Dream Monster 13

People she touches crumble into dust. Stay perfectly still and she may pass you by, not believing you to be a threat.

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Another dream monster! I’m starting to think that if I collect these into a book I’ll add some more illustrations showing how they behaved. There was a point in this dream when she was only millimetres away from somebody’s face, and they just had to stand completely still and wait to see if she killed them or not. It was very tense.

Dream Monsters

If you breathed in the gas you turned into one. They were all people once.

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More dream monsters! This collection is starting to reach a decent size, I think these are numbers 11 and 12. I dreamed these quite a while ago, but only recently had time to paint them.

I sent one to my friend Sammy and she didn’t appreciate it.

Sammy: :S why are you drawing body horror during a pandemic?

Sarah: because I had the day off work I guess

Inktober 2019: day 31 - mapping pen and ink wash

The Mirror Twins and their friend wish you a happy Hallowe’en! Be careful who you greet after dark.

I posted a terrible, late-night photo of this on twitter just to prove I finished it on time, because it was so close to midnight!

Inktober 2019: day 19 - brush inking and coloured ink

If they fall down without time to prepare, they don’t come out right.

Ghost Stories of M.R. James

I've been working on some new horror illustrations to beef up that section of my portfolio, so here are some illustrations for 5 ghost stories by M.R. James. Surprisingly most of his ghosts are more like monsters than an archetypal 'ghost', they tend to be solid and hairy.

I also noticed the impact of some stories is reduced if you don't share his pathological fear of spiders. Personally, I've found too many spiders in my hair over the years to be frightened of cobwebs.

In order, these are Canon Alberic's Scrapbook, The Ash Tree, O Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad, The Treasure of Abbot Thomas and The Tractate Middoth.

2 More Monsters

A few months ago I posted some monsters from various dreams, and people on twitter seemed to really like them so I promised more whenever I next dreamed any. I rarely remember my dreams so it took a while, but here are two which finally turned up.

The woman appeared in between waking and sleeping, she shook her head, 'no'.

There was something wrong with the man in the old shack.

6 Eyes

I scream, you scream, we all scream when we observe an injury or deformity of the eye.

I'm short-sighted but never wear my glasses so my eyes feel weird a lot of the time, and I also enjoy trying to express how things feel with visuals, so that's probably where this sort of thing springs from.

6 Monsters

I don’t often have nightmares (in the sense of dreams that have a real feeling of terror rather than just horror imagery) but I do often see monsters in my dreams. Lately I’ve been doing watercolour sketches of some of the ones I remember, with a vague notion of using them for something later.

Starting from the top left, these appeared in my dreams as follows:

The Split-Faced Man - he didn't seem hostile, but he was covered in old blood.
The Man in the Doorway - he was impossibly tall.
The Rag Men - these were made of blood-soaked bandages and everything they touched rotted away.
The Maggot Men - there were many of these all crawling around far below me, they had bulbous eyes and thin, loose skin.
The Skinless Man - he broke his own jaw to prove we couldn't hurt him, there was no way to escape.
The Obese Demon - he was covered in tumours and extra limbs, he was slow but unstoppable.

In related news, I think I’ve finally got the hang of wet-on-wet watercolour painting.

UPDATE: Two more which aren't really monsters, but I decided the imagery was close enough to go in the set since I've had some requests for a sketchbook of these. These two are both from the same dream.

The 'baby' was found wrapped in newspaper, and you had to stay out of the searchlights.

Inktober 2017 - Part 3

Day 21 : fineliners and felt tip pens - Eventually the school agreed that Nettle should just sit out of P.E. lessons.

Day 22 : mapping pen and brush pen - "It followed us home, can we keep it?"

I was hoping for this one to have a more scary feel, but the Mirror Twins seem to be too cute and are taking away from the horror of the black dog. I'm pleased with the composition though.

Day 23 : G-pen - Tree fairies of his type don't usually venture very far from their home tree, so Sweetpea has never seen a sweet chestnut before.

Day 24 : brush inking and coloured ink - I regretted not using coloured ink for the flames on day 1 every time I opened the sketchbook, so I finally relented and did a new version of the same concept, this time with coloured ink.

Day 25 : cartridge pen - Lottie is fairly sure she shouldn't talk to the Crow Boy, but she doesn't really want him to leave either.

Day 26 : mapping pen - Sweetpea's ear frills, like the leaves on his tree, turn brown and fall off in Autumn. Also like the leaves on his tree, they tend not to go at the same time.

Day 27 : fineliners and grey pens - The next three were all done while helping Sammy at MCM! It's very hard to find time to do anything else while at a convention, so I feel quite proud of myself for not falling behind. While we were on a bus Sammy requested some more pictures of Poppet's friends, 'with a musical instrument', so here are the two we didn't see in the teacup picture earlier.

Day 28 : brush pen and ink wash - Louise's house also plays host to a slightly alarming type of house fairy called Lob-Lie-By-The-Fire. He looks a little more frightening than most house fairies, but he just wants to sit by your fire and help with the washing up.

