, what about those trail cameras used to keep track of animal movement in the woods? These usually take eerie night photos in infrared and can even film! And they are usually pretty cheap.

So I ordered one. But the thing with trailcams is that they are designed to be attached to trees and left there on their own taking photos when triggered by their sensors. I had to change a couple things about it and add some accessories in order to turn it into a usable camera:

cut off the back of it so i can access the controls and screen
mount it in a camera cage (this one is designed for phones)
add an external battery plate (since the camera doesn’t have an internal battery)
add a tripod plate to it for more static shots and video shooting

The camera operates on 12v which made it perfect to use sony NP-F batteries which I also use for my man camera and other camera gear I own. I’ve been using it for a little bit now and I’m pretty happy of how it works. I think if i end up shooting more video I might add a grip handle on the right side to have a more convenient place to hold it.

conveniently enough, even if it’s primarily designed to be trgffed by sensors, it can also be manually operated from the menu, with an option that shows the current image on the screen and one of the button used for shutter or for starting/stopping video recording. It also has it’s own built-in infrared light, which eliminates the need for additional lights when shooting (although it’s useful to have some form of visible spectrum light when shooting at night in order to see where we’re going).

You can see an example of some video I did with it on youtube: short trailcam video for voidxwitch

The front of the trailcam without it's back lid attached

The back of the trailcam showing the controls

Zheani Sigil

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 EST

Carved wooden Zheani sigil

I made this carved sigil for my partner Hex before we got to see Zheani live in Brooklyn. The intention behind it was to make it a reminder of their strength and will and ward them from self-doubt and haters.

It had been a long time since I had done any wood carving but it was a very welcome change of craft. Zheani’s sigil was very fit to be carved with it’s sharp angles it ended up looking really good with some areas deeper than other. I finished the whole piece except the sigil with black paint and painted a quote from one of Zheani’s songs around the edge at the request of Hex “The kids that once harassed me Will never fucking pass me”.

Other angle of the sigil

Detail of the carving

At the Mountains of Madness Illustration

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 00:00:00 EST

Illustration inspired by the story At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft, the second in the series of Lovecraftian scenes. This is one of my favorite Lovecraft novels, I’ve always been a fan of cursed expedition stories and this is the pinnacle of it. It brings you right in the eerie and alien frozen world that is Antarctica and slowly reveals more and more terrifying secrets buried there. The main subject of this scene is an Elder Thing, one of the exceedingly strange creatures found by the scientists in the story. It was a pleasure to do my own rendition of it based on the writings and sketches of Lovecraft.

A creature with a starfish-shaped head, large wings and tentacle feet stands on a snowy cliff in front of mountains

At the Mountains of Madness print

Art print of an original ink drawing inspired by the H.P. Lovecraft short story At the Mountains of Madness

Buy a print

April 2024

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 EST

Spring is really setting in now, the trees are blooming, sleeping plants are shooting out of the earth and I feel very motivated and inspired by all this rebirth and sun energy coming in.

Here’s a little recollection of the things I worked on during this last month. Some of which I wrote more in depth about here or will in the future as they progress.

Earthworks album

I’ve been putting a lot of work on this lately, ever since figuring out the direction of this album and which songs should go on there. Over a couple years the songs that I pictured fitting on this first album shifted around quite a bit, I made some new ones, rediscovered old ones and played multiple iterations of a live set encompassing part of what became Earthworks.

If everything goes to plan I’ll finish the last song in the coming weeks, get the album mixed and mastered and release it on the day of the summer solstice.

Eternal logo

This is a commission piece for a friend on which I’ve been working on for a while. He’s starting his own games consulting company and wanted something with darker and more experimental feel than most logos for these types of companies. I’ve tried a couple things until settling down on two custom typefaces intertwined together, one being inspired by black metal logos with a shaded treatment and then pixelated.

Trailcam camera rig

In preparation for a music video we’re planning for voidxwitch I’ve been modifying a trailcam to turn it into a versatile video / still camera that can shoot both color and infrared footage. So far I’ve figured out how to make the case smaller, how to power it with regular camera batteries and how to put it in a cage so i can attach more accessories to it. I’ll keep working on this for the next couple months until we’re ready to shoot.

Low poly cursed town for voidxwitch

After completing the PS1 style avatar that I did for voidxwitch visuals we had the idea to make a whole little cursed town n which we could do different animations and scenes. We’re channeling Silent Hill and Blair Witch quite a bit for that alongside real locations from Hex’s past.

Reading:

Listen to the Land Speak by Manchàn Magan

Listening to:

Triptych: part one by Harvestman
Aghavarick Acid by Local Gods
Ashes of May by myself

Watching:

Pastoral: to Die in the Country (1974)

Playing:

Silent Hill 2

Pious Rot North Booklet Trailer

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 00:00:00 EST

Credits and details

Photography, Editing & Music

Lizbeth Poirier

Writing

Sedge Hoffart

Additional photography

Des Cendres

Edited and color graded in DaVinci Resolve

Amygdala

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 00:00:00 EST

Castle

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 03 Mar 2024 00:00:00 EST

March 2024

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 00:00:00 EST

March was a month of misfortunes, hardships and incredible experiences. The main thing that occupied my mind and time was planning for and going to see Zheani with Hex in Brooklyn, in a sort of pilgrimage. In the last couple years, all of our travels have been strongly motivated by the desire to go to meaningful places and meet and connect with people who are important for us, and engaging in culture.

The trip to Brooklyn was tiring but also inspiring and powerful, really cementing our intention me and Hex of being artists first and investing a lot of time and energy into our art. Zheani’s show was insane, I’ve never felt such a strong presence and energy from a live performance and the whole thing felt very much like a small collective ritual. I highly recommend going to see her if you can, she’s starting a world tour soon ;)

Zheani sigil

In preparation for going to see Zheani, I discussed with Hex what they’d like to have signed by her and we came to the conclusion that a charm carved in wood with her sigil would be a pretty unique choice. It had been a long time since I had done any wood carving but it was a very welcome change of craft. Zheani’s sigil was very fit to be carved with it’ sharp angles it ended up looking really goof with some areas deeper than other. I finished the whole piece except the sigil with black paint and painted a quote around the edge. At the show we got the pleasure to meet Zheani for a little bit and have her signing it, it is really charged now.

Pious Rot Trailer

As the first module of Pious Rot is getting closer to completion I thought it would be fun to put together a little trailer for the Northern part of the world and introduce some of the aspects that makes Pious Rot unique as far as TTRPG settings go. I used photos I took in Iceland along with some that our friend Des took while living on an island in New Brunswick. The pictures somehow really captured how we were seeing the land that we had created with it’s rough but beautiful nature, ample species of moss and seaweed and the large expanse of cold sea. You can watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-aOX7SJKOE&t=29s

Voidxwitch PS1 style character

Inspired by the original Silent Hill game and seeing people online making a low-poly version of themselves in the style of the PS1 I had the idea to attempt to make a 3D avatar of Hex for Voidxwitch in order to use for short videos and images to promote the project and build the world around it. Knowing that I would have around 20 hours to kill on the train to and back from Brooklyn I took some reference pictures and downloaded a tutorial in advance and then got to work while passing through small derelict American towns on the train. I ended up learning a whole lot about the limitations of the PS1 and the way models were textured back in the day. I ended up really enjoying the process and the minimalism of the modelling really allowed me to keep thing manageable for my 3D skill level. This model is now rigged and can be animated and the result is really fun (and uncanny). You can see a first animated video here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JJyNqwTmCZk

Reading:

Ecstasy is Necessary by Barbara Carrellas

Listening to:

Silent Hill 1 soundtrack by Akira Yokohama
Liebe in Zeiten der Kola by Brutalismus 3000
Satan was a baby boomer by Brutalismus 3000
Assorted Mushrooms of New England vol.2 by Mycologia
The horgenaith by Sarahsson

Playing:

Silent Hill 1

Saw cleaver

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 17 Feb 2024 00:00:00 EST

Tower

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 17 Feb 2024 00:00:00 EST

Wolf with helmet

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 03 Feb 2024 00:00:00 EST

Februrary 2024

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:00:00 EST

Thoughts about my music project

I’ve had some more revelations about the album I keep wanting to make with Ritual Dust, I keep writing these in disconnected little notes as they come to me and slowly a clearer picture of the shape of the work and the intent behind it is emerging.

It is time to usher in the new ways. It’s not the time for a return to the land but to return the land back. Where we’re going we don’t need a romanticized past to guide us, but instead a deep and honest curiosity for the ways human lived, organized and collaborated outside of the hold of capitalism and white supremacy.

I think I’ll take the title of the album from this first bit; Usher in the New Ways which plays on the whole idea of bringing back the old ways which is deeply flawed and motivated by the fact that as a culture we stuck ourselves in a place where we can’t imagine the future anymore.

There is a yearning for folklore, for deep connection and meaning, for a feeling of being part of the landscape, for rituals and celebrations that bring us together, for magic and enchantment.

I’m definitely gonna be exploring folklore and ritual in the album, and looking into ways to fill the spiritual hole that whiteness created in us as it severed us from the culture of our ancestors.

I want to bring people together to create something akin to a stone circle, a monument, a sacred site, a place of meeting and celebration but above all an incredible act of collaborative work not motivated by greed or centralized power but by a shared mutual interest and excitement, which for me is part of what being human truly is

That’s the most recent piece that clicked in my head, the idea of collaborating and doing the album with other people. Not only it’s something that ha always motivated me, bringing people together to create something larger that what we can accomplish alone but it’s also incredibly motivating and inspiring to me to have the input of other creatives and share ideas. And most importantly it models what I think we need to do at that point in time to bring change in our society and to face stuff like the climate crisis: building community, mutual help and collaborative action.

The more I keep figuring out this project, the more the songs I have been working on seem like a precursor for it instead of a part of it and I’m realizing that I should move forward and get these songs out in an EP first, close that chapter and then start this bigger album project officially. So my current goal musically is motivating myself to finish my favorite tracks I’ve been working and playing live into an EP that I’ll call Earthworks and release it when it’s done.

Putting Fantômes into hiatus for another year

This was the logical succession of figuring out what I wanted to do with my music project and also the other projects that are important for me these days; Pious Rot and the work I’ve been doing with VOIDXWITCH. Since I want to have more direction in my work and focus my energy on these, I’m pausing Fantômes for another year to create space for myself to explore these other things. In an ideal world I wouldn’t have to work a day job on top of that and could really fully engage with the work that is meaningful to me but we still need to pay bills. I’m curious to see how this year will go for those other projects and where we’ll be in a couple months.

Curse pop typography for VOIDXWITCH

Hex came up with that term Curse Pop to describe their music recently and we had the idea of turning into some kind of visual that we could reuse for their project, either as just a static visual, animated in music videos or even on merch. Since doing the new logo for their project I’ve been really inspired by the whole neo-grunge / acid graphics design aesthetic with it’s black metal lettering inspiration, 2000’s flair and chrome effects. So to continue in that line I drew a very spikey version of the lettering with the two words nesting into each other and with a very symmetrical composition, that way when we animate it or make it rotate it’ll work better and we can have the two words doing different things.

Then I headed to blender to do a 3d version of it. I’m so happy to go back to doing 3D in blender, I used to do quite a bit of it back then and even made a little zine with all 3d modeled landscapes and a small game. I find that 3D is such a great way to push visuals further and create effects that would be really hard to get otherwise. I’ve learned a lot of new tricks recently from watching https://www.youtube.com/@intr4 on youtube, like adding imperfections on surfaces and using HDRIs for more realistic reflections. This render is still a work in progress but i feel like I’m getting closer to what I want.

Photo experiments

Following some really early tests inspired by this video on the color style of the movie the Ring I went out on a walk and took more photos to see how the yellow filter combined with the tungsten white balance on my camera would look in daylight. I had so much fun on this little photo walk and was so inspired by seeing the results directly while shooting compared to doing color grading after the fact, I really feel that making visuals choices like that in camera can really change the way I shoot and how I look at different subjects. I’m more and more convinced that a lot of movies that date from the film era were so visually striking because of these bold in-camera choices that the DP took and committed to instead of trying to keep all doors open and figuring it in post. This had inspired me to get some film and start shooting more on film in order to have to be more intentional with what I shoot and how I do it.

Dolmenwood TTRPG illustrations

I recently got contacted by one of the people making the Dolmenwood TTRPG, they had found my work through the album covers I did for Aura Merlin and offered me a commission for a couple of illustration for their upcoming book. This is a big thing for me, I feel like I’ve been looking for that kind of stuff for so long, trying to find a way to make fantasy illustrations in my style for a living and collaborate with publications I’m excited about.

I’m currently still in the concept and sketch phase of the project but I’ll be update you on the process and I go along since those will also be made in full color, a welcome challenge and motivation with the cover of Pious Rot that I was planning to do in the same way.

Reading:

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Leguin

Watching:

The X-files
Godland (2022)

Listening to:

BLVCK by La+ch, SVDP & Backxwash
Out of the wind and into the Sun by the Bothy Band

Chanterelle Goblin

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 00:00:00 EST

Goblin portrait with a chanterelle hat.

Goblin head in green wearing a chanterelle

Fall of Stasis

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 00:00:00 EST

Hand-drawn logo and sigil and illustrations Fall of Stasis.

Complete logo with sigil and lettering

Sigil

Reliquaire Perçage Business Card

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 00:00:00 EST

Illustrated business card for Reliquaire Perçage featuring a reliquary made from neo-tribal shapes and piercing jewelry.

front of the card

back of the card

Front of the printed card

Back of the printed card

Detail of the illustration on the printed card

Voidxwitch Collectable Card

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 00:00:00 EST

Collectible card inspired by older magic cards designed for VOIDXWITCH’s patreon .

front of the card

back of the card

Front of the printed card

Detail of the card's description

Detail of the back of the printed card

Detail of the sigl and cvrsebreaker text on the back of the card

Kerosene Heart Lyric Video

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 00:00:00 EST

Credits and details

Editor/ Performer / Costumes

Hex Evans

Cinematographer / Editor / Props / Graphic Design

Lizbeth Poirier

Shot on the Sony A6300 with the Rokinon 10mm lens
Edited and color graded in DaVinci Resolve

Haunted Manor Weapons

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 00:00:00 EST

Old-school fantasy battle axe

Patreon Tiers Illustratons

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 14 Jan 2024 00:00:00 EST

Small illustrations for my patreon tiers

Pious Rot

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 00:00:00 EST

Small website for the RPG fantasy setting Pious Rot .

Home page

January 2024

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 EST

As Imbolg and the renewed energy of spring (it already feels like spring here in Montreal thanks to climate change) arrives, I’m taking this time to reflect on the start of this year, take stock and set some intentions and priorities for the months to come.

Starting in December me and Hex decided to really focus the start of our year on improving our creative spaces and processes and also to take our art more seriously. This has led the start of 2024 to be a time of pretty drastic change. Our apartment has changed a lot, we donated a lot of things we didn’t needed anymore, put some more in deep storage in order to keep only what’s relevant to the work we are doing now and in the future along with some pieces from the past that inspire us. I now have three well-defined work areas in my studio space; the main one with the computers and light table where I do most of my drawing, one with a large cutting mat for printed projects and large scale drawing (that also doubles as a tattoo station when I want to do that) and a third one that’s more like a tiny woodworking workshop. This is still a work in progress and I’ll probably be spending a good part of this month finessing the details of my studio space and changing things around as I figure out what works best but I should be able to make a little tour for you in the coming weeks :)

Now, for some side projects I worked on during the month:

Business Cards for Reliquaire Perçage

One of my friends who’s doing piercing has reached out in January to have some business cards made. The brief was to draw a reliquary containing different piercing jewelry. I took the opportunity to do something pretty old school with the shiny chrome effect and picked some of my favorite fonts to go along with it.

Logo for Fall of Stasis

Alongside the sleep paralysis-themed illustration I did for the band, I also redid their logo and sigil. I went with a very expressive and sharp fraktur variation for the logo, building and improving on their old logo. It had been a while i had work with vectors for that kind of work but it was more fun than I remember, it makes it quite easy to reuse parts of some letters to make other ones and make the whole lettering piece feel more consistent.

Lyric Video for Kerosene Heart

As a normal progression from a short teaser we did a while ago for the Kerosene Heart, me and Hex worked on a Lyric video for the full song last month. I played around with color overlays, creative editing and a variety of fonts to illustrate the feeling of the different sections (including a custom font i made for the bridge).

This month of February will be focused on a couple things for me: finishing the layout and the cover illustration for the Northern Lands booklet of Pious Rot, making a visualizer for the full Ecstasy in Darkness album by VOIDXWITCH. I’m also gonna be working on next month’s Occult Correspondence print and I want to do some photography experiments with color filters.

Reading:

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Leguin
Dice Men by Ian Livingstone

Watching:

Season 5 and 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Heaven adores you (2014)

Listening to:

Better way to live by Kneecap
Return to Winterstead by Guild of Lore
Middle Earth by Jim Kirkwood

Playing:

Elden ring

December 2023

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:00:00 EST

December and the end of last year ended up being about recovery, rest and a lot of planning and reorganization in preparation for what’s to come. I’m in the middle of reorganizing my studio and setting up a better home studio for Hex, it allowed me to finally get rid of a lot of stuff i don’t need anymore, make room for new art, art storage and tools (like a professional printer to make my own prints!).

It feels good to take time to finally get around to doing this, with the pace things go these days it’s easy for me to get swamped or overwhelmed with life and get used to things not working really well or being annoying instead of taking the time to fix it. I feel like my relationship to my art practice is changing, it’s becoming more and more a primary thing in my life and something I want to approach with the commitment and professionalism as a “career”, even tho I never really liked that capitalistic concept. That shifting perspective is bringing back memories from art school and learning about a lot of good practices for making and preserving pieces, resources and artist run centers for artists, ways to get financing as a professional artist and more. A lot of stuff that I had stored in a deep place in my brain after finishing university, positively turned off from the contemporary art scene and any pursuits related to it.

Now that enough time has passed and that I healed my creativity and allow myself to see me as an artist again without the shackles of art academia attached to it, it gives me new hope and motivation to pursue my art and commercial illustration at a higher level. To that effect I’ve made plans for this year, things that I’d love to accomplish and improve upon:

get 2 Pious Rot modules out in the world and put things in place for the full book
release my first full length album as ritual dust
challenge myself to draw more characters, creatures and scenes
make more paintings, personal and commissioned ones and improve my technique
start selling art prints of my favorite old and new pieces (also thinking of bringing back the print club tier on this Patreon)

I’m also really grateful of the opportunities I had in 2023 and the work I did during that year, a lot of pieces that are now in my personal favorites and will inspire me more work in the future I’m sure. I’m really of what me and my friend Sedge did with the whole Pious Rot project, it was really good for me to explore world-building and fantasy art again, my inner child is really happy about it. I spent a good part of my childhood drawing dragons, castles and medieval weapons (I still have a lot of those if you’re ever curious about what that looked like), and I feel like with all the experience I gathered through life I can bring the worlds that I used to imagine and the ones that come to me now to life. Making artwork and design work for music was also really rewarding and fulfills some old dreams of mine of seeing my images on album covers and band merch. Similarly to illustrating fantasy stories, drawing images to capture the essence of a musical album taps into the same creative ability that I have to transmute stories, places, and sounds into visuals and I can’t wait to do more this year.

On this, I hope you all had a good start of the year and I’ll be writing to you again soon with some news regarding the Pious Rot RPG project and some updates concerning this Patreon and the next steps I want to take for it.

Thanks again to all of you for your continued support, it means a lot :)

Seeds from the Olive Tree

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 00:00:00 EST

LEFT/FOLK VI: The World As It Is by Ritual Dust

A song of resilience and hope for the people of Palestine. The seeds from the ancestral olive trees shall grow again.

Originally recorded for “LEFT/FOLK VI: The World As It Is”, a compilation put together by left/folk in support of Palestine

October and November 2023

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 00:00:00 EST

Doing some catch up on my monthly review since October was crazy (as it usually is). There’s plenty of fun stuff I’ve been working on that I’m excited to share and I wanted to do a bit of a wrap up because December will be a month of rest and recovery for us.

The Dunwich Horror illustration

Ever since getting it for my birthday I’ve been really looking forward to listening to the Cadabra Records edition of The Dunwich Horror by Lovecraft. It’s a beautiful vinyl with some artwork from Karmazid and a great narrator and ambience music.

A couple days ago I put it on during the evening, got comfortable and gathered some drawing supplies and was inspired to draw a composite scene from the story. The moment when Wilbur Whateley’s brother emerges from their old shuttered farmhouse in all it’s cosmic horror.

I worked smaller than I usually do these days for that drawing, partly because I didn’t wanted to start another big complex piece that i couldn’t finish in a couple hours while relaxing and listening to the story. This usually ends up helping with the composition too, I did two little thumbnails before starting the main drawing but i didn’t thought about it too much either. For example I knew I wanted to draw the mountain with the standing stones in the background but the idea of making a tentacle reaching for it from the mass of horrors came while drawing the actual thing.

The idea of doing a series of Lovecraftian illustrations has been going around in my head for a little while now and I’m glad I found a way to get started with it. I think I’ll challenge myself to do one every month for a little while in order to get a series and possibly offer art prints of them (that would be a good way to get back to my monthly print club thing on here too ;) ).

Sleep paralysis demon illustration for Fall of Stasis

This second project kept me busy for most of October and part of November. This ended up being such a fun and motivating challenge, the kind of drawing that I always feel drawn to work on. I won’t write too much on that one again since I already made a post just for it but going forward I really want to explore more this style and get comfortable with it and experiment with different tools to get different quality of lines (brush pens and dip pens especially). I’ve been obsessing over the ink illustrations for Frankenstein by Bernie Wrightson lately and I keep being amazed at how many different textures can be achieved with this technique.

Voidxwitch’s Ecstasy in Darkness CD release

Following the release of the music video for Kill the Pain and the digital version of Ecstasy in Darkness, me and Hex got to work on the physical edition. We wanted to do a CD release that would feel like something from our teenage years, in a jewel case with a lyric book containing plenty of additional photos and little details that would help you really get in the world of the album. It was a good occasion to combine and play around with all the photos we’ve been taking for that project over the years and pair them with specific songs. Currently the 20-page booklet is done, as is the tray card and the print on the CD itself, I’m just figuring out how dark the photos can be without losing detail in the printing process. I learned a lot about soft-proofing and preparing photo prints for commercial printing in the process, not something I had done a lot in the past with photos, especially dark ones like that.

Förgjordninger cassette design

Alongside working on Voidxwitch’s album, I helped our friend Fae from Girl Circle make an interesting poster/J-card combo for her latest album release on cassette. The whole album revolves around curses in Scandinavian magic. In there we’ve put the actual instructions for a specific curse, she also prepared the elements needed for it (a ball of chalk and graveyard dirt with a nail stuck in it) and we took a photo of the ritual for the poster side of the artwork.

This was my first time doing a design with cut up printed text like the zines of yore and I really enjoyed the process. All the artifacts and imperfections it adds to the text would be really hard to create digitally and the whole process of working with paper is quite enjoyable.

Reading:

Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta
How to Blow up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm
Masterpieces of Fantasy Art by Dian Hanson

Watching:

Dream Scenario
Fall of the House of Usher

Listening to:

Förgjordninger by Girl Circles
Turas by Ordnance survey
DEMO 2023 by Bogside Sniper Squadron
DEMO by Mem//brane
N/Y by Haxan Cloak
The Dunwich horror by Cadabra Records
Elmet Brae: The Land compilation

Printing tips

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 EST

Preparing for printing
Soft Proofing
Links

Preparing a document for printing

Colors

Work in RGB and only convert to CMYK when generating the press-ready pdf.

It is also recommended to calibrate your monitor with hardware calibrator to ensure that the colors you see are as close as possible as the final result will be.

Another good trick to preview a document contrast and colors on a screen is to lower the brightness of the around 50%, or even better, bring a sheet of white paper against it and lower the brightness of the screen until it is as close as possible as the sheet of paper.

Bleed and Safety zone

Generally, printers will want at least a 0.125" bleed zone outside the document final size. It is also advised to keep the same 0.125" inside of the document free from text or important elements since it can get cut off in the trimming process.

Soft proofing

Different design and image editing software have tools to “soft-proof” a document, soft-proofing besically means proofing using software, instead of the traditionnal proofing by running the document through the press and checking how it turned out. This is useful to save time, paper and ink by identifying problems with images and colors early on before sending to the presses.

In InDesign you can soft-proof by selecting View -> Proof colors

ICC profiles

An ICC profile is a document containing a lot of information on how ink is absorbed by a specific paper and how the printing process will affect the color and contrast of a document.

Ink coverage

Total Ink Coverage or Total Area Coverage is the total percentage amount of ink printed on a specific dot in a design. designs with a lot of overprinting can lead to an excessive amount of ink deposited on the paper leading to muddy shadows and loss of detail. Ink will also not dry properly if it exceeds a certain percentage causing additional trouble.

Using Adobe acrobat, the Total area coverage can be verified for a document before sending to print.

Open the Output Preview modal, preview separations and at the bottom of the modal check the Total Area Coverage checkbox. Then depending on the paper used, adjust the percentage above which the ink buildup will cause trouble.

Sheetfed offset on coated paper: 320% to 340%
heatset web offset including SWOP: 300%
Uncoated newsprint on non-heatset web offset: 240% to 260%

Links and References

https://layersmagazine.com/proofing-with-pdfs-part-2.html
https://www.prepressure.com/design/basics/tic

Bog Sacrifice for All Oil Execs

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 00:00:00 EST

bog-sacrifice-for-all-oil-execs by Ritual Dust

Climate rage and field recordings taken in the Carrickynaghtan Bog were the main ingredients used in the crafting of this track. They were then fused and charged through feedback loops, layers of distorted drums and the alchemical transformation process of the Strega.

Originally recorded for “Elmet Brae”, a drone compilation put together by the Merveilles community.

Sleep Paralysis Demon

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 00:00:00 EST

Ink illustration made for a Fall of Stasis shirt, inspired by old depictions of sleep paralysis demons.

Person lying in bed with a candle on a side table and a demon sitting on their chest

Version of the illustration with logo and sigil

Dunwich Horror Illustration

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 00:00:00 EST

Illustration inspired by The Dunwich Horror by H.P. Lovecraft. This piece was the first I drew in an ongoing series of scenes from Lovecraft novels. I was drawn to this one because of it’s folk-horror elements and the rural setting. I had fun integrating sigils referring to the occult litterature used by the Wheatleys to conjure cosmic horrors.

