Mock Man Press

Looking back, I wish I’d spent as much time on the human figures as I did on the monster, but still, for a sketch, I enjoyed drawing The Haunter of the Dark. Lovecraft’s final horror story was adapted into a full atmospheric reading by HP Podcraft, and re-listening to it, I was struck by how dreamy it is: an archetypal vision of dark crumbling streets and doomed antiquarians almost like an early Thomas Ligotti story (although I guess the influence is vice versa). There’s some evocative images there.

And of course, the star of the piece is Nyarlathotep, the Haunter itself. I’d always pictured its monstrous form as having bat wings, but rereading the story, I realized the only definite adjectives attached to its form are that it’s really huge, it’s got wings (not specifically *bat* wings), and the “three-lobed burning eye”. For this drawing I went with a moth-like shape, or rather a mishmash of moths and various other arthropods, with hopefully not too much of the inevitable H.R. Giger influence. It moves across the night sky almost like a smoke, like a cloud, so perhaps it has no stable physical form. Perhaps it’s not a body at all but a radiance (an anti-light radiance), a thing that fills all open spaces instantly and smothers everything the moment it is unleashed, like Cyaegha in Eddy C. Bertin’s “Darkness, My Name Is.” For the three-lobed eye, I gave Nyarlathotep the ankh-eye I used in “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,” although I’m sure that really, the Faceless God wouldn’t be pinned down by any consistent physical attribute between all its forms.

I’m working now on the next page of “The Doom That Came to Sarnath.” Thanks for looking at these sketches in the meantime! Coming up, more architectural drawings, plus cats, ghouls and sea monsters!

“Pickman’s Model” is a good little Lovecraft story, and I also like Robert Barbour Johnson’s sequel/riff on it written not too long after Lovecraft’s death, Far Below. As a fan of “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,” of course, I know that the ghouls are really just adorable softies deep down (when they’re not eating people), and even in the original story there is a strong vein of black humor, but it’s still a strong horror concept. And of course, there’s no need for the “Dream-Quest” ghouls and the “Pickman’s Model” ghouls to be consistent: Lovecraft’s universe is like fractured mirrors giving many different reflections of the same few names and concepts.

The first artist I think of when I think of ghouls is, not Pickman, but Tim Kirk, a onetime assistant of Richard Corben, who drew several really mind-blowingly cool ghouls in Meade & Penny Frierson’s fanzine “HPL.” I’m undeniably influenced by his drawings. His ghouls, like mine, are VERY big and animalistic, leading to some question as to how they could ever have passed as humans, or just how much mutating it takes to get from Point A to Point B. But when in doubt, I say, go with more mutating.

Today I’m working on King of RPGs and on the next page of “The Doom That Came to Sarnath.” If you’re interested in having me draw something for yourself, feel free to commission a sketch! I’ll draw pretty much anything, especially Lovecraftian creatures.

Today’s sketch is again of Richard Pickman, title character of Pickman’s Model. He looks a bit more human than he does in “Dream-Quest,” by which point he’s completely transformed into a ghoul, but hopefully he still looks sufficiently creepy.

I’ve never read The Arabian Nights, but thinking about Lovecraft’s ghouls recently has got me interested in the original Arabian ghouls. I need to do more research, but here’s the results of my small amount of gleaning. Like most folkloric creatures, they aren’t really supposed to have any ‘species’ or any naturalistic/scientific basis, instead they’re more like fairies and goblins and demons; they can change shape, they are associated with the power of fire, and so on. However, they do eat people, and lurk in the dark, and apparently it’s said that they have long, tearing claws. I wonder if they have any relation to grues? Could there be different types of ghouls, and the New World Ghoul is actually a separate species or sub-species from the West Asian/Middle Eastern Ghoul? Were their mystic powers lost upon migration to the New World?

(Incidentally, in the early 20th century I believe the term ‘ghoul’ was synonymous with ‘cannibal’, judging from the many EC Comics of the ’50s where the word ‘ghoul’ is used in this way without any further explanation being deemed necessary. The punchline of one old Tales from the Crypt was “We’re not vampires… we’re GHOULS!” Ba-dump-bump. Even George Romero called his flesh-eating zombies ‘ghouls’ at first.)

And now for a quick scene from The Cats of Ulthar! I initially tried to draw this scene ‘seriously’, but after some fumbling efforts I decided to go for comic effect. To paraphrase the folks at HP Podcraft, it’s perhaps wise of Lovecraft that this scene takes place offscreen, as when you imagine it “cinematically,” it’s hard to escape a certain “cat puppets being tossed onto actors” feeling. Although on the other hand, being eaten alive by rats, or indeed any animal, would be a terrible way to go, and I’m sure an endless stream of cats pouring through all obstacles and consuming you would be pretty horrific… but I’ll have to draw it that way another time.

It’s Wednesday, and that means a new King of RPGs! Today I’m working on more Sarnath and on my new project.

A sketch of The King in Yellow from the fiction of Robert W. Chambers, H.P. Lovecraft and various other authors. Whenever I think of The King in Yellow, I think of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” and for this drawing I tried to go back to a creepy “Yellow Nineties” Victorian-decadent style. I had to make up a new version of the Yellow Sign, of course. The only important thing is that it be creepy. For that matter, since I don’t revise these sketches in Photoshop after I draw them, notice that the King’s arms are totally misplaced so that either (1) his head is ginormously tall and his shoulders have a foot of padding or (2) his arms are growing out of his ribs. Creepy!

Still, I enjoyed drawing this sketch. Come back tomorrow for the next page of “The Doom That Came to Sarnath”!