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