Old barn in front of a tall hill with standing stone from which a cosmic horror emerges

Dunwich horror print

Art print of an original ink drawing inspired by the H.P. Lovecraft short story The Dunwich Horror

Buy a print

Photo of the printed illustration in a frame with a newspaper clipping and a piece from a manuscript

Close-up photo of the print showing the details of the organic cosmic horror

Close-up photo of the newspaper clipping from the Arkham Advertiser with a headline reading 'Dark secrets of small town Dunwich'

Close-up photo of the torn page from a printed edition of the necronomicon with hand-drawn notes and symbols on it

Bog Sacrifice for All Oil Execs

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 00:00:00 EST

Credits and details

Cinematographer / Editor / Photographer

Lizbeth Poirier

Shot on the Sony A6300 with the Rokinon 10mm lens
Edited and color graded in Davinci Resolve
Featuring photos I took in Ireland

September 2023

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:00:00 EST

Hello everyone, I decided to try something different this month. I realized that I quite enjoyed these little retrospective I was doing by going over what I’ve drawn in the last month and wondered if I could use the opportunity and context of these posts to try to start a kind of journal of my work and experiences and not just talk about the drawings that came out of it.

September was crazy. I feel like I end up saying that to myself at the end of every month and maybe I’m starting to reckon with the fact that an artist’s life often end up looking like that, with a bunch of projects going on at the same time and tight deadlines and rushes to get everything ready for a release or an event. Or maybe it’s my ADHD brain that so often can’t bring itself to start working on something for the longest time that adds a lot of urgency to the whole process. I still have to find the right balance between too much work but a lot of excitement and too little and a lack of motivation but I trust that I’ll find it as I keep experimenting.

Voidxwitch music video

This last month’s big focus has been the VOIDXWITCH release, the album itself, the music video that we filmed and edited for Kill the Pain and all the promotion work we did to try and get their music out there. We had pretty high goals and standards set for it, higher than I’ve ever set to myself and we are aiming to do stuff professionally because we feel that the music needs it, Hex’s vision and concepts are so rich and deep that they need a rich and layered visual world to be the complete work of art that they could be. That meant that the whole thing was a challenge and we had to learn so much new things. I did a couple short videos before, and a music video or two in there but it was the first time shooting one with multiple locations, complex lighting setups, and practical special effects (can’t wait to show you how the blood cannon we made worked out ;) ). One of the first things we did this month of September was finishing the edit of the music video, following the initial plan we had laid out in the storyboard. I’m including a side-by-side of a couple of shots from storyboard to final edit in here to show how it ended up looking.

The editing phase was more straightforward than in previous projects we worked on, partially because we had planned a lot before shooting and already had a skeleton of the structure of the music video but also because I’m starting to be more comfortable editing, grading and adding effects in resolve. I learned about fusion and more advanced compositing technique during that month while applying that knowledge directly, which is always the best way for me to learn new stuff.

From there we moved on to color grading and giving the video it’s final look. This is one of my favorite parts, especially after watching the video over and over with a really flat look and desaturated colors, it’s really satisfying to see it with it’s full contrast and impact. I did a couple of different grades for it, one for the spaghetti inspired scenes for which I studied the colors of actual western movies, a rave-like super saturated and trippy one for the scenes in the warehouse and an intense blood-red one for the scenes with the fake blood.

hen after hours of rendering and some trial and error to find the best codec and bitrate for it to look good on youtube and other platforms, the music video was done and ready for it’s release on Oct. 13.

Voidxwtch album and promotion

During that time, we received the mastered tracks for the album and went ahead with setting up everything for distribution. This is such an obscure part of music that I feel rarely gets talked about. We wanted the album to be available everywhere but decided on bandcamp to be the main place where the album is hosted and sold including it’s physical copy and accompanying merch. Bandcamp has a pretty straightforward process for that which is much appreciated, from there, we’ve put the songs on Soundcloud and used a third party distributor (cd baby) to get it to the myriad of streaming platforms. This ended up opening so many rabbit holes of legal documents to fill and musicians associations to join in order to collect royalties. Once again we had to learn and research a bunch to make sure we got everything right.

At that point we left Montreal for a week to go on a little retreat in Hex’s hometown in northern Ontario to finish up all the promotional material for the release and start planning the details of the release party. Being away and no working my regular day job really allowed me to give full attention to what was left to do and have more creative bandwidth with it. It was also really pleasant to see the colors in the trees and fall was slowly settling in.

Just before leaving I designed and got printed this wanted poster as a promotion/world-building item for the music video and we ended up taking photos of it on a telephone pole near a cemetery, to really nail the aesthetic. I normally hate doing “marketing” or promoting something the way people do under capitalism, but when i get the chance to just have fun with a project and use the opportunity to create things that make me excited I feel like I’m doing something right and hopefully it can resonate with other people.

I’ll go into more details and share more pictures of this poster soon on here, but in the meantime here’s some more promotional stuff we did for the album, video and release party.

This is getting longer than I expected it to be so I’ll keep it at that for now and make another post with my drawings of September. To close it off, I’ve been wanting to share some of my recent readings and the music I’ve been listening to and getting inspired by lately. Here’s my selection for September.

Reading:

Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Listening to:

Illfänas by Them Teeth
Bring Wet Cunt / Hammerhead single by Zheani
Never Pure by SUFFER RING

Chainsword

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 23 Sep 2023 00:00:00 EST

Shield

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 00:00:00 EST

Kill the Pain Music Video

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 13 Aug 2023 00:00:00 EST

Credits and details

Director / Producer / Editor/ Performer / Costumes

Hex Evans

Cinematographer / Co-producer / Editor / Props

Lizbeth Poirier

Lighting Technician / Grip / Production Assistant

Sedge Hoffart

Hair

Sara (Sad) Drainville

Additional Costumes

Le Grand Costumier

Filmed on location and at : Studio Usine

Shot on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera 2.5k with the Rokinon 10mm and the DZOFilm 50-125mm lenses
Edited and color graded in DaVinci Resolve

Thurible

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 00:00:00 EST

Cooking grains and cereals

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 00:00:00 EST

Rolled oats

2 cups of water for every cup of oats.

Combine the oats and water in a pot.
Bring to a boil, then reduce to medium heat, let cook for 15 minutes.

Steel-cut oats

3 1/2 to 4 cups water for every cup of oats.

Combine the oats and water in a pot.
Bring to a boil, then reduce to medium heat, let cook for 20 minutes while stirring from time to time.
After that time keep it simmering for an extra 5 to 10 minutes depending on desired consistency.

White rice

2 cups water for every cup of rice.

Combine water and rice in a pot (it’s nice but optional to add some margarine or seasonings at that step).
Bring to a boil, cover and reduce the heat. Simmer for 7 minutes.
Remove the pot from the heat remove the lid and fluff with a fork.

Quinoa

1 3/4 cups water for every cup of quinoa.

Combine the quinoa and water in a medium pot.
Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce the heat. Simmer for 15 minutes.
Remove the pot from the heat and let it sit, covered, for 10 minutes more.
Then, remove the lid and fluff with a fork.

Dark Elf Shield

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 00:00:00 EST

Dark elf shield

Time is but the drawing of a sword

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 00:00:00 EST

Pixel art illustrations for a small game accompanying an album for Lyndsie Alguire.

Grass field with flowers

Castle in a field

Inside of the castle

Organ on a stone room with the floor covered with sand

Sand dunes

Sword planted in the sand dunes

Dungeon Synth Show Flyer

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 00:00:00 EST

Flyer for an underground show inspired by old-school fantasy visuals.

Flyer for an underground show

Production notes

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 02 Jul 2023 00:00:00 EST

Synths and Leads
Bass
Guitar Drums
Resources

Synths and leads

Trance gate

Create two tracks, put a synth on the first one with a melody (long notes and pad like sounds work well). Then put a synth on the other track with a short snappy enveloppe and create a rythmic pattern of notes with it, then turn off this track. go back to your first synth track and set the sidechain on the gate to take the second synth track as input, then adjust the gate settings until you hear the first synth playing the rythm of the second track. Adding some delay and reverb after the gate sound pretty too.

Drones

Sample-based pads

Layering

Layer multiple instruments / samples to make sounds richer while playing the exact same thing, play around with the volume and parameter of each one.

use enveloppes to modulate effects on sounds and blend them better with the dynamics of it layer other sounds following a melody in a different frequency range to thicken it add grain delay with pitch at 5 or 7, 50% wet and a bit of delay to add a 5th or 7th harmony to a sound automate formant shifting on sounds to make them sound more like synths slowly cut off the low end of a lead during a buildup to make it feel like it’s rising use pitch shifter in wide mode to make stuff wider really fast autopan on reverse reverb and fade in transiton sounds great layering other synths with supersaw

add beat repeat in gate mode and distortion / anything in a group, set it to a separate chain and create little bursts of distortion from the main sound

Bass

the lowest frequencies that subwoofer can reproduce well are around F and G

Bass Line Algorithms

This is definitely not a complete list of every way you could write a bass line but it includes a lot of common approaches and is a great starting point for ideas.

Root note pads: Bass holds the root of each chord.
Line up with the drums: Bass plays root notes on each of the main drum hits.
All offbeats: Bass plays the root note of each chord on all the “and” beats of the bar (“1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and”).
Disco octaves: Bass plays the root note of each chord, alternating between two different octaves of that note (usually the higher one is on the offbeats).
Root note downbeat + fills: Bass plays the root note on each downbeat, followed by melodic fills leading to the root note on the next downbeat. Also think about “passing notes” or “passing tones” - notes that may be outside of a chord or even outside of your key, but that can serve as a bridge in between the more important, anchoring bass notes you’re using.

Guitar

guitar effects chain, in that order:

pedal (for more distortion, increase output / gain of pedal - esp. combned with boost amp)
amp
then cabinet (cabinets can be combined with parallel chains and mixed together)
then guitar lead solo glue compressor
play around with grain delay, pitch up or down and then play with spray and frequency, try around 50% wet
good amount of short reverb
add widener

Drums

corpus -> kick tight preset on kick, just lil bit

Gluing drums together

Add distortion on the drum group to add similar harmonics to the different drum sounds and bring them closer timbre wise. Add the same reverb in a return channel to different drum sounds at different levels to simulate their different place in the room, more sparse sounds can have more reverb than quickly repeated ones

Think about how the different elements fills the space

Add fills / drum fills towards the end of sections to bridge to next one

Impacts (cymbal or sounds with a lot of reverb), usually at the start of sections

Layering

Works pretty well with drums too, for example layering two snare samples with different tones and characteristics to make the sound more unique.

Effects

Sidechaining

Use eq in compressor sidechain to get just the transient of the kick, click the headphones to hear the filtered sound

Using reverb with transient heavy sounds

Short Reverbs

When adding reverb to drum sounds or plucks, use a return track or a parallel channel and reduce the transient of the signal before it gets to the reverb in order to keep the original sound punchy. It’s also a good idea to apply some pre-delay to the reverb to give even more room for the initial transient to come in before the reverb kicks in. EQing out the highs and lows can also help reduce the flutter sound than can be created by the reverb.

Long reverbs

Gated reverb

put a gate on a reverb return track and lower the treshold to leave just a bit of the reverb come through. Quite useful to thicken up drums.

Resources

audio production notes

Skeleton Warrior Head

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 04 Jun 2023 00:00:00 EST

Severed head of a skeleton warrior wearing a helmet

Bonfire

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 00:00:00 EST

Sun

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 29 May 2023 00:00:00 EST

Ashes of May

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 27 May 2023 00:00:00 EST

Ashes of May by Ritual Dust

A 7-min meditative drone piece that feels like taking a stroll through a field early in the morning, just in time to see the first sun rays peek at the horizon, torch in hand, on your way to light a Bealtaine bonfire.

Originally recorded for “This Trembling Place”, a drone compilation put together by fallen lo-

Battle axe

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 26 May 2023 00:00:00 EST

Chainmail

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 21 May 2023 00:00:00 EST

Demon drinking form a horn

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 20 May 2023 00:00:00 EST

Acorn

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 19 May 2023 00:00:00 EST

Goat head

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 14 May 2023 00:00:00 EST

Exsomnis

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 04 May 2023 00:00:00 EST

Logo and sigil for the band Exsomnis.

Exsomnis logo

Sigil

Ritual Dust

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 03 May 2023 00:00:00 EST

A series of analog-processed logos for my music project.

First version of the logo

Second version of the logo

Third version of the logo

Detail of the texture of the logo

Vocal processing notes

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 02 May 2023 00:00:00 EST

Layers
Effects

Layers

Layering vocals with more takes of the same lead (called doubles), harmonies and fills creates a much richer and fuller sound giving more energy and presence to the vocals in a track.

Doubles

Doubles are two other takes of the lead melody sung in the same way with the same pitches, these are then panned all the way left and right and if needed can be chopped and ajusted to fit the rythm of the main lead. recording with a click track or the lead playing is really useful for these.

Doubles are kept quite lower in volume than the main lead and it’s good practice to cut their low end up to the fundamental frequency and dip their high end (around 5-9khz) and de-ess them pretty hard to get rid of transients and sybilans.

It helps to process these with the same or similar effects as the lead to help them blend together

Harmonies

Harmonies are either the melody sung higher or lower than the main lead or just notes without any words that harmonize well with the main melody.

long reverb and delay sounds good

panned 35 degrees left and rght

Fills

Fills (or ad libs) are shorter vocal elements that either accentuate a specific part of the lyrics by saying or singing it differently or fill in between the words of the lead, these can be really anything that adds interest to the vocals and make them more interesting. They are a good place to experiment with more intense effects too.

Tips

Use an EQ on doubles to remove some low end and high end to separate them a bit from the lead and make mixing easier
EQ the harmonies even tighter on the actual frequency that is being sung to remove a lot of unnecessary sonic information

Effects

When processing vocals with multiple layers, it’s useful to group all the secondary vocals together and apply an effects chain on the whole group while keeping the lead separate with it’s own effects chain, that way it’s less time consuming than tweaking effects on a lot of secodnary vocal tracks while still allowing to differentiate the backing vocals from the lead, the vocal chains we use are the same for both the lead and the backing vocals, their effects are just mixed differently.

All the following effect are also applied in a parallel processing way, which means that copies of the dry signal are created and the effect is applied to them fully wet. Then the level of the different copies (original dry and different effected ones) is mixed and panned to balance the presence of every effect and make the whole harmonious.

other way of pitching up vocals:

use frequency to pitch it up and automate the window
sounds nice with some dstortion and a bit of reverb

underscores vocal chain:

waves tune for autotune
shift the formant up by 1
vocal control multiband eq preset
speech enhancer multiband eq preset

1. Autotune

Autotune should always be the first effect on a track, for a lead vocal 20-50% of correction is a good place to be, for the backing vocals they can be pushed further since they are less present in the mix and we won’t hear the correction as much.

2. Compressors

In the effects rack in itself, the first effect that is applied is compression, since this is gonna be used for parallel compression we can push the compression very far with the highest ratio. It’s interesting to create two tracks with tho different compressors on them and pan them slightly (2L, 2R). Playing with the attack and release parameters also help further shape how the compressed vocals are sounding.

3. Flanger

After compression, a flanger is used to add some more stereo width to the vocals, good settings for that is a longer delay time and less feedback. This can be panned slightly to the side too.

4. Filter delay (slapback)

Then, a filter delay with only the left and right sides active is used as some kind of slapback delay. The delay times are set manually to be slightly different from each other and pretty short. Both left and right channels have a different EQ on them. This is panned opposite of the flanger.

5. Short reverb

A new track is added with a short reverb, panned to one side.

6. Long Reverb

To accompany the short reverb, a longer one is added, panned to the opposite side. Adding grit with various distortion effects can be really interesting on these reverbs.

7. 1/8 note delay

Using a regular delay, create a 1/8 note repeat, panned to one side.

8. 1/2 note delay

Same as previous but with a longer 1/2 note repeat panned to the opposite side. It’s interesting to add other effects on these delays to make it sound really different than the main vocal, anything from flanger, chorus, distortion and reverb works well.

Crisp sounding vocals

boost high frequency then de-ess

emphasis / de-emphasis saturation

boost high end, add moderate saturation and then lower the high end but less than the initial boost

plate reverb with emphasized high end

make a return track with a bright plate reverb followed by an eq that boost the hgh frequencies, send voice to it to desired amount

parallel compress the high end

create a return track, add a high pass filter cutting up to 6khz, then add an aggressive compressor, send the voice to the desired level

cut low dipped mids

cut low frequencies with an eq and dp the mids around 700hz to allow more of the high frequencies to come through

oversample when making vocals crisper

when compressing sharp vocals, use a medium attack and short release to keep transients an details

Tips

automating the mix levels of the different effects in different parts of a song can be a good way to make the vocals sound different and create a different mood in a chorus versus a verse for example.
on doubles, use quite a lot of compression to make them more uniform.
modulated delay and reverb, especially filtered down to focus on the low-midrange is really effective on doubles.

Inpathos EP illustrations

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00:00 EST

A series of 4 imaginary landscape paintings for the latest EP of Inpathos called ascension . I focussed on the symbolism of the places I depicted and the feeling they conjure in order to illustrate the different songs.

Painting of shores with high rocky cliffs and blue moonin the distance

Painting of the snowy peak of a mountain lost in the clouds

Painting of dense woods with a stream going through it, the background fading to fog

Painting for the cover of the album, a mountain pass with steep cliffs and some mountains in the distance, a branch crosses the path we're on and storm clouds are gathering overhead

Dark Fantasy Battle axe

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 00:00:00 EST

Celtic inspired dark fantasy battle axe.

Celtic inspired dark fantasy battle axe

Basilisk

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 22 Apr 2023 00:00:00 EST

Claw

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 00:00:00 EST

Illuminations Album Cover

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 EST

Painting for the cover of the second album “Illuminations” of the local dungeon synth project Aura Merlin . This second album has more of a new age, melodic ambient vibe with still some solid dungeon synth roots. It’s perfect for daydreaming or pondering the deep knowledge hidden in old illuminated medieval tomes.

The arwork for it was inspired by medieval manuscripts and the illuminations that embellishes their handwritten pages. I did quite a bit of reasearch on the iconography, the colors and the gilding techniques used back in the day to make something that felt authentic.

Illuminated painting of a large I with a heron and some trees with a castle in the background with some gold leaf details

Detail of the process of applying gold leaf to th painting

The artwork was also turned into a full design for a cassette release by Ancient Kings.

Front of the cassette case

Back of the cassette case

Inside of the sleeve

Kill the Pain props

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 19 Mar 2023 00:00:00 EST

King of the Dead

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 19 Mar 2023 00:00:00 EST

Bloodshot eyeball

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 18 Mar 2023 00:00:00 EST

Key Dagger

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 18 Mar 2023 00:00:00 EST

Horn-playing demon

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 04 Mar 2023 00:00:00 EST

Blunderbuss

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 03 Mar 2023 00:00:00 EST

Tiny fillers

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 03 Mar 2023 00:00:00 EST

Field Recording

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 21 Feb 2023 00:00:00 EST

These are my personal notes and reference for field recordings. I researched and wrote those in preparation for a trip to some neolithic sites and caves in Ireland with the goal of making recordings there and using them on my upcoming album.

Microphone on a handle, connected to a small recorder

Intro to field recordings
Techniques
Equipment
Recording Settings
Data Storage
Links

A short intro to field recordings

Field recording refers to all audio recordings performed outside of a controlled studio environment. But it’s also a lot more than that. Field recordings are commonly used as foley in movies or for sound effects in games and other medias, or made for research and scientific purposes, but the use and practice i’m more interested in is one that was pioneered in the 1940’s with music concrète and grew in popularity during the 70’s: field recordings as an art form and for use in music and other forms of art.

When approached through an artistic lens, field recordings become a way to take an imprint of a space or a landscape, to record its acoustic ecology . Not unlike a landscape painter or photographer, a recordist can create an image of a landscape and capture the ambience created by the land and it’s living inhabithants, it’s weather filtered through the artistic choices made with microphone placement, length of recording, mixing and futher processing of the sound.

More recently, interesting interesctions between field recording and other fields of study have been cropping up like archaeoacoustics which is interested in the sonic qualities of archeological sites and the experimental recreation of pre-historic soundscapes. This is usually done in a scientific context with precise measuring and sound emitting devices but I find it really interesting to approach as an artist as part of a creative exploration of the layers of history imbued in a landscape.

A great little video on different musicians and their approach of field recordings

Here are some contemporary musicians working with field recordings:

Techniques

Field recording techniques refer to the different arrangements and placement of microphones in relation to each other and to the sound that is captured in order to achieve different effects in the final recording.

Single microphone

The simplest way to do field recording is using a single microphone, be it a directional or omnidirectional one. This is usefull when trying to capture more precise sounds without necessarily having a lot of the ambient noise coming in the recording.

X/Y

X/Y is the most commonly used recording technique, it involves a matched pair of omnidirectional microphones spaced a couple inches apart. It aims recreate the way our ears pick up sounds and simulate a stereo space by the delay by which a sound gets to one microphone versus the other.

M/S

One of the disadvantages of the X/Y technique is that there is no way to adjust the wideness of the recording acter the fact, the M/S approach allows that. In this arrangement a directional microphone is combined with an omnidirectional (or bidirectional) microphone allowing to focus the recording on a specific area but to also record the overall soundscape and then mix these two sources at varying levels after the fact.

ORTF

The capsules of the microphones are placed 17 cm apart and at a 110 degree angle between each other.

Other techniques

Along with these techniques, new approaches and experimental microphones are more and more used for field recordings. These include stuff like hydrophones (designed to record under water), parabolic microphones (allowing to focus on a very precise point), contact microphones (which are attached directly to a surface), EMF microphones (which record electro-magnetic fields) and geophone (microphone that captures vibrations in material and soil).

Equipment

Starting a field recording practice does not require any specific equipemtn other than a recording device equiped with a microphone. A phone works perfectly well for that purpose. It becomes interesting to get more sensitive microphones and microphones who can capture a wider stereo image of a place if one is interested in recording more subtle or spatial sounds. At the end of the day, the act of going out onto the field, listening actively and recording is much more important than which gear is used for it.

Microphones

Microphones come in different types and sizes for different applications. For field recording the most desired quality of a microphone is it’s sensitivity, in order to be able to capture the tiniest details of a soundscape. For that reason condenser microphones are the go to.

But even in condenser microphones there is a wide array of potential microphones to choose from. Knowing the kind of sound and for which final application you’re recording them can help narrow down that selection. For immersive soundscapes with a very wide stereo field, a pair of omnidirectional microphones or even a single omnidirectional microphone is a great choice. They allow to capture sounds from all around the microphone and if using a pair of them, place them more clearly in the stereo field.

Recorders

The improvements brought to the quality of a recording by the preamps and the recording device itself versus the microphones is almost negligeable. Using high quality microphones with a cheap recorder will yield a way better result than recording with cheap microphones on an expensive recorder.

Power

A large enough and reliable power source is a must have for field recording, especially if you’re trying to record long multi-hour soundscapes and ambiences. Battery banks are a good option, they usually have one or more usb output that can power the recorder for many hours. The microphones themselves are usually powered by phantom power coming from the recorder if they are condenser types.

Accessories

Some useful accessories to include to a field recording kit:

Wind protection

Wind protection takes the form of foam or fur covers that goes over microphone and protects them from gusts of wind which can create a lot of noise and clipping in a recording.

Handle / tripod / monopod

Basically a support for the microphones allowing them to be held securely in a fixed location or moved around without disturbing them and creating additional noise. Tripod and monopods can also be extended to reach things that would otherwise be hard to record.

Headphones

Used to monitor the sound recorded into the recorder, it’s especially useful when setting up levels initially. It’s also great to be able to hear some of the more subtle sounds being recorded amplified through headphones, it can lead to the discovery of interesting sound that would otherwise have been hard to notice.

Recording Settings

Bit depth

Depending on your recorder you’ll be presented with 2 or 3 different bit depth options when configuring a recording: 16, 24 or 32 bits. What this essentially represents is how much dynamic range (or nuance between levels of volume) the recorder is going to pick up and record. A higher bit depth will give more dB of dynamic range which is gonna allow for quiter and louder sounds to be recorded without the quiet ones being lost in the noise floor or the loud ones clipping.

Levels

Data storage

Most recorders have the option of recording directly into a SD card which is great because SD cards with larger capacity are available now and take very little space to store and bring to a location.

Average recording times for different SD card sizes at 24bit:

2 GB - 4 hours
32 GB - 64 hours

As a common rule, one track of 24 bit 48kHz is about half a gigabyte per hour.

Links and resources

Tombstone

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 18 Feb 2023 00:00:00 EST

Broken dagger

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 00:00:00 EST

L'appel du vide

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 00:00:00 EST

Album Illustration for Andy Aquarius

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 00:00:00 EST

A small symbol illustration of an harp and a sword drawn for Andy Aquarius .

A small symbol illustration of an harp and a sword

Symbol on the cover of the Holy Rude vinyl album

Film look on digital

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 00:00:00 EST

Shooting settings:

24 fps
1/48 or 1/50 shutter speed
picture settings -> sharpness to lower setting
f2.8 minimum

Grading steps:

add grain
lift midtones
make sure shadows are not totally black
bring highlights towards magenta
bring midtones towards green / yellow
add a flicker layer with overlay blend mode
Add halation
add a slight vignette

Links and resources

Cineprint

Goblin Week 2023

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 00:00:00 EST

Goblin woman with armor and a polearm

Goblin faces and details

Goblin chariot

Goblin sitting in the forest and contemplating a mushroom

Kludged together goblin weapon

Goblin shield with grinning moon

Belladona

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 00:00:00 EST

Traverse the Nightmare Fog

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 00:00:00 EST

Thick fog was rising from the ground like in a victorian gothic story.

An old brick school with a row of trees disappearing in the fog

Trees vaguely visible in the fog

Trees and a pointy roof vaguely visible in the fog

Headlights shining on a street drenched in fog

Large tree with smaller ones slowly fading in the distance

Path in a fog covered park

Church visible in the distant fog, with leafless trees in the foreground

Tortured tree against a fog backdrop

Church steeple with some branches

Old church in the fog

Large brick school with low rolling fog and a tree in the foreground

Fenced area in a park covered in fog

Oak Leaf

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 00:00:00 EST

Chainmail

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 00:00:00 EST

Rock drawings

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 00:00:00 EST

Ephemeral rock drawings done in different locations and times.

