Further Bonelands Information, For The Curious

This atrocity is explained in one of the posts to which I link below. (I adore the brutality of the gratuitously unsplit infinitive.) The artist Glendon Mellow has spoken of a developmental phase in a work of art that he calls 'the uglies.' This would be an example.

So next week I'm gonna be presenting to a group of people who might actually be in a position to aid my cause -- this is the final for my Art Marketing class. Here's what I wrote for them about the series in my submission packet.

The Bonelands is a series of digital prints done in conjunction with my novel-in-progress, The Songs Of Stray Souls. Rather than illustrating passages in the story these pieces are intended to inspire settings and creatures and events. This process lets me harness my visual imagination and create without the limitations imposed by verbal thinking.

This was the first time I used photography as part of my process – prior to this, I never even took snapshots. I borrowed a digital camera and made use of the collection of bones and succulents that my spouse and I have accumulated over the years. In order to achieve the effects I desired, I had to carefully pose and light the individual elements with the finished composition in mind.

This was a breakthrough for me. I learned more about light in two weeks of taking digital photos than I had in twenty years of drawing. Although drawing does play a role here; since I make use of cropping and distortion in order to fit the elements in these pieces into a preconceived design, the process felt more like drawing with photographs than traditional collage.

Many of the pieces in The Bonelands were originally published in Swill Magazine as black-and-white pieces intended for xerography. As always, the limitations imposed by the process of reproduction proved to be sources of inspiration rather than limitation.

The use of hard black-and-white made it possible to cleanly reproduce these images at any desired size, and when I began to color them I found myself in a position to experiment wildly. From flat, muted colors to vibrant, highly saturated renderings making use of strong, almost violent contrasts in both hue and tone, the shared origin of the pieces allowed the series a unity despite the varied moods and impressions of the individual prints.

Man, I can talk a ripe old load of bullshit when needs must.

If you're interested here are some previous posts that go into the process of creating The River King in a bit more detail.

Deep In The River One
Deep In The River Two
Deep In The River Three
Deep In The River Four
Deep In The River Five

The Bonelands: All The Images From The Series

Totem

The Tower

The River King

The Mask

The Last Tree We Saw

The Island

The Gates Of Horn

The Gate Of Dreams

The Elders

The Canyon

Ozymandias

Natural Bridges

The Kicker

Guardians

Dirty Windows

Blossom

Right now I'm in the process of finishing off the final project for my art marketing class. It's a request for a grant to print, mount, and show my Bonelands series. Part of this involves putting together a CD with jpegs of all the images from the series. Most of these have shown up on this site before but this is the first time the whole shebang has been visible in one place at one time.

Now imagine a gallery with these images printed 3' x 4' on canvas. That's what I'm hoping to be able to do...

Dear Mr./Ms. X,

I am writing to introduce you to my artwork with hopes that you can assist me in getting a grant. The work in this package represents a finished series of digital prints entitled The Bonelands. I would like to be able to display these images in a gallery show. In order to do this, I need funds to print, mount, store, and ship these works. In addition, if there is no specific gallery space available I would need funds to promote this work by printing and mailing out packages like the one you now hold.

If you’re interested in seeing more of my work, I’d be happy to send you further samples or arrange to show you prints at your convenience.

Thank you for your attention,

Sincerely,

Sean Craven


Grants. Hmm.

Grants.

Lycaenops: Part Three

I think that if Oscar Wilde were to have a Lycaenops ornatus skeletal diagram on the wall of his study it would be this one. It's all about the mauve.

I did this all in Illustrator. I used the Live Trace feature to convert my pencils into vectors. I really like that function -- it keeps a lot of the initial juice from the pencils and gives you a nice clean editable vector image.

The last time I did this I couldn't figure out how to handle the color in Illustrator; this time I hit the books and found out how to do Live Paint. Worked like a dream; even with the studying it took me a lot less time to achieve the same results. I believe I'm falling in love with Illustrator all over again.

Irritatingly, when I went to double-check the name of the brute on Wikipedia, I found a high-definition photograph of the skeleton that was used as the basis for the diagram from which I worked. (I believe I will keep that awful sentence; perhaps I'll have it stuffed for my collection.) I'd started this project off with some googling for these kinds of images.

Damnit. Wish I'd had that at the start.

Now to whack the color out of the skeleton and print it up and start drawing over it... See you in a while.

Lycaenops: Part Two

Not exactly the pose I had in mind when I started, but at least it's got a little motion to it.

