I had known about H.P. Lovecraft's work since around High School which I would imagine when most of us first heard the yoohoo of Cthulhu. It wasn't really until I was well out of college, one fateful night, that I read some of his work. We had been talking about ghosts and monsters all day at the office and the thought that I should grab a collection of H.P. Lovecraft's short stories from the bookstore on the way back to the apartment. Keep the creepy vibe going, take advantage of the feeling to heighten the reading of stories I had heard were legendarily horrific. I was met at the elevator of my apartment building by the Building Supervisor looking like he had a horrible day. "You live on the seventh floor right?" Right off I was wary. "Seems as though your neighbor from down the hall had passed away some weeks ago, we just found him today. You might want to make it to your apartment as quick as possible and open some windows."
SO at the peak of creeped out I read "The Dunwich Horror." A nice little family story about the Wathley's. This is young Wilbur Wathley, without giving too much of the story away let's just say, in a way, he's kind of Lovecraft's version of Hercules. To say much more may ruin the story, all I can say is, go out and read it!
The piece itself comes from a rather inspiring talk I had with Jim Giar. So inspired was I that I did this piece without a preliminary sketch, just jumped in and went at it. Not entirely happy with the composition as I am the technique. This is graphite, watercolor, ink, colored pencil, oil pastel, acrylic all on clay board. I even scratched out the highlights like you might do scratchboard. I learned some stuff from doing this little piece, hope you enjoy!