Beholder

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 00:00:00 EST

Fantasy Battle axe

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 00:00:00 EST

Old-school fantasy battle axe

Details of the axe

Black Metal December 2022

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 00:00:00 EST

Black metal logos and symbols a day during the month of December.

Arcane

Chaux Vive

Grim

Cairn

Sigil

Eternal Flame

Lucifer Sigil

ACAB

Trolls & Goblins

Katabasis

Abysmal

Elder Sign

No AI

Solstice

The Hookups

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 00:00:00 EST

Death metal style logo for the psych surf rock band The Hookups.

The Hookups death metal logo

To the otherworld

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 20 Nov 2022 00:00:00 EST

A ghostly fox leading you to the otherworld. Foxholes are considered doors to the otherworld in irish folklore.

Linocut on paper, 4.5" x 10" - 2022

Join my monthly print club

To the otherworld limited edition linocut print

Small original linocut print, made in an edition of 28, numbered and signed, printed on locally made paper

45$ CAD

Mushrooms

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 00:00:00 EST

Amanita muscaria mushrooms

Growth

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 00:00:00 EST

Woodcut-style tattoo based off on one of my linocuts.

Wolf man

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 00:00:00 EST

“L’homme est un loup pour l’homme”

Woodcut-style tattoo inspired by this ancient saying and medieval illustrations.

Voidxwitch

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 00:00:00 EST

Cemetery Walk Samhain 2022

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 00:00:00 EST

On the eve of Samhain we ventured out at the end of the day to go visit the ruin of the Calvin Presbyterian Church and it’s cemetery in the small rural town of Saint-Anicet in Quebec. The whole place was surprisingly well maintained (compared to how it looked in 2002) and contained a wealth of ancient tombstones.

The church was once part of a settlement comprised of people with French, Irish, and Scottish heritage called Godmanchester Village created in the 1820’s which only survived around 30 years and was then abandoned.

The whole place was amazingly peaceful and we witnessed a great sunset bathing the stones in a warm light.

View inside the ruined church

A broken gravestone

A willow detail on a gravestone

A broken gravestone with a masonic symbol

A book detail on a gravestone

A gravestone with some kind of orange moss on it

Hex walking amongst the ruins

Very old grave lying on the ground

Shattered gravestone

More gravestone details

Small stone inscribed with just the word mother

My hand resting on the small praying bench

The sky at dusk over the cemetery

Fantômes issue 2 cover

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 00:00:00 EST

Pen and ink illustration of a gothic cemetery scene for the upcoming 2nd issue of my ghost story and haunting images zine Fantômes .

Pen and ink illustration of a cemetery with a large iron gate, a lantern on one of the gate pillars, plenty of tombstones in the distance and a victorian house in the distance

Illustration in context on the cover of the zine with some text on the back and the logo on the front

Hekate

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 00:00:00 EST

Woodcut-style tattoo based off on one of my linocuts.

Cemetery Walk October 2022

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 08 Oct 2022 00:00:00 EST

A collapsing crypt

A mystery bone

Leaf-covered steps

A mysterious figure walking towards the horizon

Me standing in an archway

An abandoned spiderweb

Mysterious figure amongst the graves

The sun shining through the leaves

Colors turning in the canopy

A lonely wooden cross

Hex squatting in the long grass

Broken cross on the long grass

Hex lying down amongst the forgotten

Me enjoying the warm sun

Another lonely cross

Me with some trees in the background

Winter Lantern t-shirt illustration

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 00:00:00 EST

Eldritch ink illustration made for the band Inpathos. This was made for a t-shirt design, I channelled lovecraftian horror and the aesthethics of the game Bloodborne in there.

Bealtaine

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 17 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EST

Bealtaine (or Belltaine in Old Irish), which means “the month of May” or “the month of the beacon-fire” is an ancient Celtic festival and celebration that takes place on May 1st in the northern hemisphere. Beltane marks the first day of summer and the beginning of the pastoral season, when livestock would be driven out to their summer pastures.

Beannaich, a Thrianailt fhioir nach gann, (Bless, O Threefold true and bountiful,) Mi fein, mo cheile agus mo chlann, (Myself, my spouse and my children,) Mo chlann mhaoth’s am mathair chaomh ‘n an ceann, (My tender children and their beloved mother at their head,) Air chlar chubhr nan raon, air airidh chaon nam beann, (On the fragrant plain, at the gay mountain sheiling,) Air chlar chubhr nan raon, air airidh chaon nam beann. (On the fragrant plain, at the gay mountain sheiling.)

Gach ni na m’ fhardaich, no ta ‘na m’ shealbh, (Everything within my dwelling or in my possession,) Gach buar is barr, gach tan is tealbh, (All kine and crops, all flocks and corn,) Bho Oidhche Shamhna chon Oidhche Bheallt, (From Hallow Eve to Beltane Eve,) Piseach maith, agus beannachd mallt, (With goodly progress and gentle blessing,) Bho mhuir, gu muir, agus bun gach allt, (From sea to sea, and every river mouth,) Bho thonn gu tonn, agus bonn gach steallt. (From wave to wave, and base of waterfall.) - Am Beannachadh Bealltain (‘The Beltane Blessing’), collected by folklorist Alexander Carmichael in South Uist

Rituals and traditions

Lighting of bonfires

All hearth fires in the town or village were doused before lighting the sacred bonfire. In order to make this sacred fire more potent it was to be kindled by friction between two wood pieces, using a wood drill or fire churn. The flames coming from this fire protect against sickness, supernatural harm and witchcraft. Torches lit from the bonfire would be brought back to every household and used to light the hearth fire again. When the bonfire would die, people would gather the ashes and sprinkle themselves, their cattle and their crops with them.

Often two bonfires were lit pretty close to each other and cattle was driven between them to ensure their good health for the coming season.

May bush

Decorated bush put outside of a home or in a communal area, commonly made of hawthron and decorated with ribbons, flowers and tinsels.

Dancing up the sun

Morris dancers get out in the fields in the night before Bealtaine to perform a dance supposed to help the sun rise again and bring on this new cycle of the year.

Maypole

Associations

Symbols: flowers, green branches, fire
Colors: Yellow
Herbs and plants: may flowers
Trees: hawthorne

Links and references

Earrach

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 17 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EST

Earrach marks the spring equinox, the balance of day and night. It is celebrated on March 20th in the northern hemisphere.

Associations

Symbols:
Colors:
Herbs and plants:
Trees:

Links and references

Fómhar

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 17 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EST

Fómhar marks the balance of night and day, the autumn equinox. This festival is celebrated on September 22 in the northern hemisphere. The name comes from Middle Irish fogamur‎ (“harvest”) and from Old Irish for autumn.

It is a time to mark the start of the harvest season.

Associations

Symbols:
Colors:
Herbs and plants:
Trees:

Links and references

Gheimhreadh

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 17 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EST

Gheimhreadh marks the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. It is celebrated on December 21st in the northern hemisphere.

Associations

Symbols:
Colors:
Herbs and plants:
Trees:

Links and references

Lúnasa

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 17 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EST

Lúnasa (which means “the month of august”) is an ancient Celtic festival and celebration that takes place on August 1st in the northern hemisphere. Lúnasa marks the beginning of the harvest season.

This festival is associated with the old god Lugh.

Associations

Symbols:
Colors:
Herbs and plants:
Trees:

Links and references

Samhain

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 17 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EST

Samhain (which probably comes from the Old Irish samfuin, meaning “death of Summer”) is an ancient Celtic festival and celebration that takes place on October 31st in the northern hemisphere. Samhain is a feast that marks the end of the harvest and the beginning of the winter half of the year.

Samhain is one of the fire festivals, at which large bonfires were (and sometimes are still) lit. Around them, great gatherings and feasts were held in celebration.

It also marks a very liminal time of the year, one during which the veil between this world and the otherworld is very thin, allowing all kinds of spirits to pass through more easily. In ancient times in Ireland, Neolithic passage tombs (some of which were aligned with the sunrise on the morning of Samhain) were open during Samhain.

It is custom to give offerings of food and drink to the spirits on Samhain to appease them and to help ensure that people and livestock survive the winter to come.

Making of Parshells to protect the home

One of the traditions surrounding Samhain in Ireland is the making of Parshells, a cross with equal branches made out of sticks and straw.

The two sticks are laid on top of each other at a right angle, then straw is woven between the sticks, going clockwise and ending before reaching the ends of the cross.

When hanging the new cross, you would recite the following:

“An donas amach,
Is an sonas isteach,
Ó anocht go dtí bliain ó anocht”.

Meaning
“Misfortune/ill-luck out,
Happiness/good-luck in,
From this night until a year from tonight”.

A new parshell is made every year on Samhain and replaces the one made the year prior. When taking down the old cross you had to say “Fan istigh ar an Sídhe” in order for it to retain some of its potency. This meant “Stay inside on account of the fairies”

Ancient monuments associated with it

The Grange stone circle

The Grange stone circle in County Limerick is thought to have been built in alignment with the sunset at Samhain.

Associations

Symbols:
Colors:
Herbs and plants:
Trees:

Links and references

Grange stone circle

Samhradh

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 17 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EST

Samhradh (which translates to summer) marks midsummer, the summer solstice and the longest day of the year and the time when the sun is in it’s highest position in the sky. It is celebrated on or around June 20th in the northern hemisphere. In Ireland, it was overshadowed by St-John’s eve or bonfire night over the years.

Rituals and traditions

Lighting of bonfires

Bonfires were lit at night of Samradh, from these bonfires, burning branches (or sometimes ashes or coals) were brought into the fields that were planted that year and scattered there to help the crops yield a good harvest. Bones could be thrown in the fire as an offering.

Often two bonfires were lit pretty close to each other and cattle was driven between them to ensure their good health for the coming season.

Ancient monuments associated with it

The Grange stone circle

The Grange stone circle in County Limerick is thought to have been built in alignment with the rising sun at Samhradh.

Associations

Symbols: the sun
Colors:
Herbs and plants:
Trees:

Links and references

Ossuary Wraith T-shirt Design

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EST

A large ink illustration made for the band Ossuary Wraith , designed for their merch. The frame also contains their logo which I also designed, see more details about it .

Passager lettering

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EST

Decay

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EST

The forth of my monthly print club, is complementary to the first one, decay and growth working together in an endless cycle, just in time for the coming of death season.

Linocut on paper, 3" x 5" - 2022

Join my monthly print club

Decay limited edition linocut print

Small original linocut print, made in an edition of 28, numbered and signed, printed on locally made paper

45$ CAD

Cottage restoration

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 11 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EST

Derelict cottage in the Irish landscape

Glossary
Finding a cottage
Inspection and survey
Planning
Walls
Floors
Roof
Windows and doors
Heating
Resources

I’m building this page to collect my notes, research and resources on the restoration of traditional Irish cottages. It is a project I’m planning to do with some help in the future when we move to Ireland so I’m doing a lot of prep and research work in advance to be ready when we get to it.

I have experience in woodworking and carpentry but none in stonework, plaster and lime work or any other trade involved in the building and restoration of old homes but I plan on learning some of them as I go and collaborate with trained craftspeople for more critical matters.

Glossary of terms

FLAGSTONE

; Large slabs of generic flat stone that naturally splits into layers. Commonly used to roofs (1 inch thick) and floors (2 inch thick).

LIME

; A type of mineral used as a mortar or a finish on stone buildings. The word lime originates with its earliest use as building mortar and has the sense of sticking or adhering.

LIME RENDER

; A lime render is a succession of coats of lime applied to a surface.

LIME WASH

; A lime wash is a thin coat of lime (tinted or not) applied to a surface, most commonly walls.

POINTING

; The action of filling the gaps between stones in a wall with some kind of mortar

Finding a cottage

The first step of this kind of project is finding the right cottage. There is plenty of them up for sale currently in different parts of Ireland, mostly in rural areas. You can find some in a states of disrepair, from needing a bit of finishing work to needing to be entirely rebuilt from a ruined state.

These two extremes and everything in between have some pros and cons. Getting a derelict cottage or a ruin will often be a lot cheaper, but necessitate enormous amounts of specialized work to be brought back to life. On the other hand, a good looking and inhabitable cottage can provide a good base for a restoration, or hide bad renovation choices and hidden problems that need to be dealt with (see the Irish farmhouse restoration blog ).

A good website to look for old cottages in Ireland is daft.ie

Buying a rural site in Ireland

Inspection and survey

This is the step for which I have the least information for now. It is definitely a very important step and one for which selecting a trusted and competent professional is crucial. The report that will come from this inspection guiding the planning and priorities of the restoration.

Planning

Once planning permission has been acquired and the cottage has been well inspected in order to have a clear picture of it’s current state, the time for planning the restoration work has come. This part is crucial and many factors come into it. One thing being the time that every step will take, including the setting and drying times (which can be calculated in months) and whether the climate and weather of the season allows for the type of work to be performed.

One thing to keep in mind when renovating a derelict cottage, or even just one in bad shape is living acomodations and storage space. Since often the cottage cannot be inhabited right away and needs extensive work, it won’t be possible to both live in it and renovate it. So it’s quite important to plan a good solution that will be adapated to the climate (i.e. really wet and cold winter in my case). Storage is also quite important, since the cottage might not be able to provide that either for tools and material that are gonna be needed in the project. Options here are renting some kind of container storage, or renovating an outbuilding.

Walls

The walls of cottages were commonly made out of stone or mud reinforced with straw and other material and then covered with a lime render. The walls are usually around 24" thick without any kind of insulation, the stones or dirt acting as some kind of damper for the cold / warmth.

Stone walls were made of local stone, fitted together and then pointed with lime mortar . After the pointing, which effectively smooths the surface of the wall between the stones, preventing water accumulation in what would otherwise be crevices, the walls are coated with around 4 coats of lime render (which can be tinted of different colors). The lime render is very characteristic of Irish cottages, as opposed to a lime wash

Using lime for this process of filling the gaps is important as it allows air and moisture to pass through the walls. When restoring old stone walls it is usually necessary to chisel out the old mortar which usually will have mostly crumbled away and to replace it with new lime mortar.

Sometimes stone walls were covered in concrete during the 60s and 70s, possibly in an attempt to lower maintenance of the external walls. This causes problems, since concrete does not breathe like stone and lime does, trapping moisture inside the walls and allowing it to spread to internal wooden structures, causing damp, rot and mold problems. This can be addressed by removing the concrete render on the outside first to allow moisture to escape.

Then, if a similar concrete render has been done on the inside, it can be removed at the bottom of walls (up to 2-3 feet) to allow more moisture to escape, it’s also a good idea to inspect the floor boards and beams at that point and if they are rotted, cut off a foot off the floor boards close to the walls to allow for more evaporation. It is always a good idea to get rid of all the concrete covering the stone on the inside and replacing it with a lime plater, there is multiple types of lime plaster available, some of them with additional insulating properties, which can help make the home warmer without building modern insulated walls on top of the original stone walls.

A note on insulation: contrary to modern best practices, in a house with stone walls that are 2 feet thick, the main source of insulation is the thermal mass provided by the thick stone and lime. Adding some extra membranes or insulation boards on the inside won’t do much of a difference but will definitely be very costly (because once again, this insulation material has to be breathable).

Floors

A lot of cottages had packed mud floors when they were initially built, other had large flagstones laid on top of the dirt.

More recently, a lot of those old cottages had a concrete floor poured inside of them to make a more level and isolated floor.

Nowadays, more options are available in terms of flooring, including some that allow for better breathing, allowing moisture out. One of these options is called limecrete, basically some form of concrete made with lime.

Roof

Traditionally a lot of the stone cottages built in Ireland had tatched roofs made with overlapping layers of straw (usually wheat, water reed or flax depending on the location). These layers are laid on rods of hazel and willow and pinned using various methods. Tatched roofs can last more than 30 years but the top ridge must be replace every 10-15 years since it wears out faster than the rest.

Stone or slate was also used for roofing in particularly rocky areas of Ireland, this method is extremely durable and if well put together and maintained can last for the life of the cottage.

In more recent years, a lot of these traditional cottages had their tatched roofs replaced by corrugated iron for cost reasons. They look quite bad usually and don’t last nearly as long as the other options, especially in a rainy place like Ireland.

Windows and doors

Irish cottages usually have very few (small) windows. My guess is that it made the house easier to keep warm during winter, the price of glass must have been prohibitive and also, because of the tax on windows .

The window frames themselves were usually made of wood and coated with linseed paint. Some of them were replaced with newer wooden frames coated in acrylic paint or even worse, by plastic window frames over the years. Window frames on Irish cottages are succeptible to the same problems as the walls, especially if the walls were rendered with concrete: they can trap moisture and rot. The reason why window frames were painted with linseed paint back in the day was that linseed paint allows for breathing compared to acrylic paint or plastic.

I plan on using old wooden double sash windows. There is a couple reasons for going with these over modern windows, first they can be found quite easily at architectural salvage companies for a fraction of the price than new windows (they will need to be custom built for a stone cottage because of the non-standard window holes). Old wood windows when maintained also proved to last over 100 years, which is quite a bit more than the usual 20 to 30 years a new window lasts. Another very practical reason for this kind of purpose build windows is that on traditional Irish cottages, the holes for the windows aren’t of any standard size and windows have to be custom made to fit.

They are also quite energy efficient when used correctly even compared to modern aluminium or vinyl windows. Victorian double sash windows were designed to create air convection, meaning that in summer, an opening is created at the bottom and top of the window allowing cool air to come in from the bottom and hot air to come out of the top, basically acting as passive air conditioning. In addition to that, windows would have removable screens and storms (glass panes), the screens would be put in place in the summer to keep bugs out and in winter they would be replaced by the storms, effectively creating more isolation by having two glass panels with air in between.

Sash window on Wikipedia

As for doors, there was different arrangements possible depending on the locality where the house was built. The front door usually faced south and some cottages had one door on each side.

Note on linseed paint: this paint is usually applied on a primer that's 50% percent oil. It's best to apply it in light coats and allow it to dry properly before applying a new coat. Contrary to water-based paints, it dries with UV light, so UV lamps can be used to speed up the drying process (which at worse can take a couple months).

Waste management

Cottages in rural areas in Ireland are rarely connected to a sewer system and will need a septic tank. Counties usually have pretty strict rules on the design and installation of these and installing a new one will require planning permission, so it’s an important thing to plan for.

Heating

Wood and peat burning in an open hearth was the traditional way of keeping cottages warm and fight the ever-encroaching dampness. Cottages were usually built with one or more large fireplaces, either on the ends or in the middle. Since there was no insulation and open fireplaces are not particularly efficient at heating up spaces it must have been quite cold still in these homes in the winter months, forcing people to gather around the hearth, cover themselves in blankets and tell stories.

Resources

Knowledge bases and books

Knowledge base of the SPAB
Heritage House
Irish cottage history
The Warm Dry Home
The Timeless Way of Building, Christopher W. Alexander
A Pattern Language, Christopher W. Alexander
Drawing for Architecture, Leon Krier
Get Your House Right, Marianne Cusato

Build logs and blogs

Builders and craftspeople

Workshops and training

nbhs traditional buildng skills workshops

Trans demon with sword

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EST

Hellboy symbol

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 02 Sep 2022 00:00:00 EST

Henbane

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 00:00:00 EST

The third print of my monthly print club, a henbane plant, one of the psychoactive plants used by witches in their flying ointment.

Linocut on paper, 3" x 5" - 2022

Join my monthly print club

Henbane limited edition linocut print

Small original linocut print, made in an edition of 24, numbered and signed, printed on locally made paper

45$ CAD

Ontario woods

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 00:00:00 EST

Photos from a some time in the backwoods of ontario.

Really sharp shadow of a fern on a mossy rock

Mossy stone cliff in patchy light

Eroded stones in the woods with sunlight filtering through leaves

Large stone in the woods with a tree growing on top

Mycelium covering a dead branch

Another angle of the mossy stone cliff

Sun symbol scribed on a very mossy rock

Small green and purple berries

Dead wood with a circular hole through it

Large chewed bone

Light green fern leaves

Skeleton Chest Piece

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 00:00:00 EST

Hekate

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 30 Jul 2022 00:00:00 EST

Second print of my monthly print club, the key to the underworld and the snake, two symbols of Hekate, the goddess of boundaries, the underworld and witchcraft.

Linocut on paper, 3" x 5" - 2022

Join my monthly print club

Hekate limited edition linocut print

Small original linocut print, made in an edition of 30, numbered and signed, printed on locally made paper

45$ CAD

Are you ok?

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 28 Jul 2022 00:00:00 EST

Music video / ritual performance for the first song released by Voidxwitch , titled “are you ok?”. Shot in one night after a storm in rural Quebec.

We took plenty of inspiration from witchhouse and traumacore while developing visuals that are unique to Hex’s project. Most of the shots were lit with a light mounted on the camera to emulate old-school camcorders like the one used in Blair Witch, we also shot the whole thing handheld to be able to follow the movements of Hex during the performance and add some nice camera shake. The whole thing was shot in digital but was processed to resemble a video playing back from a VHS.

All the illustrations and the typography were hand-drawn and animated with a low frame rate for that imperfect wonkyness.

Credits and details

Direction / Performance / Outfits

Hex Evans

Photography / Editing / Illustrations

Lizbeth Poirier

Shot handheld on the Sony A6300 with a 24mm prime lens
Edited and color graded in DaVinci Resolve

Beholder

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 00:00:00 EST

Classic DnD beholder

Noise Show Flyer

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 00:00:00 EST

Flyer for an underground noise show in the Mile End of Montreal which we attended as Blood and Dust.

Flyer for a noise show

Return of the Repressed Poster

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 00:00:00 EST

Poster design for Blood and Dust , inspired by horror movie posters. The main typography fro the title was done by hand. The photo features Hex .

Poster design for Blood and Dust

Detail of the typography

Detail of the photo and texture

Detail of the bottom details

Preparing for your tattoo session

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 00:00:00 EST

The week before
The day before
The day of

The week before

Drink plenty of water and stay hydrated, this will help your skin be in better condition for tattooing and heal better. Moisturize your skin regularly to keep it in its optimal condition.

The day before

Shave the general area where you want your tattoo while being careful not to break or cut the skin since damaged skin cannot be tattooed and has to heal before.
If you usually wax, do it a couple days before your tattoo to allow your skin to heal from the waxing process before getting tattooed.
Get a good night’s sleep before your session, eat well and avoid alcohol and drugs so you’re well rested for your tattoo. The pain is usually lower if you’re not tired or hungry.

The day of

Don’t moisturize your skin the day you get your tattoo since that can impact the stencil.
Put on clothes that make exposing the area you’re getting tattooed easy while still making your comfortable, here’s a little guide to help you choose the best clothing based on your tattoo placement: What to wear to your tattoo session
Bring water and snacks, especially if it’s gonna be a long session. You can also bring music and headphones to distract you during the process.
Bring a comfortable mask, I’m more comfortable with both of us wearing masks during the tattoo sessions.

Quill and ink sketches

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 10 Jul 2022 00:00:00 EST

The beast of the Gevaudan

The King of the Dead

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 10 Jul 2022 00:00:00 EST

Portrait practice of the King of the Dead from Lord of the Rings.

The King of the Dead who haunts the paths of the dead

Mixing notes

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 02 Jul 2022 00:00:00 EST

mixing process
focussed listening
midrange-focussed mixing

The Mixing Process

Organization

Tips

Group all related tracks together (drums, voice, synths, etc.) and color-code them.
Name all the tracks in a way that makes it easier to find what is what.
Remove all unused tracks and sounds.

Volume

Overall volume balancing

Starting with the main tracks and working down from there, set the relative volume of the tracks. It’s usually preferable to bring things down than up most of the time, even if that mean bringing down everything to keep one track at it’s current level and being more prominent.

If necessary, automate the volume of tracks in some parts of the song to leave room for other elements. For example, in a verse drums can be quieter and then come back louder for the chorus.

Tips

put the whole song in mono while doing that step to prevent being skewed by perceived loudness of very wide sounds
Try to keep between -3db to -10db of headroom for mastering.
Having a little bit of compression and a limiter on the master bus when mixing can help get a better feel of how it’s gonna sit in the mastered track.
Increasing the volume of some tracks slowly during buildups is really effective.
Having a little bit of silence before a drop makes it sound more impactful.
in ableton, select a track, then press CMD+A and then you can adjust all volume levels at the same time

Compression

Compression turns down the volume of a track every time the sound exceed a certain level (threshold) The ratio is the amount that is turned down. For example, threshold at -16db and ratio at 2:1, every time the sound goes over -16db, the extra volume is gonna be reduced by half. The Attack sets amount of time after threshold is exceeded for the compression to happen. The release is how long it takes after compression has happened before volume gets back to it’s initial level. And finally, makeup gain compensates for the loss of volume after compression.

Compression ratios:

2:1 gentle
4:1 standard
8:1 aggressive
20:1 limiting

Use compression to make sounds / tracks more even in volume over time (starting with -20db of compression is a good start) and then play around with different ratios. If a song has a lot of little sounds on different track for a section and they should be mixed in a similar way, grouping them and then compressing the group is a good way to get started with that.

Parallel compression, to keep the original dynamics of the sound in addition to a more punchy compressed version, can be combined with full wet compression on a same track depending on the effect desired.

Tips

start with the kick and then compress the other elements by order of importance, ending up with the high percussion last
Sidechain a lot of the elements of the song to the kick, either individually or through grouping them and then side-chaining.
If some tracks are really filtered it can be good to add a compressor on them to compensate for the loss of volume due to filtering.
Put compression on drum groups to glue them together
longer release and shorter attack makes thing more punchy

Panning and stereo field

There’s multiple ways to move different sounds in the stereo field in order to make them more interesting or to separate them to make a mix clearer. The simplest of them is to lower the volume on one channel and increase it on the other channel, that’s what usually panning knobs in different DAWs do.

Another method is called Haas panning, it uses delay to change the perceived position of a sound while still having the same volume on both channels. It works by adding a very short delay to one of the channels (usually around 30ms).

A third way is pan using EQ to change the stereo image of a sound. It works by applying different EQs on the two channels, for example having the left one be brighter and the right one be darker.

A last method that is more subtle but can make sounds more wide is using compression on only one of the channels.

Tips

Using headphones for this part is really useful.
Bass elements should be mono.
Keep reverb stereo.
Pan different tracks to create a wider stereo field.
In drops, keep most important tracks mostly in the center.
Ping pong delay is also a good way to make a track more wide.
Having the lead a bit more to one side and the chords a bit more to the opposite side can make them clearer.
Animating the panning on some element can make it more interesting.