Well, this wound up giving me more trouble than I thought -- since this was based on a drawing that was based on a drawing that was based on --

Anyway, there wasn't as much subtle detail as I usually get out of a skeletal diagram. And the femur covered part of the pelvis and I couldn't find an image of a gorgonopsid pelvis anywhere on the net so I had to fake it. And my tremor has been giving me merry hell so the line quality is even shakier then usual. And the pose looks a bit dorky...

... but I think I'll be able to get a good finished piece out of it.

I'm gonna go take care of my editing, then come back and try and get the finished version of the skeleton before tonight's writer's group meeting.

Oh, man, the iPod just threw up some Primus... ah, it'll be here when I come back.

Lycaenops: Part One

This comes from The Ecology And Biology Of Mammal-Like Reptiles and is credited 'after Colbert.' I'm taking this to mean that it was actually drawn by Edwin H. Colbert, but I could be wrong.

The thing that gets me is that I have no idea whether or not this pose was one that Lycaenops could take. Because I am an ignorant swine.

So I'm nosing up against a deadline here and I know I'm gonna be late... so it's time to liveblog another paleo art piece.

I've been wanting to draw a gorgonopsid (gorgonopsian?) for some time so this seemed like the perfect opportunity. I've been in a bit of a daze lately -- when spring break hit my brain went into a hypercogitative state and rendered me useless for all practical purposes. Instead I thought about things like my novel, my place in the arts, the state of my life, my conception of reality -- you know, the light stuff. It was good and useful but now it's over and I've got to get cracking.

So hunted down the two reference images above in order to start work. I prefer to start with good photographic reference for the skeleton but a) if the photo is anything but a strict profile it distorts the proportions badly and b) there just ain't enough photos like that around. I frequently wind up using a skeletal diagram, which makes me feel like a fraud and a ripoff. Oh, well.

In order to quell those feelings I like to reposition the animal. This involves figuring out the new pose and then tracing the individual bones of the skeleton to match. I felt a little dissatisfied with pose of the last one of these I did, so I hunted up my yardsale copy of Animals In Motion by Eadweard Muybridge and poked around until I found the second above image.

I took the skeletal diagram and enlarged it in Photoshop, printed it on two sheets of paper and taped 'em together. Now I've got a piece of tracing vellum taped to my drawing board, a .5 mechanical pencil, an eraser, and my references.

The fun part of drawing is that I can listen to music. The missus gave me her old iPod and an amp for it a while ago and I've got it loaded with a really odd mix of pop -- I just heard a bluegrass version of Casey Jones (they found him there with his hand on the throttle/scalded to death by the steam) and now Black 47 is singing about Irish political resistance and it's time to put graphite to paper.

More to come.

Crit List 8: The Parade Of Sleaze Continues -- Alligator Alley and Dr. Adder

Come on, just look at that cover.

Alligator Alley

Well, I may not know for sure, but I get the impression that this is a collaboration between underground cartoonist Tim Ferret and underappreciated novelist K.W. Jeter. The book itself -- a particularly delicious example of the Book-As-Object -- claims that it's written by the two main characters.

Allow me to quote:

In a nutshell, it was over before it began. The first guy ate a long, rectangular trash can and promptly laid down to 'sleep.' The second, apparently experiencing some last minute trepidation, tried to pull away from me. "What's your hurry, pal?" I locked my hand around his throat and lifted him up into my face, the red coals of my eye holes reflecting back to me from within his own. He went for his piece, but I folded his arm back around him until it snapped and, much to my amazement, came off! Upon finding himself 'disarmed,' he obliged me by proceeding to eat the sink and several other restroom accessories. I forget which ones exactly, as I was checking his wallet at the time.

If you can say no to that I will happily beat you to death with a nail-studded two-by-four... Nah, not really. The two-by-four fits uncomfortably in the hand. You know what I really like? A kid-sized baseball bat, one of those little ones. Enough mass to give a substantial wallop but not so much as to slow a guy down.

Maybe weight the end with a little lead -- drill a hole in the tip and fill it with melted sinkers. Sweet.

Anyway, the book is pretty fucked up; no real story and a bit of tedium here and there. I do not care. I love this book. If you think of H.S.T. as the conduit through which the spirit of Gonzo flowed, this work is the one piece of science fiction moved by that same great spirit.

Plus, there are great illustrations. Like I said, book as object.

Mektoub.

