Sketch post: GRONK!

GRONK!  Something from an older sketch.  Sort of a Mignola thing, I like that shading style.

Sketch post: Aristocratic dead.

Sir Dansforth Bloodshireford.

Sketch book post!

Cthulhu!  I draw this thing way too much...

Absence of prolonged periods.

I realize my posting duties have been neglected for the past two weeks.

The reason is my 10am-10pm double employment, and that is no excuse to NOT work on something.  Primarily, I've been sketching and harvesting ideas for the glorious day I again have time (the resulting holiday is tentatively titled "Bitchin' Day What Gave me Time").  So, I have proposed to Mr. Tep that I be allowed to contribute the sketches on this site.  He spoke very quietly and in a dialect of Egyptian I didn't recognize, but agreed.  So, tomorrow, there shall be a separate page added with regular or semi-regular sketch updates.

In the mean time, I humbly submit this Cthulhu doodle from college.

The Slit-Mouth Woman.

Japan is infamous for its urban legends, ghost myths, horror movies and its intriguing pre-westernization-animism.  To this day, Japan is constantly a source of ghost siting videos (differing from those in the "western world" by occasionally being during broad daylight) and stories of the macabre and weird.

Also, stuff like this...

As I've mentioned, Dr. Jones has been around the world and was in Japan for a little while doing some research.  One of the urban myths he did some work with was that of the "kuchisake onna:"  The slit-mouth woman.

 

From the film "Slit-Mouth Woman," also known as "Carved."

As the story goes, there was a vain woman married to (or the concubine of) a samurai.  She was most likely cheating on on him, the stories differ, and in his jealousy, he slit her face from ear-to-ear and screamed to her: "Who will think you're beautiful now?"

The contemporary story goes that her sliced up face was the result of botched plastic surgery.  But it sticks to the same vanity and mutilation.  but where it becomes fun, is the urban myth part.  She, supposedly, appears to young adults and children, wearing a hospital mask (not uncommon in Japan, they wear them to prevent the passage of colds and disease) asking do they think she's beautiful.  Upon a response, she rips the mask off and asks: "What do you think of me now?"  If the victim says no, or doesn't answer she butchers them with a scythe (or pair of large scissors, myths differ).  Supposedly, she wears a red rain coat to camouflage the blood splatters.

TOO MUCH MOUTH! AAHH!

But she can be confounded, by saying she's "so-so", "normal" or another moderate answer.  There's the triple repetition of "pomade" as well, but this gets a little fuzzy in at least my research into it (some of my sources state it's due to the plastic surgeon's wearing of the stuff).  She also loves sugary snacks, so tossing her some can get you off the hook.

There's also one source I found that gives her a 3 fixation.

Dr. Jones did give this one some merit.  And followed a few of his leads (of which there are many), and it led him to Fujikawaguchiko, which is not terribly far (about two hours drive) from Aokigahara, the forest of suicides.  What he found out, from a select group of interviews all correlated that the woman did appear in their area and with some regularity.  More research into the myth itself (a combination of working with a Tokyo based ESS and working with these locals) shows that some tales ended with the woman being spurned by her cuckold lover and fleeing into the forest.

Delightful happenstance!

Dr. Jones sent me this regarding the subject:

"I armed myself, as it were, with several sweet mochi from the local shops and a few cans of coffee.  After finding a willing guide and making sure my flashlight and GPS had a full charge, we went into Aokigahara.  Since some of the recent myths (only relatively, ones from the late Meiji era) state she has a fixation with triads as well as her family name possibly being [censored by N. Tep Ent. policy].  After repeating the name thrice in several different locations about three kilometers (to further push the numerological possibility) something appeared in the distance.  Slowly walking towards us was a woman in a red coat with a hospital mask on.  My guide, in hushed tones, told me we should give her the mochi and one of the coffee drinks and just leave.  Being the determined old fool I am, I told him to stand behind me if he was so frightened.  True to legend she asked us if we thought she was pretty.  I said she seemed so, my companion was silent.  She took off the mask, asked again, and I said she was still pretty, and she was wronged by whomever desecrated her flesh so.  She stared at me, and then screeched like a dying rabbit.  From her sleeve, she drew a large pair of scissors.  I threw the mochi at her and we both ran."