Equalization

Remove the low end of everything that’s not bass or a kick drum to prevent muddiness (that can include effects sends like reverbs and delays). To know where to start the low cut, check the lowest note played by that instrument.

check for conflicting frequencies and either pan them apart or boost / cut different frequencies for both sounds so they compete less. As with volume, it’s usually best to cut more frequencies than to boost them to create more room.

Tips

EQ reverbs so they don’t add mud in the low and high end
Punchy kicks: scoop down at 200hz, then compress with a medium attack and a quick release.
Identify and remove unwanted harmonics with a high Q point in an EQ plugin.

Double checking the mix

It’s good to do the mix itself on a good set of monitors but it’s also really useful to test it out on headphones and other types of speakers during and at the end of the process (trying it out in the car is a classic test).

Exporting the stems

Once the mix is good, it is time to export the stems for mastering. I usually create a new folder called “[name of song] - stems (x bpm)”. Before exporting the tracks i make sure that no track is soloed or deactivated. I export all tracks at a sample rate of 44100Hz, in WAV format, making sure to include the return and master effects (with nothing on the master bus).

Focussed listening

Put on some music and listen deeply to the balance of the different elements, how they are panned, what are the supporting elements in the background of the song doing, etc.

Midrange-focussed mixing

200hz < — > 4khz

Try accomplishing most of your mixing goals while staying in that frequency range, then at the end make changes on the lower and higher end if needed. This can help a lot with the perceived volume of the track.

VOIDXWITCH

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 EST

I made this logo for VOIDXWITCH based on a scribbled text they made. The concept was to play around with some angry but childlike drawing style and the void tearing at it.

Scribbled logo in white on black

Voidxwitch logo in use in their first music video

Pluto symbol

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 00:00:00 EST

Cuisinons avec amour

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 00:00:00 EST

Lettering for a t-shirt design for a group of cooks.

Cuisinons avec amour lettering with a small heart-shaped vegetable on top

Relief printmaking

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 00:00:00 EST

Relief printing or print-making is a really old technique used to reproduce images. Its history goes back to around 500BC with Egyptians using it to print on fabric and later on seals carved out of stone by ancient Chinese people. It has been used to illustrate books for a good chunk of history before photolithographic processes replaced it.

It is one of the simplest method of image reproduction and doesn’t require much specialized tools (unlike lithography or screen printing for example) which makes it perfect for people who want to start experimenting with print making.

I’ve learned multiple relief printmaking techniques when studying fine arts at university a couple of years ago, the knowledge collected in this little guide comes from experiments I did back then, insights my teachers and technicians shared with me (the technicians especially are goldmines of information) and further learning I did by myself since then.

Principle
Tools
Preparing the block
Transferring the image
Carving the block
Setting up registration
Preparing the paper
Printing the image
Drying the prints
References

The principle

Relief printing is a way to make multiple copies of an images using a block or plate that is carved, inked and then run through a press to transfer the image onto a piece of paper. It works in a similar way to a stamp in that the image will be reversed once printed and only the raised parts of the block will print, the lines and shapes that were carved leaving the white of the paper.

The tools

Brayers are used to ink the blocks when printing, they are made of a medium density rubber and come in all kind of sizes, it’s usually best to get a brayer that is of a similar width as the block you’re printing to prevent having to make multiple passes side by side, however if none is available a smaller brayer will still do the job.

Gouges are round carving tools of different diameters, they are used to clear out sections or cut larger channels with rounded ends. They are also useful to create circles.

Straight chisels are used to cut out very small details or to mark an ending point when working with gouges so that they don’t take out more than is desired (this is especially true when working with wood since there is a tendency for the wood to keep lifting when cutting along the grain).

V-tools are the main tools I use to create lines and define the outline of shapes due to their precision and varying width (the more you push the tool in the block, the wider the line becomes).

An Ink plate is a very flat, non-porous surface on which the printing is is spread and rolled with the brayer, a cheap way to make one is to tape a pane of glass to some wood or plywood.

The carving process

Preparing the block

The first step is preparing the block (wood or linoleum in this case) into which you’ll be carving your image.

If you’re using lino, one thing that you can do to make the block easier to handle and stay flat during printing (especially if working at a bigger size) is to glue the lino onto a piece of plywood of the same size or slightly larger. This will also come in handy in the registration process as you’ll see later.

If you’re working with wood, it’s very important that the block be perfectly flat, of even thickness and not warped in any way, that way the image will be transferred evenly when printing (this is less critical if printing by rubbing by hand).

Additionally, you can paint the block black before starting to carve to help you see what the positive and negative image will end up looking like since the carved parts be lighter than the raised ones.

Transferring the image

Once your block is prepared it is time to transfer your image to it as a reference for carving. Alternatively you could draw directly on your block (taking into account that the image will be reversed) and get a surprise when printing, this feels similar to doing film photography in that sense.

But if you already have an image drawn for your block, here is a couple ways to transfer it to the wood or lino.

The carbon paper method

This is the simplest method and works well for relatively simple drawings. First scan your drawing and flip it in whatever image editing software you’re using. Then print it the same size that you want your print to be. Layer your block, a sheet of carbon paper with the carbon side facing the block, and your drawing, tape them together at the edges and carefully trace the outlines of your drawing with a ballpoint pen while applying good pressure. From time to time you can un-tape one or two sides and lift the sheets to see if you haven’t missed any lines.

The toner transfer method

Carving the block

Now has come the time to carve your block, removing the areas that are gonna be white in your print and keeping the black ones. This part is less technical and repetitive and can allow some creative experimentation. Often I’m gonna draw an image to carve but change some lines, textures and shapes during the carving process.

Tip: when working with lino, heat it up with a blow dryer to make it easier to cut.

The Printing process

Setting up registration

Registration refers to guides and methods to help you print land always on the same spot on your sheet of paper when printing, this is especially critical if you’re making multiple color prints (using a block for each color) since the image won’t render correctly if the layers aren’t aligned.

The corner guide method

This is the easiest method and the one I use for small one-color prints since it’s easy to setup and makes the printing pretty fast.

The tape hinge method

This method works well with larger one-color prints

The needle method

This is the method I was taught at school for more complex multi-color prints and it works pretty well. It does require your lino to be mounted on a larger piece of plywood if you’re working with lino and your woodcut to have extra carved space at the top and bottom of your block if using wood.

leave more room at the bottom than the top

Preparing the paper

Picking the right paper and it’s size for the block is an important part of the process. Personally I prefer working with heavier cotton fibre papers since they take ink really well, tend to show some embossing and make beautiful objects once printed. Thinner Japanese washi paper can also be used, it lends itself well to the hand-rubbed printing method since they are so thin and allow to see the progress on the back. Cartouche or newsprint is commonly used for proofing a print (making test impressions to see the progress of the plate).

Once you’ve picked the paper you want to print on, it’s time to cut it to size. Usually the paper is cut larger than the block to allow some white borders on all sides and a larger border at the bottom (creating a space to sign, number and title the print). Printmaking paper almost always has frayed edges coming from the paper making process, these are desirable and often people will use a dull bread knife to cut large sheets of paper in smaller ones to imitate that irregular edge. A good way to do that is to fold the sheet of paper on the cut line with a bone folder and then drag the bread knife across the fold.

Although not necessary, I like wetting my paper before printing. This will only apply to heavy cotton papers since thin Japanese paper will not take water well. But for heavy papers, wetting on both sides and then layering in absorbent paper will render the paper more soft and allow it to take the ink better and emboss slightly which I find really pleasing.

Ink

Usually most prints are made with oil-based inks but water based inks are becoming more common, I’ve only worked with oil-based ink so far when doing that type of printing so I can only advise on those.

For inking your block you’ll need a roller, a spatula, and an inking surface (something very flat and non-porous like a plate of glass or a tile).

When your paper and registration guide is ready, take some ink with your spatula and spread it out in a line on your inking surface, it is usually good to move it around to warm it up a little bit and to make sure it doesn’t contain dried particles that will affect the quality of the print.

Pressure source

Relief prints can be printed using one of two methods, either by hand-rubbing the back of the paper that has been applied on top of the ink block with a tool, or by using a printing press.

Hand-rubbing is a good way to get started and can yield great results, especially for small editions. European woodcuts were printed mostly with a printing press historically but in japan, woodblock printing is done with a tool called a baren. Other less specialized tools that can be used are: a bone folder, a wooden or metal spoon, a metal tin, etc. Really what you’re looking for is a hard and soft surface with a medium-sized point of contact with the paper - too small and it makes it tedious to cover the whole surface, too big and it requires too much pressure to print correctly.

Printing the image

time to print

Drying the prints

Your prints will need to dry once printed, usually for a couple hours (especially if using oil-based ink). If you’re making a multi-color print, the ink will have to dry in between each color you’re printing.

In studio, drying racks are used for that purpose.

“But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged; this I shall do by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.”
- William Blake

References

Growth

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 00:00:00 EST

First print of my monthly print club, a mushroom growing from a hand, a piece about growth and connection with the self and what surrounds us.

Linocut on paper, 3" x 5" - 2022

Join my monthly print club

Growth limited edition linocut print

Small original linocut print, made in an edition of 20, numbered and stamped with my seal, printed on locally made paper

45$ CAD

Battle axe

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 00:00:00 EST

Old-school fantasy battle axe for upcoming merch by black tongue silver .

Old-school fantasy battle axe

T-shirt design for Arroliga

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 30 May 2022 00:00:00 EST

Very metal queer liberation themed t-shirt design for Arroliga .

T-shirt desig for Arroliga

Fantasy cimitar

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 28 May 2022 00:00:00 EST

Sworn to Darkness

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 28 May 2022 00:00:00 EST

Woodcut style occult inspired logo for Sworn to Darkness

Sworn to darkness logo and symbol

In order to get a realistic woodcut style I made a linocut of the symbol first to guide the drawing of the letters, here are some photos of this process:

carved linocut symbol

inking and printing the linocut

the printed symbol and the linocut

final printed symbol

Spirit photography

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 27 May 2022 00:00:00 EST

Ghostly portraits of Hex and Kita in the style of victorian spirit photographs. The ghost effect was made in camera and the daguerreotype feel was achieved in editing. A detailed how-to is available on my patreon .

Family portrait with ghostly Hex

Ghostly Hex sitting on a stool

Kita holding the hand and putting her hand on Hex's ghost's shoulder

Ghostly Kita sitting on a chair

Kita sitting with her hands crossed and veil on her head

Portrait of Kita with some old books

Ghostly Kita laying on a table

Death creeping with it's skeleton hand

Ghostly Hex squatting

Ghostly Kita walking with a candleholder

Kita sitting at a table with ghostly Hex

Hex as death looking at the camera with their skeletal arm

Ghost hand with candleholder

Ghost Hex and Kita together

Hex sitting on a chair and lighting a match with a ghost passing behind them

Ghostly Kita laying down against a stool

Hex standing and holding hands with ghostly Kita

Hex standing with a double ghostly face

In This Wet Place

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 06 May 2022 00:00:00 EST

Album cover designed for the latest Orchid Lodge album In This Wet Place , inspired by 80’s and 90’s 4AD releases.

Orchid Lodge - In This Wet Place album cover

I also designed a cassette sleeve variant of this for a short-run self-published tape of the album.

Front of the cassette case and sleeve

Back of the cassette case and sleeve

Cassette and case

Outside of the sleeve

Inside of the sleeve with additional text

Cassette with pad print

Ossuary Wraith

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 28 Apr 2022 00:00:00 EST

Ghastly bone-covered logo for the black metal band Ossuary Wraith

Ossuary Wraith logo

Ossuary Wraith symbol

Witches Flying Ointment

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 00:00:00 EST

Flying ointment or salve is a potentially hallucinogenic and highly toxic blend of plants in a fatty base that appears in folklore, fiction and books relating to witch hunting dating back to the middle ages. There’s still quite a bit of debate amongst folklorists and researchers on whether such ointments actually existed, if they actually contained the toxic and hallucinogenic plants often associated with them and whether they are one of the sources of the myth of the witch flying on a broom (the theory being that witches would craft mind-altering flying ointment, apply it on a broom stick and “ride” it in order to “fly”, in a combination of sexual stimulation, trance state and possibly vivid dreams and visions of flying).

One such description of the unholy recipe was given by Francis Bacon: “the fat of children digged out of their graves, of juices of smallage, wolfe-bane, and cinque foil, mingled with the meal of fine wheat.” The specific recipe varies but the intent remains pretty consistent: to conjure visions and dreams and give the witch the sensation of flying or travelling to the sabbath.

The plants commonly associated with this type of salve are the following: wolfsbane, henbane, hemlock, parsley (which had a reputation of being a devilish plant back then) and wild celery. During victorian times, authors embellished the story and recipe of the flying ointment, adding to it new ingredients like mandrake, thornapple, soot from chimneys, blood from small animals and more.

Whether these ingredients were associated with witchcraft (and the flying ointments by association) because they were toxic and dangerous or because of their actual use in a witchcraft practice is almost impossible to know for sure, but the folklore is still fascinating in it’s own rights. We of course have to acknowledge how it was used by the church to persecute healers and cunning folk during the multiple witch hunts that swept through Europe and America, portraying these people as witches working with plants associated with death or the devil.

More reading on the subject:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_ointment
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/229401822.pdf
https://www.corvusgreenwood.com/about-flying-ointments/

Halberd

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 23 Apr 2022 00:00:00 EST

Tattoo station setup

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 00:00:00 EST

Setup
Teardown
Green soap recipe

Setup

Step 1: setup surface

Wash your hands
Put on gloves
Spray top of station with water or alcohol
Cover top of station with plastic film, leaving some overhanging
Cover power supply with bag
Tape a dental bib on top of station

Step 2: prepare supplies

If making a large tattoo or one with a lot of a color of ink it's best to take out more ink cups and fill them than having to refill during the tattoo

Take out these supplies and lay them on the station:

new disposable razor
machine bag (cut a corner)
disposable grip (drop without touching)
clip cord bag (only touch ends)
wash bottle bag
rubber nipple
ink caps
small strip of tape
enough strips of paper towels for the tattoo

Cover green soap bottle with a bottle bag, while touching the outside of the plastic as little as possible, making sure to cover the bottom, then put it on the station
Using a wooden stick, scoop some vaseline and then using the other side scoop some shea butter (or other tattooing lotion), then put the vaseline on the top of station to hold the stick in place and stick it in in with the vaseline and lotion on top
Get your ink caps out, dip the bottom of them in vaseline and stick them to the wooden stick
Get the needles that you’ll need for the tattoo out and put them on the station

Step 3: prepare machine

Keep the machine and clip cord on the tattoo bed until they are fully bagged to prevent cross-contamination of the clean station

Slide clip cord in clip cord bag while touching the bag as little as possible, protect part of clip cord closest to the machine
Plug clip cord in power supply and keep the other end covered with the bag on the station
Take the disposable grip and slide the tube part through the small hole in the machine bag, then reverse the bag on your hand and the grip
Grab your machine and attach it to the grip, then pull back the machine bag on the machine
Plug the clip cord in the machine and tape the machine bag close, now you can put the machine on the station

step 4: prepare tattoo bed

Once everything is off the tattoo bed, spray it with medical disinfectant and leave it on for the maximum kill time
Wrap the area where the tattooed body part if gonna be, plus a bit larger with plastic film
If using an arm rest, clean it and cover it with plastic film too

Step 5: Prepare and apply stencil

Step 6: pour ink

Once the stencil is applied and drying, put a new set of gloves
Shake your ink and pour it in the ink cup and get ready for tattooing

Teardown

Wash your hands and put on gloves
Remove needle from grip, put all needles in needle disposal container
Remove the plastic covering the tattoo bed without touching the top surface, wrap it in a ball and throw it away
Remove grip from machine and leave it on the station
Drop machine and cable out of plastic on the tattoo bed, leave the bags on the station
drop the wash bottle out of its bag onto the bed without touching it and leave the bag on the station
Wrap all the stuff on the station in the plastic without touching the top surface and throw it away, removing your gloves at the same time
Put on a new pair of gloves
Spray the tattoo bed, station top, machine, wash bottle, clip cord and power supply with medical disinfectant and leave on for the maximum length of the kill time

Green soap recipe

In a 16 oz wash bottle mix the pure green soap with distilled water in a ration of 1 part green soap for 8 parts water.

Tattoo stencil

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 00:00:00 EST

find size
Copy stencil
Prep skin
Apply stencil

Step 1: Find design size

Print the design in black and white in a size that seems good for the placement
Cut around the printed design and try it on the body of the client, making sure the size is good
If needed, resize with the printer, print again and double check the new size

Step 2: Copy stencil by hand

Once the good size was found, get a sheet of stencil paper and remove the tissue paper barrier
Tape the printed design on top of the stencil paper to prevent it from moving
Using a ballpoint pen, trace over the lines of the design while applying good pressure
Before removing the design, make sure all the lines are copied
Remove the taped design and cut the stencil to size
Place it onto the tattoo bed, stencil side up

Step 2: Copy stencil with a thermal stencil machine

Once the good size was found, tape the design on a blank sheet of paper, leaving some room at the bottom
Get a sheet of stencil paper and remove the tissue paper barrier
Place the stencil paper in the machine
Place the sheet with the design in the machine
Press copy and hold the stencil paper with both hands slowly pulling on it while it copies the design
Once the copy is done cut around the stencil and place it onto the tattoo bed, stencil side up

Step 3: Prep skin

Wash your hands and put on some gloves
Take your razor and shave very closely the area you’re gonna tattoo + around 2 inches
After the skin is shaved, use an alcohol pad or prep stuff to sterilize the skin

Step 4: Apply stencil

Once the alcohol has dried, apply a moderately generous amount of stencil stuff to the area, spreading it with your finger to get an even thin coat
Hold the stencil over the area and when really sure of placement apply it onto the skin starting from the middle
Slowly stick the rest of the stencil to the skin with your finger working from the middle towards the outside
Rub it slightly when it’s all stuck to the skin
Slowly peel the stencil off
Leave to dry for around 10 minutes

Aura Merlin

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 00:00:00 EST

Wizardy dungeon synth logo for Aura Merlin

Aura Merlin logo

Vear

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 00:00:00 EST

I made this logo for the ritual noise project Vear inspired by occult symbolism and sigils.

Logo for vear, occult-like symbols and letters overlapping each others

Grimoire

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 09 Apr 2022 00:00:00 EST

Inverted Cross

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 09 Apr 2022 00:00:00 EST

Satanic Skull

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 09 Apr 2022 00:00:00 EST

Post-Civilization Anarchism

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 00:00:00 EST

Post Civilization is an idea that I’ve first encountered when I was about 18, still in university, very much a self-described anarchist and at the time quite active in the student movements. Revisiting this idea of a way of living post-civilization that is more sustainable, more equal and more fulfilling still rings true 14 years later with the current climate crisis and the constant train wreck of late-stage capitalism.

The first iteration of that philosophy comes from a small zine published by Strangers In a Tangled Wilderness called Post-Civ! which starts like this:

Post-civilization is about scavenging the ruins, physical and cultural. Post-civilization is about taking what is appropriate from all of history and pre-history. It’s about an organic method of growth, where we can apply philosophies and structures and technologies and cultures as best suits any given situation.

It’s about the anarchist urban hunter-gatherer squatting the ruins of the city living side-by-side with the micro-hydro engineer who has rigged the water running through the sewers to power her gristmill. It’s about the permaculturalist who collects camera lenses to build solar cookers. It’s about the living food-forests that we’ll turn our towns into.

It’s about never laboring again. (In this case, we are defining labor as “unnecessary, un-enjoyable work”). Frankly, it’s about destroying civilization and saving the world and living a life of adventure and fulfillment.

This first zine was then expanded upon in a second one by Usul of the Blackfoot: A Deeper exploration into post-civilization anarchism which goes a lot more in depth in taking a critical lens to primitivist ideas and modern “western” civilization, arguing for the developing, experimenting and putting into practice the ideas of post-civilization anarchism while this current civilization decays.

It also defines the core values of post-civ anarchism as follows:

Synthesis

Scavenging & Adaptation

Anarchism

Sex & Gender Equality

Ecological Harmony & Stewardship

Permaculture

This aligns a lot for me with our necessity to re-evaluate how to move forwards as a species without destroying ourselves and our environment, it aligns with my beliefs that low-tech and appropriate technology is the way forward, that agroecology and permaculture are better ways of growing our food and cultivating the plants we need, it aligns with my yearning for a re-enchanted world, one filled with stories, folklore and customs that enrich everyday life, that uplifts the most vulnerable, promote more healthy ways of connecting with our feelings, with each others and with the people who came before us.

Anarchist reading list

La Conquête du Pain - Pierre Kropotkine
L’entraide - Pierre Kropotkine
An Introduction to Anarchism - Cindy Milstein
Anarchism: What It Really Stands For - Emma Goldman
The Progressive Plantation - Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin
Anarchy - Erico Malatesta
God and the State - Mikhail Bakunin
The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin
Tao Te Ching - Lao Tseu
NO! Against Adult Supremacy https://archive.org/details/no-against-adult-supremacy
The Descholarized Society - Illych
Expect Resistance, To Change Everything, Fighting for our lives - CrimethInc
Intro to Anarchy: power and violence

Three Swords Album Cover

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 00:00:00 EST

Painting for the cover of the first album “Three Swords” of the local dungeon synth project Aura Merlin . The concept for the album was a lonely wanderer making their way to this cave in the woods in a quest to find three magical swords.

“Attack, threaten or defend
A gift, three swords, one choice
A passage to transcend
Through a smoky cavern, a voice..”

I was inspired by Russian landscape painters from the turn of the century for the colors and ruggedness of the trees in these kinds of snow-covered landscapes. The painting was made with acrylics on heavy paper.

I also made a logo for Aura Merlin which features on this cover and a layout for a cassette release of the album.

Painting of a cave in the snowy woods with smoke coming out of it and footprints leading into it

Full cover of the album with the painting, the title 'Three Swords' and the logo of the project

Cassette release of the album

Detail of the cassette sticker

Caring for your new tattoo

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 00:00:00 EST

Aftercare routine
Recommended products
Stages of tattoo healing
Placements that need extra care
Signs of infection
Links

Aftercare routine

With specialized film (Saniderm)

Day 1

Keep the specialized tattoo film on your tattoo first the first 24h.

Day 2

If your tattoo artist gave you extra sheets of tattoo film, remove the tattoo film and clean the tattoo gently using your fingers with a mild antibacterial soap, pat dry with a paper towel. Then apply a new one on the clean tattoo and keep it for the following 5-6 days.

If you didn’t get extra sheets of tattoo film, keep the one that’s on your tattoo for the first 3-4 days and then switch to the washing and moisturizing routine.

Day 5 to 15

Remove the tattoo film and clean the tattoo gently using your fingers with a mild antibacterial soap, pat dry with a paper towel.
At this point you can switch to a routine of cleaning and moisturizing your tattoo.

Day 16 to 30

You can now switch to only moisturizing the tattoo multiple times a day when you feel it becoming dry.

With regular cling film

Day 1

3-4 hours after leaving the tattoo shop gently remove the bandage covering your tattoo.

I recommend using clean sheets that you don't care staining for the first few days of healing your tattoo.

Day 2

Start the washing and moisturizing routine: once during the day clean the tattoo gently using your fingers with a mild antibacterial soap, pat dry with a paper towel and then apply some moisturizing balm. Add moisturizing balm on the tattoo when you feel it getting dry during the day.

Always wash your hands before touching your tattoo (for applying balm for example).

Day 3 to 15

Continue the washing and moisturizing routine like on day 2.

Day 16 to 30

You can now switch to only moisturizing the tattoo multiple times a day when you feel it becoming dry.

Stages of tattoo healing

Stage 1 - Swelling, oozing, soreness (day 1 - 6)

This stage starts during the tattooing session or just after it finishes, the area of the tattoo is usually gonna be swollen, especially if a lot of shading or solid ink was done, the swelling comes from increased blood form in the damaged area, a way the body has to heal wounds. Additionally there may be oozing a mixture of blood, plasma and ink this is a normal part of the healing.

Stage 2 - Itching and flaking (day 7 - 14)

This is usually the most annoying phase, the tattoo and the skin around it will feel itchy and flakes of skin may come off, especially when cleaning the tattoo, it is important to refrain from scratching or pulling on the dry skin since it can damage the tattoo and create a pathway for bacteria. Dry scabs might start forming around that time too, these will protect the healing skin from bacteria and foreign substances.

Stage 3 - Dull and cloudy (day 15 - 30)

At that stage the top layer of the skin is healed but the lower layers of skin are still in their healing process. Most of the flakes of skins and scabs should be gone by now, depending on the size of the tattoo, bigger scabs may still remain. The tattooed skin may look shiny under some light during this phase and the tattoo itself may look dull and cloudy, this is normal. The clarity of the design will come back as the skin finishes to regenerate itself.

Placements that need extra care

Some tattoo locations need some extra care in order to help the healing process in addition to the aftercare routine outlined above.

Feet and ankles

Keep your tattooed feet elevated when sitting down or laying down the first days after getting the tattoo
Try to minimize rubbing on the fresh tattoo from socks / shoes, avoid walking long distances

Side and shoulder tattoos

These placements can make sleeping awkward and it’s best to try to keep the tattoo from rubbing or sticking to bedsheets during the healing process

Palm tattoos

It is recommended to get un-powdered exam gloves to cover the tattoo during the first phase of healing, change the gloves 4 times a day and apply lotion before putting on gloves.
After 4 days you can stop putting on the gloves and resume the normal aftercare routine

Signs of infection

Here are some early signs of infection, if your tattoo is infected, these symptoms will worsen over time. Keep a close eye on a tattoo that start to show any of these symptoms and if they persist or worsen, consult a doctor immediately.

Tattooed area feel warm to the touch
Increasing pain on or around the area
Worsening redness after phase 1
Bleeding from the scabs
Oozing fluids (especially if yellowish or greenish) after phase 1

Resources and links

Agroecology and Rewilding

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 00:00:00 EST

Small stream with native plants and logs

Introduction
Concrete examples
Links

Introduction

There’s no mystery that our relationship to nature and the way ecosystems work has shifted dramatically over time, basically almost from the time we started large scale cultivation of crops. Things got further aggravated during colonization with the import of exotic plants, animals and bugs that disrupted the existing relationships and balance present in the native ecosystem.

