A Creature

Lately I have been captivated by the peculiar. This is part of the reason for the long interim between this and my last project. Some of the things I have been working on in the meantime are too strange to publish.

I wanted this drawing to convey a bublbousnous of the optical anatomy. I also wanted to convey an feeling of inkiness in an aquatic medium. I had in mind a certain swooping tangling effect from the tentacles which I feel I failed to create and will likely try again.

Inspiration

I recall in one of the interviews between Kevin Smith and Grant Morison a discussion in which Kevin mentioned a period before Clerks where he was in a mode of consuming media. He mentioned something to the effect of filling the creative mind with other peoples art in order to incubate your own ideas. I believe this is the sentiment behind Pablo Picaso’s famous quote”good artists copy, great artists steal.” When I look at what my favorite creatives do in their free time it is almost always deeply enjoying other peoples art. Hideo Kojima creator of Metal Gear for example is constantly reading books, listening to music and watching movies that are period appropriate for the temporal landscape of his creations.

If I walk the line of derivation backwards the media artifacts I stole create this drawing are numerous despite its simplicity. Morning cartoons I watched as a kid, films I saw in elementary art class, literature I read as a young adult, Television I watched last month, all bleed into my visual lexicon. Perhaps the comparison of my own work to the impressions of the genuine artifacts is what leaves me dissatisfied with my own creations.

One of my biggest inspirations for this drawing is the strange tales of H.P. Lovecraft. I cant help but inhabit the bubble of preternatural absurdity that is embodied in Lovecraft’s short stories. The octopoid visages of the old ones are iconic. Despite the absence of the humanoid element of this drawing I can’t pretend that I would have the same interest in this subject matter if I had never read The Call of Cuthulu. What inspires me about H.P. Lovecraft is his mind’s capacity to link the real world goings on of doctors, artists, scientist, and ordinary ladies and gentlemen to the abyssal plane. The things subnautic, subartic, subteranean, astronautic. Those  things in the infinite voids where the structure of creation seems to warble. The only things produced there in are hideous and strange.

Description

This drawing was drawn with 2 felt tip pens. One felt tip calligraphy pen for the lining and a fine point sharpie for the fills. It was drawn in my Canson 7’x10′ mixed media sketchbook. The sharpie ink is the first media Ive used in this sketchbook that bleeds through onto the back of the page. Watercolor, other markers and fountain pen ink fail to saturate the 160g paper.