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 2 - gel pens (and a brush pen)

Louise and her foster parents are not the only creatures that live in her house.

My 90-minute time limit fell apart already! I could only get the lineart and the spot black done in that time, so I've been frantically crosshatching in odd moments throughout the day. I'm very pleased with it though!

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 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 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

monster girls and paper people

Recently (before I went to London, if you're wondering) I was in a bit of a slump and I didn't seem to be able to draw anything. Everyone always says when that happens you should just draw loads of things until it goes away, so I used that monster generator that's been going around and drew monsters for half the afternoon! I got all girls, coincidentally. It worked very well, even if I did discover that I need to work harder on diverse body types.

Also Sammy got me with a paper person! Nooooo! I should have known she had an ulterior motive when she gave me those creme eggs.

The 'paper house' is the scrapbook I made to contain some of the paper people from years gone by. I decided to start documenting my end of the game, so I've made a flicker set showing some of Sammy's previous victories.

Why I'm Afraid of Mirrors - Part 3

Two days ago I was afraid my reflection would move on its own.
Yesterday I was afraid my reflection would not be me.
Today I am afraid there will be something behind me.

Patience encounters the thing I fear most about mirrors - the possibility of seeing something behind me that wasn't there before. As a special treat, a shrouded figure is also one of the things I fear most in general. I am terrified that one night I'll wake up and see one standing at the foot of my bed.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Why I'm Afraid of Mirrors - Part 2

Today Patience illustrates the second-biggest reason I'm afraid of mirrors. Tomorrow, the thing I fear most in any reflective surface!

Yesterday I was afraid my reflection would move on its own.
Today, I am afraid my reflection will be someone else.

Ironically, I blanked on monster design, so that is basically me Patience is seeing in the window.

Why I'm Afraid of Mirrors - Part 1

Lots of my friends already know I have a terrible fear of mirrors. Hallowe'en is one of my favourite festivals, so to celebrate this Hallowe'en my lovely assistant Patience is starring in 3 illustrations showing the things I fear will happen every single time I look in any vaguely reflective surface.

Today, I am afraid my reflection will move on its own.

Strange Friends

I told people some stories about friends I made at university, I met a ghost possessing a human who died at birth, a lovely creature made of moonlight, an urban wendigo, and a woodwose. I'm the tooth witch.

These should be available as sets of miniature prints when next I get taken to a small press event. I think that should be Thought Bubble at the end of the year.

Incidentally, even disregarding the fact that I drew him as a horrible slavering spirit of famine, I find it interesting how different the wendigo looks in my pictures and his own. I emphasise a completely different selection of features.