Rewilding is defined as “the planned reintroduction of a plant or animal species and especially a keystone species or apex predator (such as the gray wolf or lynx) into a habitat from which it has disappeared (as from hunting or habitat destruction) in an effort to increase biodiversity and restore the health of an ecosystem” by the Merriam Webster dictionary

Agroecology is defined as “an ecological approach to agriculture that views agricultural areas as ecosystems and is concerned with the ecological impact of agricultural practices”

Concrete examples

Shelled legumes contribute to re-inject nitrogen in the soil by channelling it from the atmosphere through their leaves and passing it down in the earth through their roots by a symbiotic process with bacteria. This could be used as an alternative to chemical nitrogen fertilizers which are derived from natural gas and petrol and release a lot of green house gases in the process of their manufacture.

Native Americans have been using a technique called the three sisters in order to maintain the quality of the soil they use to grow food. It consisted of planting corn, squash and beans in alternating rows.

Preserving and nurturing biodiversity is another way to make communities more resilient to crop failures caused by bacterias, fungus, insects or viruses (see the great famine in Ireland). The more varieties are cultivated or growing in an area the more rich and complex the ecosystem will be. And the easiest way to encourage that biodiversity is to into the local soil and learn about the native species that grow well in it.

8 Steps to rewilding a piece of land according to Douglas Tallamy

Shrink your lawn. Tallamy recommends halving the area devoted to lawns in the continental United States—reducing water, pesticide and fertilizer use. Replace grass with plants that sustain more animal life, he says: “Every little bit of habitat helps.”
Remove invasive plants. Introduced plants sustain less animal diversity than natives do. Worse, some exotics crowd out indigenous flora. Notable offenders: Japanese honeysuckle, Oriental bittersweet, multiflora rose and kudzu.
Create no-mow zones. Native caterpillars drop from a tree’s canopy to the ground to complete their life cycle. Put mulch or a native ground cover such as Virginia creeper (not English ivy) around the base of a tree to accommodate the insects. Birds will benefit, as well as moths and butterflies.
Equip outdoor lights with motion sensors. White lights blazing all night can disturb animal behavior. LED devices use less energy, and yellow light attracts fewer flying insects.
Plant keystone species. Among native plants, some contribute more to the food web than others. Native oak, cherry, cottonwood, willow and birch are several of the best tree choices.
Welcome pollinators. Goldenrod, native willows, asters, sunflowers, evening primrose and violets are among the plants that support beleaguered native bees.
Fight mosquitoes with bacteria. Inexpensive packets containing Bacillus thuringiensis can be placed in drains and other wet sites where mosquitoes hatch. Unlike pesticide sprays, the bacteria inhibit mosquitoes but not other insects.
Avoid harsh chemicals. Dig up or torch weeds on hardscaping, or douse with vinegar. Discourage crabgrass by mowing lawn 3 inches high.

Links and resources

Folk Horror

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 00:00:00 EST

The sun symbol from the titles of the Wicker Man movie

Introduction
Movies and television
Literature
Music
Links

Folk Horror refers to a mode of story-telling, a set of themes and to some extent an aesthetic movement fascinated by exploring the ways in which old rites, traditions and folklore can embed itself in the land and places, it digs for the ways in which humans over thousands of generations have imprinted the landscape and also how the landscape leave impressions on the human psyche.

“Hail Behemoth spirit of the dark. Take thou my blood, my flesh, my skin and walk. Holy Behemoth father of my life speak now, come now, rise now from the forest, from the furrow, from the fields and live!”
- from Blood on Satan’s Claw

It initially arose from the tension between modern life and the old ways, between the city and the countryside. Folk Horror plays with our yearning for nature and a return to the land and ideas of pastoral life while at the same time shining a light on the more dreadful side of rural living with its superstitions, repression, cults and real or metaphorical sacrifices.

god is dead, the old gods are back

By going back to the countryside and reconnecting with the old ways, folk horror unearths the bloody and traumatic history that lies buried in many places in the world, hidden behind a facade of civility and modernity. It also uses the stage of the rural village with its inhabitants meeting an outsider coming from the progressive and wealthy city to address class and culture tensions that are still very relevant today.

Folk Horror in movies and television

There is a very long list of movies and television shows using the mode and themes of folk-horror. In fact, in this new revival of folk horror it seems that cinema is the main media for which new stories are written and that contribute quite a lot for broadening the reach and scope of those stories. The unholy trinity of folk-horror films was strongly rooted in the British landscape, the new wave brings new horrors out of the soil through native American tales, ghost stories from Asia, legends from the Nordic country and more.

The Unholy Trinity

The Wicker Man, Robin Hardy - 1973
Blood on Satan’s Claw, Piers Haggard - 1971
Witchfinder General, Michael Reeves - 1968

First Wave of British Folk Horror

Children of the Stones (series), Peter Graham Scott - 1977
Stigma, Lawrence Gordon Clark - 1977
Penda’s Fen, Alan Clarke - 1974
The Stalls of Barchester, Lawrence Gordon Clark - 1971
The Owl Service, Peter Plummer - 1969-1970
Robin Redbreast, James MacTaggart - 1970
Whistle and I’ll come to you, Jonathan Miller - 1968
Quartermass and the pit, Roy Ward Baker - 1967

Folk Horror Revival

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, Kier-La Janisse - 2021
In the Earth, Ben Wheatley - 2021
Midsommar, Ari Aster - 2019
La Llorona, Jayro Bustamante - 2019
Koko-di Koko-da, Johannes Nyholm - 2019
SG̲aawaay Ḵ’uuna (The Edge of the Knife), Gwaai Edenshaw, Helen Haig-Brown - 2018
The VVitch, Robert Eggers - 2015
A Field in England, Ben Wheatley - 2013

Other notable movies

The Lair of the White Worm, Ken Russel - 1988
Wilczyca (the she-wolf), Marek Piestrak - 1983
The Hungry Grass, Archie Reid - 1981
VIY, Konstantin Ershov and Georgiy Kropachyov - 1967
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Sergei Parajanov - 1965

Folk Horror in music

Strangely, I first heard of the term folk horror used to describe music, since that first encounter I developed a fascination with everything related to this idea. The way it manifests in music is akin to how it does in film, through a variety of genres (from actual folk music to experimental electronics) but with a shared interest in some themes and aesthetics. Finding about Ghostbox records was another milestone in my exploration of musical folk horror, their curated collection feels like an extension of the early sonic explorations of the BBC radiophonic workshop and I would describe the music they release as the sound of hauntology .

Folk Horror in literature

Fiction and tales

Damnable Tales: A Folk Horror Anthology by Richard Wells
The Fiends in the Furrows: An Anthology of Folk Horror by Steve Toase
Casting the Runes by M. R. James
Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
Randalls Round by Eleanor Scott
Works by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Writing about folk horror

Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange by Adam Scovell
We Don’t Go Back by Howard David Ingham

Old anthropological texts

The Golden Bough by James Fraser
The Witch-Cult in Western Europe by Margaret Alice Murray

Links and Resources

Bonbons aux patates

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 22 Mar 2022 00:00:00 EST

Steps

Boil 1 small potato in water until it is soft when poked with a fork, around 15 min
Let the potato cool, when it is safe to handle, remove its skin and put in large mixing bowl
Add 1 tsp of vegan butter and 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract to the potato and mash very well until there is no more clumps
Add 3 cups powdered sugar to the potato mixture in small batches while mixing together, it should create a semi-firm dough. If after the 3 cups the dough is still very runny, add more powdered sugar until a better consistency is achieved
Lay down a large piece of plastic film on a flat surface and spread the dough on it to create a long rectangle, approximately 4" wide
Spread 4 tbsp of peanut butter evenly on top of the dough rectangle
Grab the plastic film on one of the long sides and carefully roll the dough in roll. Keep the film wrapped around the roll tightly to help it keep it’s shape and place it into the refrigerator for a couple hours to harden
When the roll feel more firm, unwrap the plastic film and cut the roll into slices, enjoy!

Crust paper props

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 19 Mar 2022 00:00:00 EST

I recently had the chance to work on the soundtrack for a narrated story called “Crust” released on the Library of the Occult label with Blood and Dust . The story is set in 1976 in rural England in the little town of Greenwood located close to a bog called Andertons Moss where in 1951 a well preserved prehistoric bog body apparently offered to the waters as ritual sacrifice was discovered.

These paper documents are ones that the main protagonist of the story, an archeologist looking for the truth behind Andertons Man’s death, encounters during her research. I made those to bring the story to life and give it a more tactile and physical presence.

A variety of papers and cardstock were used to match what would have been used in reality, like heavy white cardstock for the museum label, newsprint for the newspaper clipping and a thin off-white paper for the leaflet.

You can listen to the whole story and it’s soundtrack on Bandcamp: Crust story narrated by Peter Baker .

All the paper props

Detail of the page from the History and Folklore of Greenwood leaflet

Detail of the museum artefact label for the Anderton man bog body

Detail of the newspaper clipping reading Moss Man Unearthed

Hoisin Sauce

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 00:00:00 EST

Steps

TODO

Swamp Lantern

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 18 Feb 2022 00:00:00 EST

Mushy, heavy and psychedelic logo shrouded in thick smoke for the occult doom band Swamp Lantern .

Logo and icon

Logo only

Icon only

Arroliga

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 00:00:00 EST

Spiky neo-tribal inspired logo for the photographer Arroliga .

Outline version of the logo

Full color version

Imbolg

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 00:00:00 EST

Imbolg is an ancient Celtic festival and celebration that takes place on Feburary 1st in the northern hemisphere. Imbolg is a fire festival celebrating the promise of the return of spring or the rekindling of the solar hearth.

This festival is associated with the goddess Brigid (or Bríg) who is associated with wisdom, poetry, arts and crafts, healing, protection, blacksmithing and domesticated animals. It is said that Bridgid started the custom of keening.

“Moch maduinn Bhride,
Thig an nimhir as an toll,
Cha bhoin mise ris an nimhir,
Cha bhoin an nimhir rium.”

“Early on Bride’s morn
The serpent shall come from the hole,
I will not molest the serpent,
Nor will the serpent molest me.”
- Hymn to the serpent, coming out of slumber on Imbolc

Rituals and traditions

After a feast, each family would gather and making a Brigid’s cross, a cross made out of straw or reeds which would then be hung over a doorway for protection.

Associations

Symbols: Swan, Sheep, Serpent, Flame, Brigid’s cross
Colors: White, Silver and Green
Herbs and plants: Blackberry, Coltsfoot, Ginger, snowdrops
Trees: Rowan, Willow

Links and references

Imbolg lore

Research links

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 00:00:00 EST

Instruments

Music production

Music

Giant list of anti-fascist metal bands

The Travel Log

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 00:00:00 EST

An illustrated logo inspired by old-school DnD Manuals made for the DnD lore podcast The Travel Log.

Travel log logo on an old tome illustration

Henbane

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 00:00:00 EST

A lettering piece made inspired by the henbane herb, used by european witches in their flying ointment.

Henbane lettering

Bosch Creature

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 00:00:00 EST

Small illustration of a creature form a Bosch painting made for an art trade.

Bosch creature illustration

Detail of the head and bird perched on the nose of the creature

Detail of the spiky tail of the cape

Chickpea flour omelet

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 00:00:00 EST

Steps

In a large bowl, mix 3/4 cup of chickpea flour, 1/2 block of silken tofu, 3/4 cup of plant-based milk, 1/2 tsp of turmeric and salt and pepper to taste with a whisk until smooth.
Heat up a pan with a little bit of oil in it, when it’s hot, pour half of the mix in the pan and cook for 5 minutes or until the bottom side starts to brown, no need to turn it over when it’s cooked.
Serve with fillings or on it’s own, enjoy!

My favourite recipes

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 00:00:00 EST

Breakfast
Sides
Pasta
Stews
Soups
Comfort food
Sandwiches
Desserts
Bread

Breakfast

Vegan buttermilk pancakes

Date bread

Latkes

Turmeric oatmeal

Waffles

Sides

Kimchi

Lembas

Grilled brussels sprouts

Potato salad

Pickled daikon radish

Pasta

Vegan low fodmap spag

Lemon Veggie Pasta

Mushroom Stroganoff

Creamy mushroom pasta

Cauliflower mushroom pasta bake

Butternut squash pasta

Gochujang mushroom pasta

Alfredo truffle pasta

Tuscan gnocchi

Tuna casserole

Peanut tofu noodle bowls

Mushroom pasta

Soba noodles

carbonara noodles

Stews

Southern fried cabbage

Japanese curry

Spicy vegetable stew

Spanish rice with chickpeas

Moroccan Tagine

Dublin Coddle

Green curry

Kimchi stew

Lentil chili

Jambalaya

Chickpea turmeric stew

Soups

Zuppa toscana

Coconut Curry soup

Creamy mushroom ramen

Potato and leek soup

Broccoli and cheese soup

Chicken and gnocchi soup

Rosemary garlic wite bean soup

Pho

Salads

Roasted carrots and chickpea salad

Cucumber pasta salad

Falafel salad

Pasta salad

Comfort food

Sandwiches

Tempeh Reuben Sandwich

Banh mi

Jerk wrap

Chicken ceasar wrap

Tofu lettuce wrap

Desserts

Vegan christmas cake

Gateau froid au café

Depression cake

Cinnamon rolls

Brownies

Banana bread

Fruit cake

Tofu chocolate mousse

Pumpkin cake

Butternut squash pudding

Cinnamon rolls

Welsh cakes

Oatmeal raisin cookies

Peanut butter cookies

Choco chips cookies

Gingersnaps

Pudding chomeur

Vegan cheese

Cashew camembert

Vegan camembert

cheese making supplies

Sauces

Marinara sauce

Mushroom ketchup

Peanut sauce

Alfredo Sauce

Stir fry sauce

Dips and butters

Vegan nutella

Bread

Sourdough starter

Breakfast sausage bread

Borodinski bread

Apple crisp oats

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 23 Jan 2022 00:00:00 EST

Steps

If using apples, cut half an apple in small squares and put in a pan with 1/2 tsp of plant-based butter, cook until sligthly browned.
In a small pot combine 1/2 cup of rolled oats and 1 cup of water
Cook on medium/high until it boils, around 7 min while stirring.
Turn of the heat and add 2 tbsp of plant-based milk, mix well.
Once the oats and apples are ready, transfer them both to a bowl, then measure all the other ingredients and add them on top, stir well before eating and enjoy!

Wassail

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 22 Jan 2022 00:00:00 EST

Illustration for a small game made by James Chip inspired by the folk tradition of wassailing.

Cover illustration showing a tree, apples, and a playing card

Page frame with trees

Small detail illustration showing a ribbon connecting a tree, a mug of hot drink, a playing card and the setting sun

Glaive of Mars

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 00:00:00 EST

One of the magical items found in my chtonic travels, a symbolic glaive associated with the god Mars.

Pencil and acrylic on paper, 5" x 9" - 2022

Painting of a small glaive with a wolf guard, a pommel representing two snakes eating each others tails and a tip from which a flame rises

Detail of the pommel with two gold snakes

Detail of the tip of the glaive, coated with gold

Detail of the wolf that ornates the guard

Black Tongue Silver

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 00:00:00 EST

Hand-drawn lettering for the jeweller Black Tongue silver , who makes medieval weapon inspired silver jewelry.

Logo in black

Logo in white

Hex Ritual

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 00:00:00 EST

All the variants of the logo and sigil

Logo in black with texture

Logo in white, alone

Sketching process

Fantômes Zine - issue 1

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 00:00:00 EST

Fantômes was my first zine project, one that started very small when I realized that I could regroup in a zine my obsession with ghosts, the drawings I made of them and the photos of ghostly places I took. Then I asked around to see if other people would be interested in creating or writing pieces about ghosts, and got an incredible response. I then spent the next 6 months collecting, assembling, laying out and illustrating all that material to form what became the first issue of this little zine. This project regroups all of the drawings I made for the zine, from my personal standalone pieces to the more illustrative page frames and fillers to accompany the different stories and written pieces.

Cover illustration and lettering

The cover illustration'

The frame for the introduction page of the zine

Small illustrations for the bookmark

Page details and border illustrations

Page fillers for 'The Solitary Tree' story

Illustrations in context of the pages

Candelabra illustration on the right hand side printed on velum paper

A page frame for 'practised hands, doubtful eyes'

The page frame illustration for 'Ghosts'

Small page filler

Page accents for the story by Michael Wolf

More page frames for the 'minous' story

Introduction page illustration in process

A hand-drawn sigil on an edited photograph

Frame for the mixtape page

A dark souls inspired illustration spanning a small spread

Small accent for the 'ghost hospitality' story

Mundaun

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 00:00:00 EST

A pencil drawing inspired by the alpine folk-horror game Mundaun . I was really fascinated by it’s locations, characters, objects and beautiful hand-pencilled textures that blend the whole world of the game into a morphing and moving drawing.

Detail of the headless goat

Close-up photo of the drawing, showing the pencilled textures

Detail of the chapel

The finished drawing on my work table

Sickle of the Sun

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 00:00:00 EST

One of the magical items found in my chtonic travels, a symbolic sickle connected with the sun.

Pencil and acrylic on paper, 5" x 9" - 2022

Painting of a bronze sickle with a pommel featuring a solar symbol

Close up of the handle, wrapped with leather strips and the pommel

Detail of the tip of the blade

Detail of the pencil and acrylic textures on the blade and the background

Vampire Lock

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 00:00:00 EST

I sculpted this vampiric lock on top of a real steel padlock and kept it functional. The inspiration for it was a drawing I made last year which you can find in my Sketchbook of December 2020 . My intent was to make something that feels old and a bit out of time and slightly threatening, something you think twice before unlocking.

The completed and painted vampiric lock

We used this lock in a recent photoshoot for our band Blood and dust .

The lock in a photoshoot

Basing myself on the initial drawing, I made a more precise drawing of how I saw the lock. Then I used it as a pattern to cut multiple layers of styrene to shape which were then glued to form the face of the lock.

It all starts with sketches

Then began the cutting and carving of the styrene parts.

Cutting the gothic arches

Shaping the wings

Once the styrene parts were sculpted and sanded, I started working the the vampire’s face with green stuff (a type of epoxy putty).

Sculpting the vampire face with green stuff

Adding the wings

All parts that needed to be sculpted that way are now done

The final step once I was happy with the overall sculpt and the details of it was painting. The whole thing was painted with acrylics, then weathered with oil paints and finally some metallic accents were added to simulate chipped paint.

Basecoat done, starting to define the shading and tones

I also made a box to contain the lock out of an old toy box I had around that I covered with heavy black paper and then distressed using my usual techniques: sanding, painting with acrylics, rubbing with a dirty cloth and just generally mistreating it.

The distressed box made to contain the lock

Sun Invocation

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 00:00:00 EST

A singular flame, borrowed from the sun, captured in paint on wood, enshrined in a sigil.

Acrylic on wood, 6" x 6" - 2021

Final painting, an oil lamp lit with a sigil to the son overlaid over it

On winter solstice of this year 2021, I had the feeling that I should take painting back again, after more than 10 years. For a year now I’ve been going on personal and artistic journeys on the solstices and equinoxes, looking for insights and inspiration. It started with a walk through the neighbouring park, feeling the cold wind on my face and absorbed by the bright setting sun.

The sun through some branches

I knew the sun and warmth would come back but I also knew that dark, cold and lonely days and months were coming, especially with the plague looming over the city. I made an offering to the sun god that day, and asked in return if I could carry a single flame of it’s fire for the coming months. This painting is that flame, captured in paint on wood, enshrined in a sigil.

First layer done, the lantern containing a single flame of the sun

Drafting the sigil

Transferring the points on the surface

Faint reference lines

Underworld I

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 00:00:00 EST

This small painting is the first in an ongoing series of depictions of chtonic travels, or katabasis, spiritual descent to the underworld in search of knowledge, lost souls or magical items.

Acrylic on wood, 6" x 8" - 2021

Small painting representing a large cave with fire coming from below it, large bonfires are lit inside of it surrounded by tiny figures

Detail of the lower part of the painting, showing a ledge, some rising smoke and fire

Extreme close up of the painting showing tiny figures with torches assembled around a bonfire

Details of the ceiling of the cave, covered with stalactites

Irish Potato Soup

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 26 Dec 2021 00:00:00 EST

Steps

Cut 4 large potatoes and 2 large onions and 3 garlic cloves in thin slices and put them into a large pot along with 4 tbsp of vegan butter.
Add 2 cups of vegetable broth to the pot along with 1 tsp dried sage , 2 tsp dried parsley, salt and pepper, cover and turn the heat to medium, letting it cook until the potatoes are soft.
While the soup cooks, cut 1 seitan sausage and 3 plant-based bacon slices into small cubes and and to a frying pan along with 2 tsp of oil.
When the potatoes are soft (approx. 30 min) add 4 cups of plant-based milk to the pot, taste and adjust the level of spices and salt and keep cooking for 15 min.
While the soup is cooking, turn the heat to high under the frying pan and cook the sausages and bacon well until browned and crispy.
When everything is ready, use a potato masher and break down the potatoes in the soup, you don’t have to make it super smooth, keeping some chunks is nice.
Serve with freshly cut kale, sausages, bacon and some parmesan on top, enjoy!

Magical Correspondences

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 23 Dec 2021 00:00:00 EST

Correspondences are links between different symbolic ideas, objects, moments and ingredients. These are useful in different magical and alchemical practices to enhance the effect of a spell or ritual. I also find them useful as reference to create symbolic artworks , create sigils or to be used as a guide and tool for introspection and self-discovery.

Day correspondences

Day	Intent	Planet	Astrological sign	Element	Colors	Deities
Monday	Emotions, dreams, clairvoyance	Moon	Cancer	Water	White and greys	Selene, Luna, Diana, and Artemis
Tuesday	intent	Mars	Scorpio	Fire	Red and warm shades	Mars, Ares
Wednesday	Communication, writing, art, creativity, mental activities	Mercury	Gemini, Virgo	Air	Yellow, grey and mixed hues	Mercury, Hermes
Thursday	Intentions, abondance, goals, opportunities	Jupiter	Sagittarius, Pisces	Fire	Blue and purple	Zeus and Thor
Friday	Love, friendship, emotions, beauty, sex	Venus	Libra, Taurus	Air, Water	Green, light blue, pink and copper	Venus, Aphrodite
Saturday	Retribution, banishment, protection	Saturn	Capricorn	Earth	Black and dark shades	Saturn, Hecate
Sunday	intent	Sun	Leo	Fire	Gold and orange	Helios, Apollo, Lugh, and Bel

Planetary magic

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 23 Dec 2021 00:00:00 EST

Classical planets
Modern planets
Links and references

The seven classical planets

The Sun ☉

Representative of the ego, the self, the identity. Strong and powerful.
The modern symbol of the sun, the circumpunct, was first used during the Renaissance, it represents Apollo’s golden shield with a boss. The older medieval symbol (and alchemical symbol of gold) was a disk with a ray 🜚. In alchemy, the sun is the supreme light, the cyclical nature of the process and is associated with the conscious, energy and the ego.

Associated metal: Gold
Associated day: Sunday
Associated color: Gold Associated organ: Heart

“The Days and Hours of the Sun are very good for perfecting experiments regarding temporal wealth, hope, gain, fortune, divination, the favour of princes, to dissolve hostile feeling, and to make friends.”
- the Key of Solomon

6	32	3	34	35	1
7	11	27	28	8	30
19	14	16	15	23	24
18	20	22	21	17	13
25	29	10	9	26	12
36	5	33	4	2	31

The Planetary Square of the Sun

The Moon ☾

Mysterious and divinatory, intuition and emotions.
The crescent as been used to represent the moon since the earliest time, first with it’s horns pointing upwards, then pointing to the side. It is linked with silver in alchemy and rules over emotions, intuition and imagination.
Associated metal: Silver
Associated day: Monday
Associated color: Purple
Associated organ: Brain

“The Days and Hours of the Moon are good for embassies; voyages; envoys; messages; navigation; reconciliation; love, and the acquisition of merchandise by water.”
- the Key of Solomon

37	78	29	70	21	62	13	54	5
6	38	79	30	71	22	63	14	46
47	7	39	80	31	72	23	55	15
16	48	8	40	81	32	64	24	56
57	17	49	9	41	73	33	65	25
26	58	18	50	1	42	74	34	66
67	27	59	10	51	2	43	75	35
36	68	19	60	11	52	3	44	76
77	28	69	20	61	12	53	4	45

The Planetary Square of the Moon

Mars ♂

Aggression and war The symbol of mars is an arrow emerging from a circle, it represents the spear and shield of the god Mars and was used as the symbol of iron in alchemy.
Associated metal: Iron
Associated day: Tuesday
Associated color: Red
Associated organ: Gall blader

“In the Days and Hours of Mars thou canst make experiments regarding War; to arrive at military honour; to acquire courage; to overthrow enemies; and further to cause ruin, slaughter, cruelty, discord; to wound and to give death.”
- the Key of Solomon

11	24	7	20	3
4	12	25	8	16
17	5	13	21	9
10	18	1	14	22
23	6	19	2	15

The Planetary Square of Mars

Mercury ☿

Communication, deceit, trickery.
The symbol for mercury is a caduceus, a staff intertwined with two serpents carried by the god Mercury. In alchemy the symbol could be the combination of gold (sun), silver (moon) and vinegar (matter). Associated metal: Mercury
Associated day: Wednesday
Associated color: Orange
Associated organ: Lungs

“The Days and Hours of Mercury are good to operate for eloquence and intelligence; promptitude in business; science and divination; wonders; apparitions; and answers regarding the future. Thou canst also operate under this Planet for thefts; writings; deceit; and merchandise.”
- the Key of Solomon

8	58	59	5	4	62	63	1
49	15	14	52	53	11	10	56
41	23	22	44	45	19	18	48
32	34	35	29	28	38	39	25
40	26	27	37	36	30	31	33
17	47	46	20	21	43	42	24
9	55	54	12	13	51	50	16
64	2	3	61	60	6	7	57

The Planetary Square of Mercury

Jupiter ♃

Growth, expansion. The symbol for Jupiter is the greek letter Zeta with a stroke to indicate that it is used as an abbreviation for the god Zeus. In alchemy it’s symbol is the combination of silver (moon) and vinegar (matter) and is associated with tin. It rules over wisdom, justice and knowledge. Associated metal: Tin
Associated day: Thursday
Associated color: Blue
Associated organ: Liver

“The Days and Hours of Jupiter are proper for obtaining honours, acquiring riches; contracting friendships, preserving health; and arriving at all that thou canst desire.”
- the Key of Solomon

4	14	15	1
9	7	6	12
5	11	10	8
12	2	3	13

The Planetary Square of Jupiter

Venus ♀

Love, beauty and sex.
The symbol for Venus is a circle with a small cross below, representing the mirror of the goddess Venus, older versions did not have a cross at the bottom. In alchemy it’s symbol is a combination of gold (sun) and vinegar (matter) and is associated with copper.
Associated metal: Copper
Associated day: Friday
Associated color: Green
Associated organ: Kidneys

“The Days and Hours of Venus are good for forming friendships; for kindness and love; for joyous and pleasant undertakings, and for traveling.”
- the Key of Solomon

22	47	16	41	10	35	4
5	23	48	17	42	11	29
30	6	24	49	18	36	12
13	31	7	25	43	19	37
38	14	32	1	26	44	20
21	39	8	33	2	27	45
46	15	40	9	34	3	28

The Planetary Square of Venus

Saturn ♄

Discipline, limits and time.
The symbol for Saturn is based on the lower case eta greek letter with the abbreviation stroke only surviving as the curve at the bottom. It also got it’s cross like the other symbols, to appear more christian.
Associated metal: Lead
Associated day: Saturday
Associated color: Black
Associated organ: Spleen

“In the Days and Hours of Saturn, thou canst perform experiments…to cause good or ill success to business, possessions, goods, seeds, fruits and similar things, in order to acquire learning; to bring destruction and give death, and to sow hatred and discord.”
- the Key of Solomon

4	9	2
3	5	7
8	1	6

The Planetary Square of Saturn

Modern planets

Uranus ⛢

The symbol for Uranus comes from the combination of the Iron and Gold alchemical symbols, creating the one for platinum. Another symbol was proposed, an orb with the letter H over it ♅.
Associated color: Black

Earth 🜨

The symbol for Earth is a circle crossed by two lines representing the world divided by four rivers. A medieval European variant was the globus cruciger ♁ the globe surmounted by a cross. In alchemy earth is associated with vinegar (matter) and it’s symbol is a cross.

