Artist/blogger Michael Bukowski at Yog-Blogsoth has been pursuing a goal to draw every character mentioned in the writing of H.P. Lovecraft. Above is one of the most famous of those creatures, Cthuhlu. Descriptions from the writing in which the character appears are also included. He hopes to complete this task in a year, including popular characters with lengthy descriptions to those that are merely mentioned. Click through to see if this artist’s imagination comes close Lovecraft’s!
Bukowski writes in his first post on June 29, 2010:
Since I discovered his work in highschool, I’ve been in love with H.P. Lovecraft’s writing. It’s influenced me artistically more than any other author. His cosmic nihilism and fear of all things related with the sea churn up horrid images in any reader and are almost impossible to dislodge from an artists head.
This blog will be an attempt to draw all the creatures Lovecraft ever wrote about or mentioned. In some cases his descriptions are very detailed and precise (Elder Things in At the Mountains Of Madness), and in other cases he simply names creatures (Voonith in Dream Quest Of Unknown Of Kadath) but all require a level of interpretation and imagination. I also take most of his descriptions but leave somethings out (I gave my Fisher From the Outside wings).
His self-imposed deadline is approaching! Here are some of the creatures he has conjured up so far.
Ibian: “It is written on the brick cylinders of Kadatheron that the beings of lb were in hue as green as the lake and the mists that rise above it; that they had bulging eyes, pouting, flabby lips, and curious ears, and were without voice.” — H.P. Lovecraft, The Doom That Came To Sarnath
Things That Devour and Dissolve: “You think those floundering things wiped out the servants? Fool, they are harmless! But the servants are gone, aren’t they? … Things are hunting me now — the things that devour and dissolve — but I know how to elude them … My pets are not pretty, for they come out of places where aesthetic standards are — very different. Disintegration is quite painless, I assure you — but I want you to see them. I almost saw them, but I knew how to stop.” — H.P. Lovecraft, From Beyond
Hastur: “And then, from out of the darkness of the cavern’s well, an eldritch head showed dimly. Then, as it thrust forth, I almost screamed aloud in horror, for the face was a ghastly travesty on everything civilized; it rose from a neckless body which was a mass of jelly-like flesh, rubbery to the eye, and the tentacle which adorned it took rise from that area of the creature’s body which was either its lower jaw or what passed for a neck.” — H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth, The Gable Window
The Color Out of Space: “‘It must be somethin’ from away off in the sky like the men from the college last year says the meteor stone was. The way it’s made an’ the way it works ain’t like no way o’ God’s world. It’s some’at from beyond.’ … It was a scene from a vision of Fuseli, and over all the rest reigned that riot of luminous amorphousness, that alien and undimensioned rainbow of cryptic poison from the well — seething, feeling, lapping, reaching, scintillating, straining, and malignly bubbling in its cosmic and unrecognisable chromaticism.” — H.P. Lovecraft, The Color Out Of Space
Bokrug: “However this may be, it is certain that they worshipped a sea-green stone idol chiselled in the likeness of Bokrug, the great water-lizard; before which they danced horribly when the moon was gibbous …Here was done the very secret and ancient rite in detestation of Bokrug, the water-lizard, and here rested the altar of chrysolite which bore the DOOM-scrawl of Taran-Ish.” — H.P. Lovecraft, The Doom That Came To Sarnath
We wish Michael Bukowski luck as the one-year mark approaches!
(Yog-Blogsoth via Boing Boing)
Published: Jun 1, 2011 03:34 pm