Dr. Jones has had me working on a digital painting of this encounter, but insists that there's no rush.  That should go up in a few days.

Sunday? More Like Art Day.

I sure do love drawing monsters.

King of Spiders, Lord of the Todash Darkness.

The villainous Crimson King from Stephen King's Dark Tower cycle.

 La Gran Ousio
This is one of my personal ones.  I like him. 

 Big Daddy and Little Sister

A friend ask what she should draw.  I suggested a Little Sister.  So I was compelled to do this one.  The coloring isn't done yet...but I'm pleased with it.

A noted absence...

My time is consumed by my internship and job.  As such, I have only the weekends to make things.  So, I'm going to try and keep atop posting some comics I have been doing.  There's no real title yet, but it's about some of the ESS field agents.

These go in chronological order based on their stories, not the order cataloged and drawn.

Apologies for the half-coloring.  I hadn't finished it before other tasks loomed-black and ominous-on the horizon.

A cast sheet for your reference.

More to come...

Garm: The Surgeon and the Children of Xyn.

Garm: the Surgeon is easily my favorite (personal) character.  I've explained him a bit before, but didn't go in-depth into the cult itself.

The origins of this whole sprawling mythos came from a drawing I fell in love with when I was in junior high. 

That drawing is so bad I refuse to post it here.

But the ideas of biomechanical fusion and beings that were some sort of horrible techno-zombie, rotting and still able to come after you, stayed with me.

Of the multitudes of books I've collected and hoarded over the years, the Undead Green Blood art book is a particular favorite.  It also led to this illustration:

You can really smell the Yasushi Nirasawa.

And so, their legion grew and the mythos changed.

I started to draw on more mythology from around the world and combining them with several unified stories.  The biggest of these is a thing I've only been calling Sylvertongue (the protagonist's familial name) and as I wrote it, editing the beginning (horrid) parts, the Xyn rose again, clattering and screeching in the dark, lusting for attention.  So I worked on them, hammered out the stupid ideas and patched them into a dystopian future full of strange cults and a society balancing the knife's edge of doom.

The  Children of Xyn draw their name from the malevolent force their "leader," Goukai Gin, also known as Ragnarok, channels.  As the stories go (told by the oldest of the Children), Gin was nearly killed by another, who also channeled Xyn's malevolence.  As he lay, eviscerated and perforated, Xyn took hold of him and forced his body back to life, pulling the waste from around him into a body.  To aid in his breathing, he donned a gas mask bewitched by Xyn itself.  He became the first, and others were drawn to him by the dark whispers of Xyn goading puppeteer's strings to burn reality.

 

Garm (on the right) before the Children.

Garm became more interesting given this idea.  The idea of hierarchy in an anarchist cult that wanted the end of all things was silly.  In a world were magic suddenly began to exist (I refer to prevalent use of an energy source that bends physics and not the occasional ragged edge of reality one finds now and then in our current world) science has a whole new field of unexplored variables.  Garm studied at MIT and majored in "metaphysics and physiology" with a double minor in faerie and lycanthrope biology.  his thesis on the use of magic to manipulate the human genome was almost cause for an arrest.  His job was with the Black Water military contractors designing super soldiers.  Most of those he grew didn't survive outside the embryonic tanks they were birthed in.  So he started to test fully grown subjects.  He was expelled from the organization with a huge cover-up and was drawn to the Children of Xyn for obvious reasons:  They let him work on whatever and whomever he pleases.

Also on the way are some more finds from Dr. Jones, a translation of one of the hand pages, and some of Dr. Shiloh's notes.  Work and an internship (on top of my duties at the ESS and for Mr. N. Tep, esq.) is consuming most of my week.

 

The doctor will see you now.

Finally!

The Blightshade is finished.  The sculpt is done and ready to paint!

 

  

 

The Bogleech's Blightshade, now in clay.

This guy stands 6.5 inches tall.  The head is four inches long.

Painting to come soon.