Neptune ♆

The symbol for Neptune is the trident of the god Neptune.

Pluto ♇

The symbol of Pluto is a monogram of the letters P and L. An alternative symbol is a bident surmounted by an orb. The alchemical symbol of Pluto allies vinegar (matter), coal (darkness) and alum (spirit) symbolizing revolution, quick and sudden inner / spiritual change, death and rebirth.

Asteroids and minor planets

Links and references

Research links

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 00:00:00 EST

References, archives and research material on illustration and art

Essays and interviews
Archives
References

Essays and interviews

Courses and drawing practice

References

“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.” - Mary Shelley

Flail prop

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 00:00:00 EST

I made a handle for an existing chain and spiky ball that I got as a gift in order to turn them into a flail replica. The feel of the leather on the handle and the weight of the chain and ball is really nice, makes you want to fight enemies in a dank dungeon.

The flail, it's long chain and spiky ball

The whole thing in context

Symbolism in art

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 00:00:00 EST

The Three Fates by Alexander Rothaug

Overview and themes
Notable artists

Overview and themes

Symbolism was a literary and visual art movement from the late 19th century of French, Russian and Belgian origins. Literature, myth religion and poetry are it’s main sources of inspiration material, with artists drawing from old mythology, medieval poetry and more modern pieces like Les Fleurs du Mal from Charles Baudelaire as inspiration for visual pieces. Starting in 1870, in a context of great scientific and industrial development in Europe, poets initially and then painters initiated this movement in reaction to the fading of spirituality in this new era of rationality and industry.

One key aspect of symbolic works of art is their detachment from direct representation of things that exist but instead try to convey emotions, dreams and ideas through the use of symbols and codified visual language. The symbols can be integrated in the artworks in different ways, either personified through characters or animals, sometimes carved or inscribed on the architecture present in the drawing or painting or drawn on top of the image, like an overlay of meaning.

In the Symbolist Manifesto, Jean Moreas presents it as such:

“Ainsi, dans cet art, les tableaux de la nature, les actions des humains, tous les phénomènes concrets ne sauraient se manifester eux-mêmes ; ce sont là des apparences sensibles destinées à représenter leurs affinités ésotériques avec des Idées primordiales.”

(Thus, in this art movement, representations of nature, human activities and all real life events don’t stand on their own; they are rather veiled reflections of the senses pointing to archetypal meanings through their esoteric connections.)

Most of the symbolist artworks and poetry were seen by very few people, mostly amongst small circles of symbolist artists or through some petites revues (small magazines) in France. Partly because of the hermetic and occult aspect of the works but also because of the desire of the artists to stay in the margins of the art world.

Contemporary artists working in this path

Notable 19th century artists

Agnes Slott-Moller
Akseli Gallen-Kallela
Austin Osman Spare
Arnold Böcklin
Alexander Rothaug
Boleslas Biegas
Carlos Schwabe
Carlo Farneti
Cayley Robinson
Elihu Vedder
Edvard Munch
Lady Frieda Harris
Félicien Rops
Ferdynand Ruszczyc
Fernand Khnopff
Franz Von Stuck
Gaston de Latenay
George Frederick Watts
Gustav Adolf Mossa
Gustav Klimt
Gustave Moreau
Hans Thomas
Jean Delville
John Duncan
Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach
Maria Yakunchikova
Maximilian Pirner
Max Klinger
Mstislav Dobuzhinsky
Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis
Mikhail Vrubel
Odilon Redon
R. H. Ives Gammell
Sascha Schneider
Victor hugo
Viktor Vasnetsov
Hans Thoma

Pre-19th century artists that would have been at home in the movement

William Blake
Salvator Rosa
Gustave Doré
Francisco Goya
Caspar David Friedrich
John Martin

Links and reference

Wassail

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 00:00:00 EST

Steps

Pre-heat your oven to 400°F, cut 3 large baking apples in thick slices and arrange them in a baking dish, sprinkle a bit of sugar on top. Cover with aluminium foil and bake for 30 minutes.
While the apples are cooking, combine 4 cups of ale, beer or cider, 1/2 cup of sugar, 1 cinnamon stick, or 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 teaspoon ground ginger and the zest of 1 lemon in a large pot. Heat slowly and bring to a simmer, be careful not to let the mixture boil.
When the apples are ready, place them in a bowl and pour the wassail on them, serve hot along with friends while partaking in wassailing

Black Metal December 2021

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 EST

As I did in 2017 , I’m making a black metal inspired typography piece every day of the month of December.

Grief

Systemic racism

Wassail

Cold

Chagrin

Fanghorn

Dungeon

Nameless dread

Summoning

Occult

Hive

Krampus

Den of evil

Stone Circle

The Return of the Repressed

Goth Resentment

Veil

Ruined Tower

Nazgul

Bog Body

Chthonien

Repainted toy scythe

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 00:00:00 EST

I repainted and added a wooden handle to this toy scythe we found in a thrift store. I find it has quite a Giger-esque feel to it and works wonders as a photo prop now.

Detail of the head of the scythe

The whole thing in context

Dungeon Synth Covers

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 14 Nov 2021 00:00:00 EST

Cassette sleeve designs for fictional dungeon synth albums, I’m definitely interested in making real ones so if you have a dungeon synth project and are looking for some cover art contact me!

Silent Gnome - A Contemplative Stroll Through the Castle ruins

Mournful Sorcery - A Dark Conjuring of Shadows

Depressive Goblin - Into the Deep Caves of Despair

The Witches of Alicudi

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 14 Nov 2021 00:00:00 EST

Illustration inspired by the folklore of the flying witches of Alicudi made for cvstomer service zine, a folk-horror zine, you can get the zine here: https://cvstomerservice.bigcartel.com/products

The flying witches of Alicudi, transforming into animals over a grain mill and some infected wheat

Detail of the grain mill

Around Your Grave I'll Light a ring of Fire

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 13 Nov 2021 00:00:00 EST

Cover artwork for a new single by Blood and Dust, listen to it on BandCamp here: https://blood-and-dust.bandcamp.com/track/around-your-grave-ill-light-a-ring-of-fire

Personal artifacts

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 23 Oct 2021 00:00:00 EST

This ongoing series documents my personal collections of artifacts, some with historical significance, some purely some stick or rock found in the woods somewhere, but all with meaning and a past of future story attached to them. In archeology, artifacts are only as precious as their well-documented provenance and context that allows them to tell a more complete story. These items that I found, unearthed or bought have a story of their own but also a story that I made for them, this is an exercise in collecting those stories so they can be shared and hopefully inspire other people to create stories of their own for their favourite found objects.

Dark Folklore illustrations for Disturbia

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 00:00:00 EST

Pencil and ink digital illustrations and lettering pieces around themes of folklore and magic made for the brand Disturbia .

First flash sheet containing mushrooms, standing stones and a witch bottle

Second flash sheet with a corn dolly, ritual dagger, green man and frog in a coffin

Last flash sheet containing a hand of glory and the head of a mari lwyd

Failed utopia

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 18 Oct 2021 00:00:00 EST

Brutalist ruins of Montreal’s olympic stadium and surrounding public spaces.

Mushroom risotto

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 10 Oct 2021 00:00:00 EST

Steps

Roughly cut the mushrooms in medium sized-chunks
Heat up 4 cups of vegetable broth in a pot until simmering, keep at that temperature throughout the cooking process, also keep a cup nearby to transfer the broth
Put 1 tablespoon of vegan butter in a pan with the cut mushrooms and cook them slowly until they are slightly browned
Put the remaining 1 tablespoon of vegan butter in a large pot and add 1 1/2 cups of arborio rice, roast the rice on high intensity for 2-3 minutes in the butter
Lower the burner of the rice to low and start adding the broth to the rice, 1 cup at a time, stirring while the rice cooks and absorbs the broth, then adding more
Once all the broth as been absorbed the rice should have doubled in size, it’s time to add 1.5 cup of light beer to the rice and cook it a bit more while stirring
Once the beer has absorbed, turn off the heat and add 3 tsp of fresh thyme, the cooked mushrooms, 1/2 cup of vegan parmesan, and some salt and pepper to taste, mix well to incorporate all the ingredients
Serve with some chopped green onions or chives and the leftover from the beer used to cook the risotto, enjoy!

Folktober 2021

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 00:00:00 EST

The green man

Jenny Greenteeth

Green childen of Woolpit

Drawing of standing stones in a forest clearing

Photo of the standing stones drawing resting on a large stone

First page of the Jabberwocky poem with the head of the creature poking out

Second page of the Jabberwocky poem with the vorpal sword

A human horse hybrid demon from scotland, the Nucklavee

The Wyvern, a bipedal dragon on a shield

Vacarme Hurlant

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 00:00:00 EST

Logo for a blackened death metal band from Quebec.

Vacarme Hurlant logo in white on black

Vacarme Hurlant logo in black on white

Hex

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 00:00:00 EST

Let your demons out.

A demonic portrait of Hex with a long tongue, death stare and horns, surrounded by a crown of spikes with their name in black metal font at the bottom

The same portrait but in a monochrome red palette

The Onion Knight

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 00:00:00 EST

The Onion Knight from Dark Souls one, sitting at the gate and wondering about life.

The Onion Knight from Dark Souls one, sitting at the gate and wondering about life

Foulest Witch

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 00:00:00 EST

Hand-drawn logo, sigil and illustrations for Foulest Witch, a black metal, dark ambient and ritual music label.

Complete logo with sigil and lettering

Sigil

Sigil with text

Dagger and candleholder

Wheel Skeleton

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 00:00:00 EST

One of the skeletons tied to gigantic spiked wheels from Dark Souls.

Nicole Marxen

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 00:00:00 EST

Hand-drawn band logo for the solo project of Nicole Marxen , a mix of avant-garde pop, synthwave and experimental rock. Her first album is a meditation on grief and the painful and messy process of going through these feelings, in her own words: “I often compare the experience to uncovering a crystal, digging through foundation to discover something both jagged and brilliantly beautiful.”

Logo on a project photo

Logo in grey on black

Nihtgengan

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 00:00:00 EST

Hand-drawn band logo for the oniric dungeon synth / darkambient project Nihtgengan

Nihtgengan logo in white on black

Nihtgengan logo in black on white

Research links

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 14 Aug 2021 00:00:00 EST

Where I keep my references for crafting, woodworking, low-tech, permacomputing and low-bandwidth web projects.

Small web
Woodworking
Tools
Electronics
Drawing
Other crafts

Small web

Woodworking

Reproductions of early furniture

Tools

Electronics

Drawing and illustration

tool to find animal references in a specific angle

Other crafts

Tattooing

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 14 Aug 2021 00:00:00 EST

Terms
Tools
Supplies
Technique
Safety
Links

Terms

CYCLE

; Refers to the cycle of motion of the motor of the tattoo machine, pushing the needle out and back in the tube.

DWELL TIME

; How long the needle is staying in the skin during it's cycle.

GIVE (or SPRINGYNESS)

; The less dwell time a machine has the more springiness or give it has. This is desirable because it reduces the chances of damaging the skin by dragging needles inside the skin while tattooing.

STROKE LENGTH

; How much the needle travels in and out of the tip during the cycle, measured in mm.

THROW (or HANG)

; How much of the needle hangs out of the tip when the machine is at rest.

LINING

; Tattooing the solid lines of a tattoo.

SHADING

; Tattooing the shaded, gradient parts of a tattoo.

Tools

Needles • Needle types • Machines •

Needles

Needles come pre-packaged in a sterile package either with just the needle, the needle and a disposable tube or needle in a cartridge (for rotary machines). Needles have an expiry date so check that.

Needle codes looks like this: 9RL In which the 9 is the amount of needles and RL is the type of needle, in this case a round liner.

Needle Types

Round Liners (RL)

Needles grouped in a circle, good for lines, needles are more tightly packed together.

Flat liners (FL)

Single row of needles, used for lining and whip shading.

Round shaders (RS)

Similar to round liner needles but with the needles spread out more for easier shading.

Magnum (M1 - weaved or M2 - stacked or RM - round grouping)

Needles lined up in a row to cover more ground, there is two types of magnum needles, weaved and stacked, weaved magnums have the needle more spaced out than stacked magnums. Magnums can have a flat or round grouping, meaning that either all the needles get equally deep in the skin in the ones in the middle go deeper than the ones on the side.

Bug pin

Needles are needles made using smaller individual needles than standard needles, all types of needle stacks can come with bug pin needles.

Complete guide to tattoo needles

Machines

There is coil machines and rotary machines. Coil machines use electromagnets in a simple circuit with a spring and contact screw in order to create the reciprocating action needed to tattoo. Coil machines on the other hand use a rotary motor that drives a cam connected to the needle to make it go in and out of the skin.

More and more, tattoo artists are moving from using coil machines to using rotary machines, the main advantages being ease of setup and tuning, reduced noise and vibration and ability to use needle cartridge and change needles easily on the same machine during a session. The rest of this guide will be oriented towards rotary machines.

Machine accessories to keep in stock:

disposable grips
Rubber nipples (to connect the needle to the bar)
Machine bags
Cable bags
tape for machine bags

Machine types / configurations

when coil machines were the main type of machines used for tattooing, often artists would have multiple ones, setup differently for different tasks. Here’s a list of the different uses and what characteristics are most desirable for the task. Some newer rotary machines have adjustable configurations that allow to do most of those with a single machine.

Liner

Runs fast and has usually a longer stroke length to get the ink in in one pass.

Shader

Runs slower and has a shorter stroke length in order to make smoother gradients and transitions. Running the machine extra-slowly can be useful for techniques like whip shading.

Color-packer

Vlad Blad Avenger 2 pro stroke and voltage cheat sheet

Small lines (under 7 RL): 4.2 stroke at 7V Big lines (7 RL and up): 4.7 stroke at 7V Stipple and whip shading: 4.7 or 5.5 stroke at 3.5V Smooth shading: Color packing:

Supplies

Inks

TODO

Technique

Setting up the station

Before the client even shows up I have to setup my station with my machine and all the supplies i’ll need to tattoo, I made a tattoo station setup and teardown guide for that.

Preparing the skin and applying the stencil

Before any work can begin, the area of the skin to be tattooed has to be shaved closely and disinfected. This is to avoid pushing hairs or bacteria and viruses that could be living on the skin inside the body and potentially creating infection. It will also prepare the skin to receive the stencil.

A stencil is an image used as a reference while tattooing, it can be either drawn freehand with a skin-safe disposable marker or transferred on the skin with stencil paper. Stencil paper can be used with a thermal printer or by hand by drawing over it. I made a tattoo stencil guide that details the steps in making one and applying it.

Lining

TODO

Shading

TODO

Safety

Studio layout • Sharps disposal

General studio layout advice

Have a sink dedicated to hand washing in tattoo room
Have a separate sterilization room, don’t wash hands in contaminated sink
Have a bathroom used just for bathroom stuff
Put signs with hand washing instructions at every sink
Put “do not touch” signs and biohazard signs on all surfaces that should not be touched (workstation, garbage bin, etc.)
Make sure all surfaces are non porous in bathroom and tattoo room
Keep wall mounted liquid hand soap and wall mounted paper towel dispenser beside each sink
Keep hand sanitizer in tattoo room near workstation and in entrance
Keep all equipment in drawers until it needs to be used

Sharps and sharps disposal

Always use single use and disposable sharps (needles, razors, etc)
Inspect packaging of pre-sterilized sharps to make sure it’s not been compromised
Dispose immediately after use in a sharps container
Dispose of the full sharps container when it’s 3/4 full
Install the sharps container on a proper wall mount as close as practical to the use area
Look into service that picks up biohazard waste

Links and References

Ariel Doom

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 00:00:00 EST

A lettering piece made for the black metal-themed art project of a friend, see more over on her instagram .

Ariel Doom logo in white on black

Ariel Doom logo in black on white

Leather belt

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 00:00:00 EST

I made this leather belt out of scraps of leather and metal rings years ago, I recently added some removable chains and straps to it. I carry on it my small sickle, a mask and sometimes I hang other useful things from the rings when I go out.

Leather belt and sickle in it's sheath

Leather belt with chains

Saguenay travel photography

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 00:00:00 EST

Hiking and climing to see the fjords, riding kids bikes down construction lanes, eating risotto as breakfast, a first escape during the plague.

The fjords of Saguenay

Tall cliffs shrouded in fog

Grass-roofed cabin

Dying little jumping mouse on a bed of moss

Mushrooms on log

Hex capturing my soul

A miniature moss forest in a tiny cave

Looming cabins

Massive lead and wood religious statue hiding behind trees

Cozy spot in the woods

Endless roots growing on a boulder

Late evening car ride

More moss

Squatting forest goth

Bug-eaten stump

Sneaky ferns

Shadow-filled woods

Towering lookout

Jess standing on a boulder

Just enjoying the trees

The creepiest track marker

Empty parking lots

Very pastoral traffic cone

Suburban wilderness

The low tide under the setting sun

Make yourself a website

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 00:00:00 EST

Interesting websites
Practical knowledge

The same way as I can’t imagine living in a space designed and decorated by someone else based off a generic pattern, I can’t imagine my words and my work exist solely in the conformist and reductive spaces that are current day social media apps. When making this website I craved the freedom that I felt when I first started interacting and making stuff on the web as a kid. This place was wonderful, an infinite interconnected array of niche websites with fascinating content and stories, a true autonomous zone, containing within itself the knowledge on how to create itself.

During my early experiments in building websites and forums I spent a lot of time inspecting the code of other websites I liked, stealing little bits of html and css and mashing them together in this creative assemblage that took life on my screen.

Then came adulthood and getting a job. At that point I had been messing around on the web for quite a while and everyone was looking for a “web person” to make their small business website. I learned Wordpress, made my own theme base and started spurting out copies of it with slightly different branding applied on top for my clients. The more I made websites that way the less I could feel that sense of freedom and wonder that I use to see as a foundational part of the web as a kid. It all become hollow and meaningless.

Up until I joined the Merveilles community again and rediscovered that web. The wild web of weird personal websites, webrings and wikis . Not only did it brought back that creativity and inspiration to create on the web in a more personal manner, I also realized that this corner of the web, even if it had shrunk since my childhood, had developed some new branches: digital gardens , websites built like a flow of thoughts or list of links , free-form websites , and explored new considerations: low-bandwidth and highly accessible websites, energy-aware websites , net art , and more. I’m still discovering new interesting websites by the day through talking with people on mastodon and going down link rabbit holes and then I keep up to date with them through the use of a RSS feed reader, an old piece of technology that gives me what those social media timelines should, The latest from the websites and people I care about.

So, all that story to tell you: make yourself a website, start small, you’ll need a text editor and some knowledge of HTML and CSS . I recognize that I’m quite privileged to have known a simpler and easier to grasp web and probably a lot of the people who might read that will have trouble imagining what it looks like. I’ve included a list of interesting websites to give you ideas, I really recommend right-clicking on them and clicking on the “inspect” option, you can see the building blocks of all websites that way. Otherwise, don’t bother looking into static site builders until your website has grown enough that manually uploading your files becomes too much work. Stay away from design trends articles and the big blogs, instead spend time with yourself and the code and figure out what a website means to you. And as soon as you can, put it out there and link it to other websites.

Want to read more about this side of the web, I got you covered:
My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be? - a beautiful and inspiring essay on what website can look like

“But on a more communal level, I suspect that cultures of digital detox — in >suggesting that the online world is inherently corrupting and cannot be >improved — discourage us from seeking alternative models for what the internet >could look like.”
– Lauren Collee, from https://reallifemag.com/the-great-offline/

A list of interesting websites to get lost in:

Practical knowledge to get you started:

A cool webzine on how to make a website from scratch
Getting started with HTML
Getting started with CSS
A visual reference for CSS
HTML tips from Thomasorus
Neocities - a hosting platform for small sites with a built-in editor in the style of the geocities of yore
Host a website on glitch - a simple hosting platform for static websites, also has a built-in editor
Deploying a static site on digital ocean - i feel this is still over-complicated for beginners, i’ll try to find the equivalent of what I had as a teen: logging on my friend’s server with ftp and dumping my files
Lichen, a tiny CMS
Deux fleurx, datacenter-less hosting services using old computers in homes

Resilient computer

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 00:00:00 EST

I’ve been thinking about making a portable low-power resilient computer for quite a while and have been slowly assembling the parts that i’ll use to make it. My main goal with it is to have a backup computer if my macbook crashes.

Inspirations:

https://back7.co/home/the-raspberry-pi-quick-kit
http://opacity.ru/cyberdeck
https://cyberdeck.cafe/build
https://alternativebit.fr/posts/ultimate-writer/

It needs to

run all the software tools I need to daily and creative tasks
work offline and connect to the internet
run on battery power, grid power or solar power
is easy to repair and upgrade if needed

Parts acquired so far

Raspberry Pi 4 (dimensions 4” x 2.75” x 0.75”)
Anker external battery
Used pelican case
Old bluetooth apple keyboard (will be retrofitted to run without batteries)
Switch for power source
old wireless mac keyboard

Parts to get

Connector for external power (usb C):
Display port to hdmi adapter: https://cablexpert.com/item.aspx?id=8204
3 x Usb panel mount: https://elmwoodelectronics.ca/products/panel-mount-usb-cable-a-male-to-a-female
1 x Audio jack, panel mount: https://elmwoodelectronics.ca/products/panel-mount-stereo-audio-extension-cable-18-3_5mm
1 x Panel mount ethernet: https://elmwoodelectronics.ca/products/panel-mount-ethernet-extension-cable
1 x Panel mount hdmi: https://elmwoodelectronics.ca/products/panel-mount-hdmi-cable-40-cm
1 x cdmi adapter: https://elmwoodelectronics.ca/products/odseven-raspberry-pi-4-micro-hdmi-adapter-4k-compatible
Sd card extender: https://elmwoodelectronics.ca/products/3687-adafruit-sd-card-extender-68cm-26-inch-long-cable
Screen: https://elmwoodelectronics.ca/products/10-1-display-audio-1280x800-ips-hdmi-vga-ntsc-pal (10” x 6.45” x 1.1”) or https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B076GZVCP2/ref=as_li_ss_tl?dchild=1&keywords=Elecrow+11.6+Inch+1920X1080+HDMI+VGA+1080P+LED+Display+Moniter+Compatible+for+Raspberry+Pi+Win+PC+Game+Consoles&language=en_US&sr=8-5&linkCode=gs2&linkId=9e7633a4831e2e948553bb1fc24f5d18&tag=ehca05-20
Usb Battery replacement: https://www.amazon.ca/Lenink-Battery-Eliminator-Supply-Replace/dp/B07ZGF6BMM
Speakers: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077MKQJW2/ref=as_li_ss_tl?smid=AFHAE9RJVUMB&psc=1&linkCode=sl1&tag=ilumi03-20&linkId=5ae6dc1f8e06aa4d0fdb5213b0876283&language=en_US , https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0822YZPR9/ref=as_li_ss_tl?smid=A31G33MT63S07E&psc=1&linkCode=sl1&tag=ilumi03-20&linkId=12ffa08281384cb3daf621b5272bfc1c&language=en_US
Touchpad: https://www.newegg.com/perixx-ppd-504-11572-peripad-504/p/173-000H-00021?Description=touchpad&cm_re=touchpad-_-173-000H-00021-_-Product

Treecrets cards

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 11 Jul 2021 00:00:00 EST

Basing myself on a game by James Chip , I created a series of cards with illustrations for the different steps of this meditative and introspective game about listening and talking to trees with your friends.

Treecrets card game

Meditative animist card game that allows you to converse with trees, to be played alone or with a friend in a quiet spot of forest

Buy a print

Marinated veggies

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 06 Jul 2021 00:00:00 EST

Steps

These are really good in banh mi sandwiches but could also be added to a lot of recipes like bowls or as a side or entrée.

Chop 3 carrots and 1 small cucumber into sticks
Cut 1 jalapeno pepper into thin slices, removing the seeds
Put the veggies in a mason jar and pour 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar, 1/3 cup rice vinegar and 1/2 cup white vinegar into it, fill the remaining space with cold water to cover the veggies
Add 1/2 tsp of sugar and 1/2 tsp of salt and close the lid
Put in the fridge overnight

Summer chickpea sesame salad

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 06 Jul 2021 00:00:00 EST

Steps

Follow this recipe to make the chickpeas but replace the tofu with chickpeas, I made this salad with leftovers chickpeas from a breakfast.