I still can't quite believe I managed to do this one after spending 9 hours selling comics in a packed convention hall, and a further 45 minutes on a bus.

Day 29 : fineliners and felt tip pens - I caught con lurgy so this was one of the hardest ones to do all month, I felt dreadful while I was drawing it! It's also very hard to draw when one has to stop every 5 seconds to blow one's nose. Still, it looks pretty good I think.

Leilus has a lot of features he could choose as his 'I am a demon' warning sign, but the tongue is the obvious best choice because it can be hidden inside his mouth. The stereotypical spaded tail would probably be the worst.

Day 30 : ink and water - Well, it seems I finally ran out of steam and had to settle for one that I really wasn't happy with. I wanted to draw Nat one more time because it was the last day, but I was still ill and didn't have the brain power to get him on model or work out a good composition. I probably should have used a different pen too, but I'd hardly used ink and water at all! I should have been sensible and opted for something with less risk, but these are the lessons we learn in Inktober.

One of the reasons Nat keeps his hair so long is that it's usefully prehensile.

Just a Hallowe'en picture still to come!

Part 1, Bonus Picture, Part 2, Hallowe'en

Inktober 2016 - Part 2

Here's the second batch of Inktober pictures for this year! I'm still finding it a bit harder this year than I did last year because my schedule has become very irregular, some days I barely have any time to draw anything (more than one of these was finished on a moving train), but I'm determined to keep going!

Day 11 - cartridge pen : Lena insists the fortune-telling works better if you use Nan's good tea set.

Day 12 - gel pen : The Crow Boy doesn't mean to be creepy, but he usually is anyway.

Day 13 - brush pen and coloured ink : I was out with a friend and she said "draw Poppet with a pumpkin", so here we are!

Day 14 - g-pen : Lena would probably have a whole wardrobe of dresses like that if she had the money.

Day 15 - gel pen : Tempting with fruit isn't the only way for a changeling to entrap unsuspecting humans. (Ely is also wearing her glamour like a sensible fairy.)

Day 16 - ink and water : Lena is able to use all sorts of tools for divination. She can get much the same results by scrying in a bowl of water, but a crystal ball looks spookier.

Day 17 - g-pen and grey pen : The Mirror Twins have an endless supply of creepy artifacts somewhere. That's probably some variant of a Hand of Glory, but let's not ask where they got it.

Day 18 - brush pen : I made a mistake with this one! I sketched it in the morning and did a first pass in mapping pen, then realised I wouldn't have time to cross-hatch it before work and also couldn't get away with bringing wet media to the library counter, so I had to re-do it in brush pen. Spider matches Nettle on day 4 now though, which is nice.

Day 19 - ink and water : Things look very different when Lucas looks through his bad eye. This is one of the ones inked on a moving train, I was at work from 10am to 9pm and I was determined I was NOT going to keep working on this at home when I really wanted to go to bed!

Day 20 - g-pen and markers : A companion piece for day 6. Child psychics can be a danger to themselves as well as others.

Part 1, Part 3, Hallowe'en

Inktober 2015 - Part 1

It's that time of year again! Time to have ink all over my hands for a full month. Here are my pictures from the first 10 days of Inktober.

Day 1 - ink and water. Isaac may be an angel or he may be a ghost with delusions of grandeur.

Day 2 - gel pen. This one was done in a bit of a hurry because I forgot we had guests for dinner. No proper background for you, Nat.

Day 3 - brush inking and ink wash. Time to cheat and do a dolly-style picture already! I used it to practice brush inking so it wasn't a complete cop-out. Lena is looking fancy in a shiro-lolita outfit.

Day 4 - g-pen. I was absolutely gobsmacked that my 'frequent use only' cartridge g-pen still worked after months gathering dust in a drawer. That's not a good environment for Chiihon.

Day 5 - brush inking and ink wash. Ill-advised adventures in ink wash may be my favourite part of Inktober, even though I don't like ink wash enough to use it normally. This is where I started to settle into the rhythm of the challenge, I think. Lucas survived this incident, but the police never found the culprit.

Day 6 - mapping pen. Throwing your only friend in the air is the best and most entertaining way to practice your telekinesis, of course.

Day 7 - brush inking and ink wash. I was still thinking about Lucas after being very pleased with day 5, so I drew him again. 7 or 8  years later he's about as fully recovered as he's ever going to be.

Day 8 - ink and water. I wish I'd had time to give this one a better background, but Sweetpea is having a good time with his tree's autumn leaves anyway.

Day 9 - gel pen. Not all the fairies in Louise's house are creepy and bad.

Day 10 - ink and water. I tried specially to have a proper background this time, as I'd gone four days without one. One of the tricks Spider can do with his psychometric powers is translate books in languages he otherwise doesn't know.

Part 2, Part 3, Hallowe'en