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Friday, April 30, 2010

Shadow Over Innsmouth

Here's a picture I did inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's excellent and super-creepy horror novella Shadow Over Innsmouth, which has to do with a decaying New England fishing village and the cross-breeding bargain the citizens made long ago with a race of horrible fish-man creatures.  It's a great and terrifying story, and gets me all creeped out however many times I read it.  For some reason I was in a scary-stuff mood recently (usually that comes with the lead-up to Halloween, not in April), and I wanted to draw something in that vein, so here it is.  It's not actually depicting an event from the story, but was inspired by it:


(Click on image for full-sized version)

This is one of the most detailed and labor-intensive drawings I've ever done - it's 11x17, black and white ink over blue pencil.  It's also for sale.  Considering the hours put into it and how pleased I was with the final result, I'm asking $250, which includes shipping.

e-mail me if interested - chris at curiousoldlibrary dot com.

9 comments:

Comic Tools said...

This may be my favorite thing I've seen you draw. Also, holy crap on your handling of the perspective/depth of field.

Chris Schweizer said...

Thanks, sir! I've gotten in the habit of VERY loosely freehanding a kind of warped perspective grid (I think when the ground is curved it's four-point, which I never learned to do technically), and every once in a while it comes out working.

Ben Towle said...

Yeah, that looks fan-freakin-tastic, Chris. Have you ever seen any of Troy Nixey's stuff? I'm not up on his work of late, but he used to do some Lovecraftian stuff (with lots of tentacles and whatnot) that would appear in ONI DOUBLE FEATURE back in the day.Anyway, that's a great image. I need to go back and re-read the story now!

Brian said...

Wow!

Unknown said...

Beautiful! I love the composition and the depth you are able to achieve with perspective and shadows. With Crogan, teaching, a new house, and life in general, how can you find the time to do these marvelous drawings?

Chris Schweizer said...

Ben, I don't know Troy Nixey's work, but I'm going to try and track some down.

Stan, thank you so much! I'm putting aside a little time each day specifically to draw - I'm trying to develop a way to depict environments with a lot of detail but not so much as to draw attention away from the figures, and want to get in as much practice as possible before drawing the next book. One of the things I like most about watching period films are the sets, and it's something I want to get across in the Crogan books. I feel like I was moving in the right direction with "March", but I want to push it further. I think a lot of the story in "Loyalty" is going to take place in the snow, so what environment there is needs to really pop.

I also am still in the period of research and no output, so I have to do SOMETHING so that I don't feel useless. It's a juggle, but so far it's been manageable. Luckily, Liz is very patient with me!

Noah Berlatsky said...

That's the most adorable shadow over innsmouth drawing I think I can even imagine. Great idea really nicely done. Congratulations, sir.

Chris Schweizer said...

Thanks! I'll have some prints at Heroes - if you're there, I'll pass one on to you.

js said...

I love this. It's perfect in every possible way!