Slice the 1/4 of a red onion in thin half-circles
Cut 1/4 of garden cucumbers in thin half slices
In a small bowl combine 2 tsp of plain sesame oil or olive oil, the 1 tsp of toasted sesame oil, 1 tsp of soy sauce and 2 tsp of rice vinegar to make the dressing
In the serving bowl, add 2 handfuls of mixed salad greens, the cucumber slices, the chopped red onion and the 1/2 cup of grilled and seasoned chickpeas and pour the dressing on top.
Sprinkle some sesame seeds on top and enjoy!

Summer Solstice 2021

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 20 Jun 2021 00:00:00 EST

Pausing and listening to the rhythm of the earth while the burning wheel tumbles down the hill.

A single leaf on the ground

May the sun shine warm upon your face

Ripples in the water

A dead branch floating in water, on it's cycle to fee new life

A spire poking through the trees

Playing the irish bones to the rhythm of the earth

Vambit conversion

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 18 Jun 2021 00:00:00 EST

The original vambits were a small run of laser cut acrylic toys designed by the folks at Hundred Rabbits , I had it laying around on my desk for years and it always had a missing art and antler. Since it was already a bit damaged it gave me the idea of making it really rough looking while practicing my miniature painting skills at the same time.

The final vambit with its new look

Tattoo ideas

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 13 Jun 2021 00:00:00 EST

Some of my tattoos on my legs

I see my skin as my personal grimoire, adding to it as I make discoveries, have revelations, find talismans and artefacts, come up with new sigils and live new experiences. I also keep a list of tattoo ideas and things I’d like to add to the grimoire over time.

Ghost reading (inspired by Blashpemous)
Magic circles
Stone circle (around belly button)
Skull on hand (by alixe cooper)
Sigils over elbows
Poe with lantern from zelda
Goblin
neolithic maze symbol
Black swirl on elbow
Chandelier with ghost hand
Tattoos inspired by folklore
Swords / daggers
Medieval Mace
Bronze age artifacts
Dragon
Dungeon map / floor plan
Hand of glory
Medieval illustrations
henbane and other psychoactive witchy plants on my lower legs
Crossbow
Lord of the rings inspired tattoos
Frame saw
sun symbol and fire churn on my back (by Julie Docteur)
FOLK LORE on fingers (by Empousai )
Two crossed oak branches on my chest (by Alixe Cooper )
broken halberd on my leg by myself
Satanic skull with smoke by myself
GRIMOIRE over knee by myself
Two little imps with a trans symbol by myself
Sun scythe by myself
Little mouse with an eye by La Spectre
Big flail (by Empousai )
ONLY FREAKS lettering (by Horseforest )
Ghost with flail (by Meagan Blackwood )
Ghost pepper (by Evey lp)
Coffee ghost (by Evey lp)
Bike gear (by Evey lp)

Hammer handle

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 12 Jun 2021 00:00:00 EST

A while ago I found this little ball-peen hammer in an antique store, it had a handle at the time but it ended up breaking with use at the thinner part. The head sat in my tool chest for a couple years until recently when I started to work on my new tool chest project .

With this new motivation to get all my tools together in a new home, I wanted to give this little guy a new handle.

First step was to pick the wood I would use for it. I settled on white oak because it’s easily accessible here in Montreal, really dense and sligthly flexible and I just love the grain pattern of it.

The longest and trickiest part of the process is definitely shaping and smoothing the curves of the handle. I used a succession of tools to do so:

a draw-knife to remove the big chunks and rough out the shape, following the grain
a small sharp carving knife to get the shape closer to it’s final shape and getting rid of the most obvious high spots

Once the handle was really close to it’s final form, I switched to a large file and different grit of sandpaper to smooth everything out. The best way I found to check my work was to look at it from different angles and from the end under a harsh light to see where there were still irregularities. At that stage I also cut the slot that would contain the wedge locking the head in the final assembly. I cut it deeper than the hammer head itself knowing that I would push it deeper and trim the excess.

Then, the handle was oiled with 3 coats of linseed oil, with some sanding with some steel wool between each coat.

To make the wedge I used a little block of ebony wood I had lying around. I would not recommend buying new ebony wood since the species is endangered but walnut would make a good alternative. The important aspect is that the wood be really hard and dense.

I cut it with my Japanese saw to the good size and tapered the end by running it against a big machining file. I then put the head of the hammer on there, tapping the bottom of the handle really hard on my worktable while holding the head to push it down the handle. when it was in place I inserted the wedged and then tapped the whole hammer with its head down on the table to drive it into place.

After making sure the head was locked in place, I trimmed the excess with the Japanese saw and sanded and oiled the end of the handled now embedded in the head.

Here is the final hammer in company of his friends in my tool chest in progress.

Spicy cucumber salad

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 09 Jun 2021 00:00:00 EST

Steps

Chop the 2 garlic cloves finely
Cut 1 english cucumber or 3 garden cucumbers in medium thick slices
In a small bowl combine 1 tsp of gochugaru, the 2 chopped garlic cloves, 1.5 tbsp of apple cider vinegar, 1.5 tbsp of toasted sesame oil and 1 tbsp of maple syrup
Add the cucumber slices to the dressing and mix well with a spoon until all the slices are covered
Sprinkle some sesame seeds on top and enjoy!

Growing and harvesting herbs

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 07 Jun 2021 00:00:00 EST

This little guide act as a reminder for our own little balcony garden of fresh herbs so the tips will be tailored for herbs growing in terra cotta pots outside on a balcony.

Herb growing and care

Planting

Mediteranean woody herbs (lavender, thyme, sage, rosemary, oregano)

These prefer a mix of 1/3 sand to 2/3 compost to emulate the drier and sandier sands of the Mediteranean. They also need soil that drains quickly.

Non-woody herbs (mint, basil, chives, cilantro, parsley, dill, fennel)

These prefer just compost as potting soil.

Avoid compost containing manure (too much nitrogen), compost that contains wetting agents or added nutrients, unamended soil with no inorganic material.

For now we’ve only planted herbs from starter plants but I plan to try sprouting seeds that I collected from previous plants next year and take notes of the process.

Here’s a good guide on when to plant them, in which type of soil and in which sun exposure: https://www.almanac.com/sites/default/files/d6/garden_guide_growing_herbs.pdf

Watering

Herbs in pots outdoor need a lot of water compared to plants indoor or even to herbs planted directly in the ground, make sure to check them regularly for signs of wilting or sagging and water them plenty during the warm months of summer.

When watering your herbs, make sure waters runs of out the drainage holes at the bottom of the pots, making sure all of the soil is wet and encourage deeper root growth.

It is best to water them in later afternoon / start of night to prevent evaporation and allow for drying before nightfall.

Pruning

Prune hard in spring to encourage new growth (leaving 1-2 inches of the stems), prune again after flowering. Don’t let the herbs flower, it will change the taste and reduce the growth of new leaves. Non-woody herbs need to be pruned regularly (every 3-4 weeks) to keep them looking neat.

Harvesting

Useful harvesting rules to keep the plants in good health and growing more:

Harvest new growth regularly while keeping bigger leaves at the bottom
Harvest shoots just after a split to encourage the two smaller shoots to grow larger

Tool chest

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 04 Jun 2021 00:00:00 EST

After years of thinking about it and pushing the project back, I finally tackled the building of a proper home for my hand tools. I’m trying to use as much of the wood I already have around to make it and the actual structure once was the case containing the first ever modular synth that I put together as a teen.

Since I didn’t wanted to draw a full precise plan of it and every tool, here are the guiding principles that I used as I fitted the tools:

Fit as much tools as possible
Keep all tools easily accessible, never more than 1 tool to remove to access any of them
Make each holder unique to the tool so it’s easy to find what goes where

This is still very much a work in progress. Once I’ll be done with the main cabinet, I’ll move on to the doors and then the finishing and hanging of the tool chest. I’ll try to document different phases of the project and show the final result in this project.

Wood species

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 00:00:00 EST

First and foremost, the most sustainable form of timber is reclaimed wood. Good sources of reclaimed wood are wooden pallets (commonly built of white oak if the wood is hard or pine if soft), timber from demolition of buildings and barns, old furniture. You can find more information on identifying pallet wood here: Identifying pallet wood .

Notes on sustainably harvested timber: buying European wood is usually a good choice because since 2010, the EU Timber Regulation enforced the replanting of trees, better forest management and limiting annual harvests.

Organizations and logos to look for:
The FSC (forest stewardship council)
The PEFC (programme for the endorsement of forestry certification)

The FSC is an independent, non-profit organisation promoting responsible management of the world’s forests. Their certification system provides internationally recognized standard-setting and trademark assurance to anyone, business or individual, who is interested in supporting responsible forestry.

Other resources on sustainable timber:
https://www.earthsight.org.uk/ Choosing wood species for timber framing

“Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.”
– The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry

Hardwoods

Oak • Maple • Birch • Walnut • Ash • Cherry • Bamboo

Oak (chêne)

Grows in the Americas, Asia, Europe and North Africa with the most diversity in North America. Its wood is very resistant to fungi and insects making it a really good construction and boat-building wood. It’s also traditionally used to make barrels and smoking food. The bark of the white oak is dried and used in medical preparations. Oak bark is also rich in tannin, and is used by tanners for tanning leather. Acorns are used for making flour or roasted for acorn coffee.
Always best to make sure it’s FSC-certified.
Subpecies: White oak, English oak, red oak, southern live oak
Harvest cycle: 68-88 years

Maple (Érable)

Grows in Asia, Europe, North Africa and North America. It’s really hard wood is used for turning, furniture, butcher’s blocks, bows and furniture. Maple is also a tonewood (a wood which carries waves well) which makes it really suitable for making musical instruments. Its wood is also used to smoke food and to make charcoal and the sugar maples are used to make delicious maple syrup.
Subpecies: Sugar maple, silver maple, sycamore maple
Harvest cycle: 20-30 years

Birch (Bouleau)

Grows in most of the northern hemisphere. Birch is a strong hardwood that can be quite flexible used to make high quality baltic birch plywood. It is used in furniture making, musical instruments and construction. Harvest cycle: 20-30 years

Walnut (Noyer)

Grows in southeast Europe and Japan and in the western part of North and South America. Very hard and attractive looking wood, mostly used for furniture, turning, and lutherie. The nuts are edible and the nuts shells can be ground and used as an abrasive.
Harvest cycle: 50 years

Ash (Frêne)

Grows in Europe, Asian and North America, strong hard and heavy wood that is also quite elastic. It is used to make bows, tool handles, furniture and stairs (because of its durability). It’s elasticity also makes it a good wood for steam-bending.
Harvest cycle: 10-60 years

Cherry (Cerisier)

Good alternative to mahogany which is getting more rare.
Harvest cycle: 50 years

Bamboo

Non FSC certified because it’s defined as a grass and not a tree but grows really quickly and can be easily sustainable.
Harvest cycle: 3-5 years

Softwoods

Douglas fir • Pine • Cedar • Cypress • Fir

Douglas Fir (Sapin douglas)

Native to western North America but the most susceptible to be sustainable comes from the EU. The Douglas fir is a really important source of food for small animals which eats its seeds. It is one of the best construction timber woods, especially useful for large wooden structures. It’s strong and resistant is also used for flooring.
Harvest cycle: 30 years

Pine (Pin)

grows in North America
Harvest cycle: 50 years

Cedar (Cèdre)

Native to the western Himalayas and the mediterranean region Cedar wood and oil is a moth repellent which makes it good for chests and closets in which woollens are stored.
Harvest cycle: 30-40 years

Cypress (Cyprès)

Cypress grows all over the world, from Japan, to Mexico and North America Used for construction timber and furniture making, it’s heartwood is also moth repellant and is used for chests, drawers and closets. It is also used to make long lasting fence posts and bows.
Harvest cycle: 30-35 years

Fir (Sapin)

Harvest cycle:

The Landscape is Listening

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 00:00:00 EST

Walking the urban Landscape of Montreal and noticing it’s nature, patterns and textures. Getting lost in the fragmented forest that lives beneath the city.

These photos were taken in the context of the workshop of the same name organized by Lily Hayes & George Saralis-Wheatley, more info can be found here: https://thelandscapeislistening.cargo.site/

Trans Cerne Giant

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 00:00:00 EST

T for Trans

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 00:00:00 EST

A personal project made for on instagram alphabet of LGBTQIA terms.

T for Trans in black letter style

Blood and Dust

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 00:00:00 EST

Coat hanger

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 00:00:00 EST

This coat hanger is built in a mix of neo-gothic and eastlake styles out of knotty pine, with moldings and cutout details. The hardware is cast iron and comes from a local company. The whole thing was stained and weathered to look like an antique piece of furniture and hopefully it lives long enough to become one.

Guillotine model

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 00:00:00 EST

I built this model guillotine for fun when I decided to go back to building miniature things, it also was a nice exercice in timber framing since I used real wood joints to assemble the structure. It is built with wood, cardstock and aluminium for the blade.

Rites of Blood and Dust

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 00:00:00 EST

Album cover and cassette sleeve design for the first Blood and Dust release. The texture used as a background to the design was photographed indoors from soil, leaves and branches collected outside and with the addition of a good amount of fake blood. The concept for this album design, especially the cassette version was to make a physical vessel to contain the music, like an ancient cursed object holding the intense emotions and energy channelled in the songs. The cassette sleeves were cut, punched and folded by hand and all cassettes were engraved with our two sigils.

You can get this cassette and listen to the album over here: https://blood-and-dust.bandcamp.com/album/rites-of-blood-and-dust

Cover for the digital album Rites of Blood and Dust

Cassette edition of the album

Back of the cassette

Inside of the cassette sleeve

Detail of the engraved and screen printed cassette

Scrying mirror

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 00:00:00 EST

A mirror to look into the darkest depths. I made this scrying mirror frame out of two pieces of black-painted spruce wood tied together with waxed string - as above, so below. The pieces were carved hollow to hold the mirror without any glue - held safe but still free.

Golem Heart dice

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 21 Feb 2021 00:00:00 EST

Logo for a friend’s custom gaming dice project. The lettering is based on an existing font with heavy modifications and texturing. The heart was sculpted in clay, photographed and edited.

If you’re interesting in custom gaming dice look up his work here: https://www.instagram.com/golemheartdice/

Tattered banner

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 21 Feb 2021 00:00:00 EST

A war-torn goblin banner with a little battle trophy strapped to it. Pencil drawing with color added digitally.

Crom Cruach

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 00:00:00 EST

CROM CRUACH by Surgeryhead/Blood & Dust

Crust

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 00:00:00 EST

CRUST Narrated by Peter Baker by Blood and Dust

Fun Hell

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 00:00:00 EST

An hommage to the wonderful trash city that is Montréal.

Rites of Blood and Dust

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 00:00:00 EST

Rites of Blood and Dust by Blood and Dust

An ominous presence

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:00:00 EST

A mysterious haunting figure.

Dread distortion pedal

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:00:00 EST

This was my first effect pedal built. It is based on a clone of the Boss DS-1 classic distortion pedal. I was built for my music project Blood and Dust as part of an effect chain we use on a cello. It is primarily used to make sounds heavier, grittier and add this sense of dread that is permeating our music.

Dread distortion pedal

Blood detail on the bottom of the pedal

Input and output

Folk magic wands

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:00:00 EST

All of my ritual tools are crafted by hand using hand tools with respect to the tree from which they came from. They are finished with natural linseed oil and wax for durability. After being completed they are cleansed over a flame. Unless specified, they are not created with a specific magical practice in mind and it is up to you to imbue them with your own personal meaning.

I am also open for custom work and commissions, feel free to reach out about those if you’re interested :)

a sigil engraved folk magic wand

detail of the sigils

This first wand is perfectly aligned with my own carving style. Keeping the general shape of the branch while at the same time adding faceted details and sigils that complement it. It is perfect to direct energy in ritual work, stir brews and potions and trace protective circles.

Length: 14”
Unknown wood species

folk art inspired wand

detail of the carving

This second wand is inspired by my love for folk art and contrasting wood tones. Embracing the tortuous quality of the branch and expanding on it with carved details.

Length: 14”
Unknown wood species

sharp wand for necromantic rites

details of the wood patterns

This third wand is perfect for the current times and this part of the wheel of the year. It started as a hollow termite-eaten branch, carved to a sharp end and then naturally darkened with iron oxyde. Inside of it was placed a rabbit rib bone and then the two ends were sealed with black wax. This one is perfect for darker or necromantic work.

Length: 11”
Unknown wood species

termite-eaten folk magic wand

detail of the wood patterns

This wand is made from termite-eaten wood, showing these sinuous patterns on the handle, like natural sigils.

Length: 13.5”
Unknown wood species

Matcha and spirulina latte

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 00:00:00 EST

Steps

In a small pot combine 1 cup of plant-based milk, 1 tsp of spirulina, 2 tsp of matcha powder and 1 tbsp of raw sugar (if adding it)
Cook on medium/high until it starts smoking while continuously whisking it, around 5 min.
Turn off the heat and transfer to a mug, enjoy!

Stay à la maison

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 00:00:00 EST

Small lettering piece made during a rough patch in the pandemic, remembering people to stay home.

Lettering reading stay à la maison

Baphomet

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 00:00:00 EST

Hellebore zine cover

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 24 Dec 2020 00:00:00 EST

The good folks at Hellebore zine tasked me and Hex to make the cover image for their impromptu Yuletide edition . The theme was the celtic horned god, Cernunnos. With our interpretation of Cernunnos, we wanted to explore the darker aspects of the natural cycle while subverting the gender binary that is often attached to this ancient pagan divinity, channeling Cernunnos within a social and natural context that embraces nuance, complexity, and change. The final cover treatment and design was made by Nathaniel Winter-Hébert .

Dead leaves buried by snow, dark and empty branches reaching for the sky like the horns of a great beast. A cold hand holding strongly onto the flame of life, leading us through these winter months of darkness and decay.

I’ve also crafted the headpiece for this photo out of leather and sticks, I’ll post about it on here at a later time.

Year Walk 2020

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 24 Dec 2020 00:00:00 EST

Walking on the longest night, looking inside for what’s to come.

I put on my ritual leaf crown, grabbed a lantern and ventured out in the cold empty streets and alleyways of Montreal. This was a walk I had to do alone. It was a moment I gave myself to thread new paths, going down the darkest routes without any map, open to what I could find around and inside of me. I became more comfortable with some of my fears in the process and discovered a renewed creative flow of ideas.

Shadows and bones dancing together

A menacing insect head, spilled on the asphalt

Abandonned childhood hideout

Festive spirits

The Cathedral of dead vines

The black dog-like creature is following me...

More ghosts

The wheel of the year is turning

and the trees are dancing and crying

Fantômes

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 00:00:00 EST

Small static website for my collaborative ghost story zine Fantômes .

Home page

Issue page

Ambience page

Winter oats

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 04 Dec 2020 00:00:00 EST

Steps

In a small pot combine 1/2 cup of steel-cut oats and 1 cup of water
Cook on medium/high until it boils, around 7 min while stirring.
Turn off the heat and add 2 tbsp of plant-based milk, mix well.
Measure and add all the other ingredients and spices on top, mix well before eating to ensure that every spoonful is tasty, enjoy!.

New Orleans travel photography

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 00:00:00 EST

Hot sauce, neon lights and plant-covered high balconies.

Tramway tracks and some mighty trees

High metal-fenced balconies

More beautiful trees

Magazine street

View from Magazine street

Vintage car

Frenchman street

Those beed necklaces

The plants just grow everywhere

Architectural details

Bubbles and bright colors in the sun

Unexpected architecture

Voodoo shop

Overpass

Graffiti culture is alive and well in New Orleans

Famous New Orleans Po' Boys

Pretty plant

Neon signs from inside of a bar

Dublin travel photography

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 07 Nov 2020 00:00:00 EST

Foggy alleys, crumbling buildings and the smell of beer.

Red brick alleyway at night, filled with smoke

Back alleys

Shawarma is a big thing here

Hybrid architecture

Alleyway scenes

Graffiti on on old painted buildings

Antique streetlight in the warm morning glow

Halloween night in temple bar

The well worn out stools of the local pub

Some brutalist architecture

Pubs in the morning

The beautiful architectural mess that is Dublin

A pause in the park

Brutalist Dublin airport

Palmtrees

Fox ritual doll

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 00:00:00 EST

The cunning fox escapes the hunter with its prey, crawl underneath brambles to the safety of its lair. Its power lies in its curiosity and ability to see through deceptions.

Seasonal produce of Québec

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 00:00:00 EST

All year long

These are not affected by seasonality

Beets
Carrots
Mushrooms
Onions
Cabbage
Leeks
Garlic
Potatoes
Rutabaga
Sweet potatoes

Spring

from the end of March to the end of June

Apples
Asparagus
Cucumber
Celeriac
Radishes
Rhubarb
Snow peas
Spinach
Tomatoes

Summer

from the end of June to the end of September

Beans
Blueberries
Broccoli
Celery
Corn
Cucumber
Eggplant
Fennel
Grapes
Green onions
Ground cherries
Kale
Lettuce
Pears
Peas
Radishes
Raspberries
Rhubarb
Snow peas
Spinach
Squash
Strawberries
Swiss chard
Tomatoes
Turnip
Zucchini

Fall

from the end of September to the end of December

Beans
Blueberries
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Celeriac
Celery
Cranberries
Cucumber
Eggplant
Kale
Lettuce
Pears
Pumpkin
Peas
Radishes
Raspberries
Spinach
Squash
Strawberries
Swiss chard
Tomatoes
Turnip
Watermelon

Winter

from the end of December to the end of March

Endives
Jerusalem artichoke
Celeriac
Parsnip
Pears
Rhubarb
Squash
Turnip

Savory miso oats

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 00:00:00 EST

Steps

cut the seitan sausage in slices and chop the green onion
In a pan, put a little olive oil and the sausages slices and cook on medium high until browned, around 5 min
At the same time, combine in a small pot 1/2 cup of steel-cut oats and 1 cup of water
Cook on medium/high until it boils, around 7 min while stirring.
Turn of the heat and add 1 tsp of brown miso, 1 tsp of soy sauce and 1/2 tsp of thyme, mix well.
Transfer to a bowl, add the sausages, 1 tbsp of nutritional yeast and the chopped green onions, mix well before and enjoy!.

Low-tech

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 03 Nov 2020 00:00:00 EST

Examples of low-tech
Resources

With the ongoing climate crisis, the destruction brought forth by the unsustainable push for constant growth of capitalism and a world filled with increasingly complex and disposable machines and tools, there is very strong need to scale down and simplify our technology and engineering.

Design has become on a lot of ways a self-referential discipline, focussing more and more on aesthetics over creative problem solving or, at the even more basic level, just taking the time to see if there is a problem to solve. Design has been instrumentalized by capitalism to manipulate people, create needs and keep us distracted.

Craft was turned into a hobby by capitalism as global supply chains and globalized markets with their concentration of manufacturing facilities in countries where labor is cheap and environmental regulations are rare. But craft holds the power to decentralize the production and maintenance of a lot of the items we use in everyday life and have them last for generations.

Since I was a kid I was curious about how things worked, from synthesizers and computers to medieval siege weapons and woodworking tools. By taking those apart, and building my own versions with what I had available and plans and knowledge collected from books and websites I developed an ability to repair or build tools for most situations where a tool is needed and also to think of new ways old tools could be used.

I can imagine a future where small communities have integrated craft and functional and critical design and engineering in order to become more resilient, reduce their technological waste and teach these skills to children.

Examples of low-tech technology

Pedal-powered machines

People have been making pedal powered machines almost since bikes were a thing, most machines working with a rotational movement or reciprocal movement is a good fit for that kind of energy. The idea being, having a frame with a seat, pedals, gears and often a flywheel (to even out the rotation and multiply the energy generated) that transfer human energy to a rotating shaft which is then attached to the machine directly to make it spin or via a cam mechanism to transform rotation into reciprocal movement.

Plenty of pedal-powered machine projects

Resources, inspiration and further reading

Death ritual doll

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 00:00:00 EST

With his hollow ribcage, emaciated face and dark tattered robes, he is standing at the crossroads to help souls cross to the other side of the veil. This small ritual doll was crafted during the times leading up to Samhain this year, channeling the transformative energies of the dying season.

Off-grid living

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

This is a very organic gathering of my notes and research on living off-grid, either in a home or in a vehicule (like a boat or a van). I have a dream of building a timber framed house in the woods at some points and to have a van or a boat setup for short-term living so these notes act as preparation, planning and inspiration for those projects.

Power
Water
Fuel
Internet
Heating
Lighting
Computers
Shower
Toilet
Insurance
Safety
Links

Power

The house and vehicule have quite different power needs, but in a perfect world they would both be powered by renewable energy. I’ll detail here the system I started designing for a van.

Van power needs total: 1784 Wh

Specs of the system
180Ah / 2160Wh 12v lithium battery
200W of solar panels (monocrystalline, in parallel)
2000W pure sine inverter
40A charge controller

links and resources:

Water

Weekly water needs with shower and a sink: 25L

links and resources:

Fuel

I currently plan to use propane as fuel for a small stove in the van because of it’s price and availability. Propane tanks should always be stored outside or in a ventilated compartment for safety.

links and resources:

Propane system design

Internet

Accessing the internet in a moving vehicule can be tricky, for the van I plan on minimizing our internet needs, using public and businesses wifi and data from our phones.

Heating

Small wood stoves are really good at heating vans and boats, take into account storage space for wood, matches and fire extinguisher if getting a wood stove. Otherwise propane heaters are the cheapest and most efficient solution.

links and resources:

How to insulate a van

Lighting

I would ideally use warm LED lights for most lighting needs, ideally with dimmers to accommodate our preferences at different moments in the day. In the van I would use 12v bulbs and lights so they are easier to integrate with the electrical system.

Links and resources:

computers

For work, making music, and editing photos we use Mac laptops which would use up a good chunk of our power resources. In order to mitigate that I’m currently planning to build a small portable computer based on the RaspberyPi to use for simpler tasks, navigating the web, watching movies and listening to music.

Shower

My plan for the van project is to have a shower in a cabinet. When closed it could be used as a work/cooking surface and when open a shower head and curtains could be put in place to transform it into a working shower. Showering in an off-grid vehicule is a luxury and uses a lot of water so I plan on using public showers if available, like in camping grounds and install a shower head that reduces the amount of water passing through it.

