The Shunned House

I waited until February 28 to post this picture because I did the original sketches and photographs for it on February 28, 1987. This picture was a commission from a costumer friend of mine who was an H.P. Lovecraft fan. He wanted me to do an illustration from the Lovecraft story "The Shunned House." In this story, a pair of amateur scientists investigate hideous phenomena originating from a weird old house in Providence, Rhode Island. My friend wanted me to portray the Shunned House, but without any of the usual "horror house" cliche's.

I didn't know at the time that the Shunned House was based on a real house in Providence. Instead, I took as my model an early twentieth century house near my own residence in Cambridge, Mass. This house was in "Shady Hill Square," a set of houses set around a little park-like commons. It was an affluent area and Harvard professors lived there. But it was also somewhat shabby and for some reason whenever I visited it, it gave me the creeps. Perhaps it was the Harvard professors. So I used one of the houses at Shady Hill for the model Shunned Home, complete with the tangled ivy, gnarly trees, and black windows. I sat on my portable stool and sketched it outdoors, not an easy task in Massachusetts in February. The conditions were rather as they are right now: dreary skies over leafless trees and melting, congealed, dirty old snow.

I avoided any horror cliche's which were not from Lovecraft's original. But if you looked closely at the windows and door of my house, you could see disturbing flashes of livid light, a tentacle or two, and some green slime at the door. Unfortunately, my photo of the picture isn't very good and you can't see this here. The painting was almost monochrome, rather like a New England grey winter day.

My friend who commissioned it is long dead, gone off to whatever afterlife welcomes Lovecraft fans. I wonder what happened to the painting. Maybe it was auctioned off or given away. I hope someone still has it, with the slime, shivers, and gnarly trees.

"The Shunned House" is ink and watercolor on illustration board, 14" x 20", May 1987.

The Leprechaun Monster

I don't usually do cartoon characters, whether at Trader Joe's or anywhere else. But the assignment came to me, and I did my best. The idea I was given was, advertise this product with a cartoon character that is a mix of Cookie Monster and a leprechaun. I may be the only person on earth who has never seen "Sesame Street" on TV, so I had only a vague idea of what he looks like. Someone whipped out one of those ubiquitous screen phone gadgets, spoke into it "Cookie Monster!" and within seconds, images of this character appeared in Google Images. Ain't technology grand. So there he is, the green pseudo-Irish cookie monster. "Green Plant" is an unusual drink, blending fruit juices with "microgreens" and vegetable extracts. This billboard is supposed to appeal to kids and mothers.

Asterism

I nearly didn't get to post this, due to a power failure at my usual posting time. High winds damaged lines and blew some transformers. I am really sick of this winter stuff. If you live in eastern USA, you probably are too.

Here is another star scene from the same big long series of astronomical pictures I have been featuring. This one is called "Asterism," which is a name for a highly visible cluster of bright stars. I never get tired of astronomical pictures. I'm painting one right now, and just airbrushed the bright blue background for it, thankfully before the power went out.

"Asterism," acrylic on illustration board, 7" x 10", February 1990.

Train from the Past

I believe this is a New York subway train, which I depicted while it was sitting still at a station somewhere in Queens. The sketch is dated March 15, 1987. I was in New York for one of my attempts to get work on book covers from science fiction publishers. In those days, you had to live in New York or at least travel easily there, in order to get work from publishers. Since I didn't live there, and found it difficult to get there quickly, I didn't get much work. It all seems quaint now, when illustrators from all around the world from the Philippines to Egypt to Argentina can get work and send the images to the publishers online.

Light Echoes

When a supernova explodes, its light propagates outward in a sphere, like an expanding bubble. When this light strikes gas and dust clouds, it reflects, producing what astronomers call "light echoes." As the light-bubble expands, more and more reflections appear. This picture, inspired by a supernova observed near our galaxy in 1987, shows some of these light echoes. This time I chose a color scheme different from the usual blue and red that I used in space pictures. The colors are, as I have explained before, mostly arbitrary, since human eyes can't see them. Space artists and photographers add whatever makes it look interesting.

"Light Echoes," acrylic on illustration board, 10" x 7", February 1990.

Dragon's Progress

Back in the now dust-covered days of 1982 I did a lot of fan art for 'zines run by friends and imitators of Marion Zimmer Bradley. I also did illustrations for other fan publications ranging from comics to academic essays. This was one of them. It was an interior title page for an article by an MZB fan and friend. Other than being about dragons, I have no recollection of what the article was. Somewhere in my archives buried in dust is the magazine with the article and my illustration in it. There is some cuteness in this piece, notice the dragon warming its own tail with fiery breath, and the "literary" dragon in the bottom half with the fluffy quill pen and scroll, and the pince-nez glasses.

I don't usually do drawings or paintings of dragons. It's not because I don't like dragons. It's because I have not got enough knowledge of animal (reptile) anatomy to make a convincing dragon. But then so many renditions of dragons have been done throughout history, that all sorts of improbable anatomies have been created for dragonkind. I have a very nice book called "Dracopedia" by William O'Connor which has everything that I would need to know about making images of dragons as well as creating them in Photoshop. Maybe I should try to depict another dragon.

"Dragon's Progress" is ink on bristol board, 8" x 10", spring 1982.

Techno-mage at 60

The techno-mage (or in my own parlance, "nouergist") Tanheu Afboureh-Souteth turns 60 later this year, and this is a new portrait I've made of him. He continues to serve as the director of the Nouergic Institute of Surakosai. He is also active as a consulting physicist at the new Institute of Advanced Studies which recently opened in the seaside town of Eloro, some kilometers south of Surakosai.

He is still active in research, investigating nouergic aspects of cosmology and dark energy, and has recently gone on a geographic exploration mission to the southern continent of Wairuna.

This image comes to you from my world of Noantri. Photoshop color over a pencil drawing, February 2010.