Toilet

I’m thinking of getting or making a composting toilet for the van project, they almost doesn’t smell and with a urine diverter the compostable waste can be disposed of anywhere. In a small vehicule my plan is to combine the shower and toilet space to save space.

porcelain urine separator

Insurance

Insuring a van

Safety

Locks for all doors
Curtains for the windows
CO2 and propane detectors
access to all storage spaces from inside if needed
Fire extinguisher
First aid kit
Hidden compartment for valuables

Altar of inspiration

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

Small altar made of found and hand-made objects to inspire creativity. The little casio keyboard got a ritual burial in the making of Blood and Dust video .

Inspiration altar

Dodecae

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 25 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

Inktober 2017-2018

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 25 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

Magical items on a shelf

Trans rites

Standing stone

Haunted house

Coffee dagger

Ghost cat

Natural burial

Cold grave

Burning church

Hand of glory

Warm wishes

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 25 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

Warm wishes

Grim Howl

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

Grim Howl logo

Plant-based proteins

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

Tofu

11g protein per 100g

Apart from being a source of protein it is a good source of iron and calcium. Tofu is pretty neutral and versatile, it is available in silky soft (perfect for desserts) to extra firm (good for meat-like textures). If used in salty meals it’s best to marinate it and season it to give it more flavour.

For a better texture, freeze overnight, thaw the day of cooking and press for 15 to 30 minutes before cooking.

Seitan

75g (35g absorbed by the body) protein per 100g

Seitan is a dense, wheat-gluten based protein that packs a lot of protein, some iron and is super low in carbs (4g per 100g). Since a lot of spices are included in it’s preparation it doesn’t need much additional seasoning when cooking with it.

Hail seitan!

Tempeh

19g protein per 100g

Tempeh is like a cousin of tofu, it’s made of whole soybeans fermented in a block, it has an interesting texture and holds pretty well when cut in strips and cubes. Like the tofu it tastes best when seasoned or marinated, I’ve found it really good for BBQ recipes.

Veggie Pâté

between 4g and 9g protein per 100g, depending on recipe

Veggie pâté is different from the previous protein sources since it’s a combination of vegetables and beans to form a kind of spread. It is mostly intented for sandwiches or toasts, doesn’t need extra seasoning and is pretty good eaten cold.

Beans

Soybeans

18.2g protein per 100g
Soybeans are one of the rare complete proteins (containing all essential amino acids) in plant sources

Lentils

protein content: 9g protein per 100g

Large white beans

protein content: 9g protein per 100g

Large white beans

protein content: 9g protein per 100g

One downside of eating a lot of beans is feeling gassy or bloated, that is due to the oligosaccharides, a naturally occurring sugar molecule present in the beans that our body cannot break down in the stomach or small intestine. To counteract that, soaking the beans in water for 8 to 12 hours prior to cooking them can help breaking down these sugars.

Poutine

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

Steps

Cut the potatoes in 1/2 inch fries-shaped strips, cut the mushrooms in slices, chop the onion in little cubes.
In a bowl, combine the potato slices with 4 tbsp of olive oil, 1 tsp of smoked paprika, 1 tsp of pepper flakes and 3 tsp of salt, make sure they are evenly covered.
Place the potatoes on a baking sheet and bake at 425 degrees farenheit for 20 min.
While that bakes, drizzle a bit of olive oil in a pan and sauté 1 cup of sliced mushrooms and the chopped onion on high heat until the onion is translucent and mushrooms are starting to brown.
Reduce the heat to medium and add 3 tbsp of cornstarch to the mushrooms and onions, make sure they are well covered.
Gradually add 1 cup of vegetable stock and 1 cup of plant-based milk while whisking, you should see some bubbling happening and the gravy thickening, keep cooking for 10 minutes.
When the gravy is ready, turn off the heat, add 1/2 tsp of nutmeg, some salt and pepper and mix it well and set aside.
Flip the fries over and cook for another 20 minutes.
When the fries are ready, put them first on your plates, then add the gravy, the vegan cheese cut in little cubes, slices of pickles and chopped green onions.

Research links

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

Where I keep my references for folklore, ancestry and magic research

Folklore
Ancestry
Magic

Folklore

Ancestry

Roots deeper than whiteness

Magic and alchemy

Sigils and occult symbols

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

What are sigils
Austin Osman Spare
Intuitive Sigils
Word Method
Rose Cross Method
Planetary Square Method
My own sigil work
Links and References

What are sigils

A sigil, in it’s simplest form is a type of symbol used in a magical or ritual practice. The term sigil derives from the Latin sigillum, meaning “seal” which becomes clear when looking at the seals in the Key of Solomon for example. They are used in a wide array of occult traditions from ceremonial magic, chaos magic, witchcraft, Thelema and Golden Dawn amongst others. I’m even inclined to see runes and Icelandic staves as some kinds of sigils in the way they were drawn and used. Runes are more than letters and refer to larger ideas and were used as magical signs and to write spells¹.

“sigils are monograms of thought”
- Austin Osman Spare

What makes sigils different than letters or purely symbolic images is their connexion to a magical intent or entity. Their ability to contain and channel will is what makes them so special and interesting to me, and the fact that they are immaterial and can stay in the realm of the mind in visualizations or be inscribed, drawn, tattooed or stamped into an object to become physical.

Austin Osman Spare

The work of Austin Osman Spare, a British artist and occultist informed a lot of what we call sigil magic today. We can see references to his own system to make sigils out of combined letters in contemporary chaos magic. I’m especially interested in how he integrated aspects of Art Nouveau and Symbolism in the characters and symbols he drew, there is something strong that draws me to these types of organic and line-based shapes.

In Spare’s system there are no “correct” or “incorrect” sigils; neither is there a list of ready-made symbols. It is of no import whether a sigil is the “correct” one or not, but it is crucial that it has been created by the magician and is therefore meaningful to him/her. Because s/he has constructed it for personal use, the sigil easily becomes a catalyst of his/her magical desire, and sometimes it will even waken this desire in the first place. ²

Making sigils intuitively

When I started making sigils, I did not know about the different existing methods to draw them from words of intent or from magical squares. I went with an intuitive and personal approach.

The Word Method

This is by far the most common method, one that Spare used quite a lot and probably the one you’ve already heard about it you did any research on making sigils.

Making sigils from a rose cross

Making sigils using planetary squares

Sigils can be drawn using planetary squares. Refer to this page on planetary magic for the squares.

Other practices using Sigils

Donald Michael Kraig has a technique early on in Modern Magick called IOB which is short for Identify, Objectify, Banish. The TLDR on it is find the thing you want to unbind or its root, create a drawing/art/sigil/signifier, do a banishing of your choice taking care to have your stand-in object outside of the field of banishment. Watch the objectified thing whither in your mind’s eye. You can also use this technique to visualize / sense where there are connections to the thing. If it’s bound to you, for example, intuiting where on my body/chakra/whatever it connects and cutting it (again, in visualization).

My own sigil work

As mentioned above, I mostly work with intuitive personal sigils

A sigil for the self, as a signature

My new sigil, created as part of my gender transition process breaks away from the rigidity and cleanness of the previous symbol, embracing imperfections and intuition in it’s drawing. It’s elements intersecting and colliding without being constrained.

The oil and sugar symbol originates from an old stylized signature from my art school years. While doing some research on alchemical iconography I realized that the two symbols formed by this combination of the letters T O & M corresponded to the alchemical symbols for oil and sugar, hence the name.

Grounded in my truth, open to change

“In the field of the truly esoteric, words are the sigils of power that form as the inner world takes outer form. They develop a greater meaning and purpose as we formulate the grand sum of experience into singular flowing points. Even the act of writing is itself a magical act, a ritualistic focusing and a scriptural act of devotion.”

Links and References

Magical or divinatory use of runes, Wikipedia

Wyrd terms

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

Here is my ever-growing collection of wyrd terms collected online, in books and in conversations. Getting familiar with these concepts and integrating these words in my vocabulary is part of my commitment to re-enchantment.

ANTHROPODERMIC BIBLIOPEGY

; The practice of binding books in human skin.

APOTROPAIC

; Intended or having powers to ward off evil.

ARBORGLYPH

; The carving of shapes and symbols in the bark of living trees.

TO DITHER

; To tremble of shiver with cold (provincialism from Yorkshire).

DOLMEN

; A structure consisting of one large unhewn stone resting on two or more unhewn stones placed erect in the earth: a term also frequently used as synonymous with cromlech.

DOWNS

; Rolling hills in southern England, The name comes from the Old English dūn (“hill”).

TO FATHOM

; To measure with the width of your arms stretched, it creates a strong connection between the body and the space and the land. It is also the action of bringing somebody closer to your heart and embrace them in your arms.

GENIUS LOCI

; Protective spirit of a place.

GRIM

; Old anglo-saxon word for devil.

HAUNTOLOGY

; Refers to the return or persistence of elements from the past, as in the manner of a ghost, introduced by Jacques Derrida.

KATABASIS

; In mythology and folklore katabasis refers to a trip to the underworld, or the land of the dead in search of knowledge, a quest object or a loved one.

KENOPSIA

; The eeriness of places left behind.

KRATT

; A kratt was a magical creature in Estonian folklore formed from hay or of old household implements by its master, who then had to give the devil three drops of blood for the devil to bring life to the kratt.

LYCH

; Old term for corpse.

MENHIR

; A single tall standing stone as a monument, especially of prehistoric times.

NUMINOUS

; A place rich with the presence of spirit. To be innumined (hans poutianen). Becoming aware of the numinous nature of the landscape around us and the corresponding numinous qualities inside of us. This is where art meets magic.

PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY

; The study of specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals and also how the human psyche leave traces on the landscape over long periods of time.

SIGIL

; A sign, word, or device held to have occult power in astrology or magic.

TENEBRISM

; A style of painting using very pronounced chiaroscuro, with darkness a dominating feature of the image.

Scrambled tofu

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

Steps

In a small bowl combine 1/2 cup of water and 3 tsp cumin, 2 tsp paprika, 2 tsp turmeric and 1 tsp garlic powder.
Pour 2 tbsp of oil in a large non stick pan. Crumble the block of tofu into the pan with your fingers and cook on medium heat for 5 min while stirring.
Add the water and spices and mix it well to cover all the tofu. Continue cooking for another 5 min while stirring.
Add 1/4 cup of non-dairy milk and mix it well. Cook for 3 more minutes until the milk blends with the tofu creating a more creamy texture.
Sprinkle 1/3 cup of nutritional yeast and stir lightly to cover all the tofu. Remove from the heat, add salt and pepper and serve!

Really good on it’s own, served with toast, in breakfast tacos or sandwiches

A heavy black veil

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

Darkness hides what was obvious to better reveal what was occulted

Cemetery walk oct 2020

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

Wandering between worlds.

Scotland travel log

Lizbeth Poirier — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

Nature, architecture and haunted places.

The Mountains surrounding the Loch Ness

Edinburgh castle from below

A dirt path in a field going into a dark forest

The ruins of Boleskine House

Tapoch Broch

Cemetery details

Cemetery mushrooms

Blood and Dust

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

Logo and visuals for the ritualistic horror drone project I’m doing with Hex. You can find more over on our band website: https://blood-and-dust.com/

Curious Moth

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

Curious moth logo

Inked logo

initial sketch

Fall oats

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 00:00:00 EST

Steps

In a small pot combine 1/2 cup of steel-cut oats and 1 cup of water
Cook on medium/high until it boils, around 7 min while stirring.
Turn of the heat and add 2 tbsp of plant-based milk, mix well.
Measure and add all the other ingredients and spices on top, mix well before eating to ensure the chocolate melts and is evenly distributed, enjoy!

Ariel

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 00:00:00 EST

Ariel logo

Ariel crest

Ariel logo in context

Black Metal December 2017

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 00:00:00 EST

TRVE KVLT

Ruin

Ritual

Unreadable

Doom

Black mass

Castle

Black soul

Coffee

Church of the goat

Cursed

Damned

Decay

Dart

Dead flowers

Freezing hell

Grave

Grim

Lore

Loud and slow

Minas Morgul

Mirror

Ofridr

R'lyeh

Sigil

Third eye

Void

Yig

Cursed Object

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 00:00:00 EST

Hand-drawn lettering, identity system and publisher seal for a publishing company.

Cursed object logo and sigil

Cursed object lettering

Cursed object publisher's seal

Ich Hab Die Nacht Geträumet

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 00:00:00 EST

Credits and details

Direction / Art direction

Geneviève Lamarche Reid

Photography / Editing

Lizbeth Poirier

Performance

Viky Boyer

Shot on the Sony A6300 with a 24mm prime lens
Edited and color graded in Premiere Pro

John Eternal

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 00:00:00 EST

John Eternal lettering

Noir Lifestyle

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 00:00:00 EST

A short film to put in moving images the lifestyle upon which Manière Noire was built. Shot mostly on location at Mont Megantic, with some interior shots done in Montreal.

Credits and details

Producer

Manière Noire

Art direction

Geneviève Lamarche Reid

Photography / Editing

Lizbeth Poirier

Models

Evey lp & Chanel Willard

Music

Stygian by The Devil and the Universe

Shot on location with the Sony A6300 and a 24mm prime lens

Warm wishes

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 00:00:00 EST

Iconoclastic short video accompanied by one of my modular synth compositions, shot in slow motion with practical fire effects.

Credits

Art direction / Photography / Editing

Lizbeth Poirier-Morissette

Production Assistant

Geneviève Lamarche Reid

Model

Evey lp

Music

Haunted Attic (Devil Worship Rework) by Principe d'incertitude

Shot on the Sony A6300 with a 24mm prime lens
Edited and color graded in Premiere Pro

Danse Macabre

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 11 May 2020 00:00:00 EST

A dancing skeleton for the plague days

Deep One Tiara

Lizbeth Poirier — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 00:00:00 EST

My interpretation of the deep one tiara from Lovecraft’s Shadow over Innsmouth.

Timeline

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 EST

The timeline shows all the projects of this website, along with all the notes and pages on here, ordered in chronological fashion

Tree

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 EST

A branching tree representation of all the pages of this website

Boleskine house and burial ground

Lizbeth Poirier — Sat, 19 Oct 2019 00:00:00 EST

Exploring the charred remnants of a very old and very cursed house and it’s neighbouring cemetery.

The Boleskine burial ground

A faded sign marks the entrance of the cemetery

Moss covered gravestones with the Loch Ness in the distance

Gravestone detail

The old gate lies abandoned

Old monuments

A strange boarded up stone house lies in a corner

I step on a stone and reach in the broken window

Little 666 engraved on the window frame

Peaking inside, there is a fireplace with a strange occult symbold carved in the mantelpiece

A trapdoor with a some ghostly dust flying around

Ancient and long gone monuments

General view of the burial grounds

The Boleskine house

Boleskine house, at least what's left of it

On old door frame in the ruins

More doorways

Glass bottle, melted by the inferno

View through one of the windows

More doorways

The main door, partially intact

A corridor filled with debris

Looking out to the mountains

Another corridor, this one leading to the basement stairs

Stairs to the basement

What's left of the fireplace

Dead tongues

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 00:00:00 EST

Preview video for the song Dead Tongues by Blood and dust .

Credits and details

Photography / Editing

Lizbeth Poirier

Assistant

Hex Evans

Shot on the Sony A6300 with a 24mm prime lens
Edited and color graded in Premiere Pro

Suburban unease

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 08 Jul 2019 00:00:00 EST

A series of cinematic shots of the Montreal suburbs trying to capture the feeling of unease, distrust and inhospitality of higher middle class white neighbourhoods.

Entering a shadowy backyard

A mysterious hole in the ground filled with concrete debris

Empty windows looming, covered in vine

Perfect spot to peak at passerbys through the blinds and the overgrown bushes

Windows like empty eyes trapped behind fences

The local church

Houses built like an overprotective parent with a gaping mouth as a door

Little signs letting you that there's always someone watching

Who knows what happens behind closed (garage) doors

Smothered

Lizbeth Poirier — Sun, 20 Jan 2019 00:00:00 EST

A heavy white blanket swallowing the city.

Chrysopoeia typeface

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 01 May 2017 00:00:00 EST

Chrysopoeia is a custom all-caps typeface I designed in 2017, it’s name come from the alchemical process of turning lead and other low metals into gold. All the characters are drawn with lines of a uniform weight, something i was really into at the time. I think there’s some interesting ideas in there and I’d like to revisit the concept in another typeface one day, going for something closer to the source material, possibly hand-drawn.

Iceland travel log

Lizbeth Poirier — Wed, 22 Mar 2017 00:00:00 EST

Barren landscapes, black sand and fish bones. A journey through the harsh Icelandic winter, discovering it’s rich cultural and historical past, simple way of life and complex language.

The city
The nature
The flea market
The food
The statue garden
The history
The fish drying racks

Since music and the arts are running so deep in Icelandic culture (it is said jokingly by the locals that most people are at least in a band), here’s some local music to listen to while reading this travel log:

If you want to explore the depths of the quite rich black metal scene of Iceland, I really recommend the book Svartmálmur from Verði ljós.

Reykjavík, the city

Small but cozy, with it’s metal clad homes and myriad of coffee shops and small bakeries Reykjavík is quite welcoming, nestled in it’s cove, the smoke cove (rough translation of the city name) is one of the most northern capitals in the world which can really be felt in winter, due to it’s piercing cold winds rolling down the mountains and oppressive darkness. Walking around town, I noticed how much care was put in developing the city in harmony with the landscape and trying to reduce the toll commonly taken on nature by urban spaces. Something quite impressive to see as I left the city are the large tubes that bring the geothermal energy that heats 90% of the city’s buildings, tapping into the volcanic depths of the very active island.

Reykjavík in the 1860's - source wikipedia

Appartment builds with large glass panels

A small example of Reykjavík's active graffiti culture

Street sign in icelandic

An adorable small mint green house under the snow

A drakkar detail on a roof with a wave pattern

Moss wall in Reykjavík

The mountains, waterfalls and beautifully harsh nature

Venturing out of the city, I was instantly struck by the nature, large fields of moss-covered volcanic rocks pierced by fiery geysers, snow covered peaks disappearing in the low clouds and blowing snow, it is barren, cold but also beautiful rich and alive, you can feel the boiling volcanic power hidden underneath the Icelandic landscape, a large-scale meeting of fire stone and water on which some people decided to live. Standing on the Reynisfjara beach surrounded by towering sharp stones, my feet sinking in black volcanic sand and in awe in front of the roaring waves coming to crash a few meters in front of me I couldn’t help but think of the Icelandic fisherman of yore pushing their little wooden ship at sea in those menacing waves, wearing their heavy waxed canvas outfits reeking of fish oil and sweat, getting ready for the prospect of many days at sea in the hope of getting enough fish to last them for the coming months.

Moss and rocks

Winding road through a snowy and mountainous landscape

The black sand beach

Large open stone cave nearby the black sand beach

Geysers in a moss covered landscape

A green mountain

Boundless skies and flat land with some glowing green aurorae

Some beautiful icelandic poneys from up close

Even more moss and rocks

Findings from an Icelandic flea market

I was pleasantly surprised to find a big flea market in Reykjavík, the Kolaportid Flea Market is filled with plenty of antiques, old books with beautiful typefaces and even a little food section with a variety of dried fish, which Icelandic people eat almost like toast with some butter on top.

Various posters and flyer in the entrance of the flea market

Piles of old books in icelandic

The library section with a view on the harbor

An old (risoprinted?) religious postcard

Books and an ornate paper cutter

Enveloppes with postage stamps

Nordic food with a lot of paprika

While exploring the city we stopped at Matur og Drykkur , a restaurant serving reinterpreted traditional Icelandic cuisine.

The Matur og Drykkur restaurant with it's painted sign on the corner of the building

Decorations and books on some shelves in the restaurant

My meal

Overall while staying in Iceland we cooked most of our meals because of the prohibitive price of food, restaurants and fresh ingredients over there, because growing things on this rocky volcanic and very cold island is particularly hard. There is exploration into growing fruits and vegetables in geothermically heated greenhouses since 1924 and there’s been more and more development into this ever since. You can read more about that over in this article .

In order to learn more and experiment with Icelandic cuisine I got two recipe books: the Nordic Cookbook by Magnus Nilsson and Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine by René Redzepi. There’s plenty of fish and meat recipes in there but there’s also some interesting things made from grains or fermented, I might also try to make plant-based versions of some of the meat recipes.

The Einar Jónsson statue garden and it’s surroundings

Just next door to Hallgrímskirkja, the famous Reykjavík church, is a small museum and garden dedicated to the works of Einar Jónsson. The bronze statues are mysterious and evocative, infused with inspiration from both german symbolism and Norse mythology. Most of them are pretty small and their dark green patina blends them well with the surrounding nature.

The back of a bronze statue

View from one of the windows of the museum, it was closed that day so we just peaked in

Nordic symbols or runes on the sides of one of the statues

Another detail from a window of the museum, plants a tea set and a small brass object

Very small stone structure near the church, with no clear purpose

Historical Iceland, museum pieces and old house reproductions

Those next photos cover what I’ve seen in multiple museums around Iceland, chronicling the different moments of it’s old and rich history.

The Árbær Open Air Museum has a number of historic houses and a church that were moved from central Reykjavík over the years.

The Skoga museum is a folk museum situated in southern Iceland with an extensive collection of artefacts linked to craft and fishing, natural history collections and reproductions of traditional turf farmhouses.

The Reykjavík maritime museum is focussed on the history, folklore and culture surrounding fishing and seafaring activities, which are pretty central to Icelandic life. They have beautiful ship models and complete boat cockpits and plenty of marine artifacts on display.

The Saga Museum is a wax museum focussed on the early history of Iceland, the first people who came over during the main Settlement around 874, the socio-political developments from there, the witch hunts and the great sagas who tell those stories.

Cross-stitched harbor scene

Small round flower painting on a wallpapered wall

Old documents and specimens

Large goat head with 4 horns part of the natural history collection of the Skoga museum

Reproductions of traditional turf farmhouses

Embroidered folk art tapestry

An old handwritten note with a seal

Some old notebooks

Hanging tray that also serves as picture frame

Let’s just take a moment to appreciate the functional beauty of this tray hung on the wall of one of the rare old wooden Icelandic houses. Folk arts and crafts have this way of making things beautiful while at the same time keeping them very relatable and human.

Cured meats hanging from the farmhouse ceilling

The farmhouse kitchen

Makeshift storage in the roof of the farmhouse

Looking outside from inside the farmhouse

Door detail of the turn farmhouse

Detail of a carved roof piece from the old church

The Sorcerer's screes a book of Icelandic magic and sigils

I haven’t had the chance to visit the Icelandic museum of sorcery and witchcraft or the Draugasetrið (Ghost center) but I will surely return for them in the future. I did however get a book on Icelandic magic: Sorcerer’s screed during our trip.

The fish drying racks

We got lucky enough to know someone living in Reykjavík with a car that could show us around what’s easily accessible to tourists, that included an outdoor fish drying rack and an abandoned house near the coast. Upon arrival, the first thing that hits us was the smell, even though the fish has been there for a while in the cold and dry weather the smell was still overpowering. The second thing I noticed was the ground, covered in thousands of small fish bones. Nearby we found an abandoned home, a tell-tale sign of the exodus towards the big city Reykjavík, from the smaller rural villages.

Fishing racks covering a large field, with no one around or any building near

Discarded fish at the fish drying installation

Fish bones scattered at my feet

More fish bones

The mossy wooden structure of the fish drying racks

Icelandic landscape from the window of an abandoned house

Mysterious hole near the abandoned house

On my way back from this trip, I kept thinking of the things that I had seen and experienced, how life is shaped by living among such epic landscapes and at the same time in a smaller, more closely-knit city. I tried to keep with me this feeling of warmth that I felt everytime I stepped in a coffee shop after a freezing stroll through the city streets, the inspiration and artistic urge that comes from the necessity to fight the cold and the darkness and connect with others and the humility in the face of the sheer scale, power and beauty of nature in all of it’s forms.

Latency

Lizbeth Poirier — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 00:00:00 EST

First prototype of a never-completed short movie project about latency, absence and persistence of human presence in architecture and urban landscapes. This is all test footage shot by a one-person crew in one night in Montreal.

Credits and details

Photography / Editing

Lizbeth Poirier

Music

Samuel Desrosiers

Shot on the blackmagic cinema camera with a 50mm prime lens

Miniature landscapes

Lizbeth Poirier — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 00:00:00 EST

Exploring the miniature landscapes found in nature, microcosms contained into and evoking the larger landscapes that they are part of.

Snow covered cliff with small bushes poking through

A patch of long grass amongst the snow

Tumultuous waters rushing through boulders

Fallen tree in the woods with melting snow

Strong waters, freezed in time

Sun rays on a frozen lake with a large broken tree in the distance

A small clearing with sticks and leaves on a blanket of snow

Lizbeth Poirier

Entrance

Lizbeth Poirier

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Ritual Dust

Resume

Lizbeth Poirier-Morissette

Selected clients

Training

Artistic Works

Exhibitions

Live performances

Music releases

Community collaboration

Videos

Awards

Publications and mentions

Public speaking

Arts and cultural work experience

Way of life

Table of contents

Cultivate a relationship with nature

Learn to listen, name and express feelings

Trust your body and learn to take care of it

Get confortable with setting and respecting boundaries

Take accountability for your actions and feelings

Grow a practice of gratitude

Develop an awareness of privilege and power dynamics

Realize that insecurities comes from ignorance of self

Challenge assumptions and false narratives about yourself

Focus on commitments, dreams and goals instead of tasks

Readings

Now

Personal work

End of years

Highlights of 2025

my favorite books of the year

my favorite movies (and series) of the year

my top 10 songs of the year

Highlights of 2024

my favorite books of the year

my favorite movies of the year

my top 10 songs of the year

Highlights of 2023

Highlights of 2022

Highlights of 2021

Highlights of 2020

Fantasy art

Ogham

Table of contents

Origins and history

Ogham alphabet

Links and references

The ghost is part of the earth now

Watching

Reading

Druidism

Table of contents

History of druidism

My practice

Celebrations and important calendar dates

Samhuinn/Samhain

Yule (winter solstice)

Imbolc/Oimelc

Ostara (spring equinox)

Beltane/Bealteinne

Litha (summer solstice)

Lughnasadh/Lammas

Mabon (autum equinox)

Links and resources

Music visuals

Playing

Bookmarks

Table of contents

Personal websites and wikis

Zines and publications

Blogs

Bookstores and publishers

Occult books

Others

Lovecraftiana & cosmic horror

Artists

Art

Tattoo artists

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