Dr. Adder

Those in the know tend to credit John Shirley's City Come A Walkin' as the Patient Zero of cyberpunk. For me, it's this book, which was finished in 1972. If Shirley is the Ramones, this is the Velvet Underground. Not exactly the thang but it has all the markings -- and it has the specific vibe of the sixties turning into the seventies, of moral decay really setting in. Of the Hustler/Penthouse era that made my flesh crawl when I was a child. The pervasive feel of urban scum in this one is just awesome.

You've got high-tech lowlifes, perverse sex (genetically manipulated intelligent giant chicken fucking is how the book starts out), lethal prosthetics, and Philip K. Dick references.

It's a SF novel written, to a great extent, about decadent Seventies pornography and the spiritual toll it exacted. Hey, folks, we live in an even more porn-saturated culture now. The plot of this novel centers on the personal and political conflict between a porno-doc who performs elective surgery on women to turn them into uber-whores and the degraded TV preacher that he done wrong. I read this in the Reagan years and Jeter was right! (rings bell, waves placard) Jeter was right!

The edition I have is the Bluejay Books version, with excellent interior illustrations by Matt (Was I just talking about the gonzo?) Howarth. If I included comics in this list, his Those Annoying Post Bros. would be near the top.

Next:
CAPTAIN BLOOD
THE OWL

Crit List 7: Let The Parade Of Sleaze Begin -- The Fungus and Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

Turn your head. Now cough.

Fuck it. I have three short stories to revise, an issue of Swill to start assembling, the next print to make and the one after that and so on, the novel is pleading with me, begging with me...

Fuck it. Internets, I have been away for too long. And it's been too damned long since I just had a little lonesome geek fun.

It's time for the sleaze. Sometimes I want nothing more than a simple, wholesome diet of sex, drugs, and violence -- or, to be depressingly honest and list them in the order of significance in my resume, violence, drugs, and sex a distant third...

Weep for me. But sex moves way up on the list if you include frustration and obsession. I am, after all, a twenty-year veteran of a committed monogamous relationship.

Anyway, let's get down to it. No comics, no movies, and yeah, I've got literary pretensions but sometimes I need to read something fucking sleazy. The following volumes should prove adequately repulsive, and the keen-eyed reader shall find keys to other realms of sleazery.

These books are fucking great. The standard by which all of belles-lettres are to be judged. And if you disagree?

Say it to my face, motherfucker. Go ahead. East Bay, motherfucker.

THE FUNGUS
also published as DEATH SPORE

Film critic John Brosnan wrote a number of horror novels, both by himself and in collaboration with friends of his. These were done under the pen names Sidney Ian Childers = sick and Harry Adams Knight = hack.

These are R-rated B-movies on the page. The clever kind with a wicked subtext -- think Roger Corman or Larry Cohen. Brosnan's great literary innovation lies in his treatment of victims. I mean, if you've got a monster you need some fucking victims. Brosnan had a real knack for developing characters you care about in a couple of pages -- and then he'd kill them in fine gross-out style. The videonasty pattern of cutting from the main story to a victim and then back to the main story is a very useful narrative pattern.

Victim-oriented high points in The Fungus include an obese bartender who suffers explosive fermentation from the yeast in his belly and a lesbian couple, one of whom intentionally infects the other with thrush. They come across as real people, you like them or at least sympathize with them, and they die horribly.

When I say these books are movies on the page, it's not just story structure that I'm talking about. Brosnan has a vivid visual imagination; I see everything in his books. Don't quite get the voiced but I watch his books.

One of the minor pleasures of these works is the sense that Brosnan (or one of his collaborators) spent some time in the library looking things up. The Fungus is willing to toss the occasional scientific name at you. I dig that shit.

Slimer is weak; Tendrils is weak. Every other SIC (Worm) and HAK (Carnosaur, Bedlam) book is great. May I make a particular note of Carnosaur? It came out before Jurassic Park, had pretty much the same idea, was a more entertaining read, and had better science. Funny, that...

A quick aside concerning Tendrils. I picked up a copy at a library sale and was thrilled. Unfortunately, it had a misprint that ran through the whole book and rendered it unreadable. So I had to order another copy from a bookstore in the UK.

Thing is, the two editions have far and away the best Monster As Penis imagery ever.

I am convinced that this painting originally had the penis monster going right into her mouth...

For christ's sake, who the fuck did they think they were kidding with this?

For a while this guy and Aleister Crowley were my main role models...

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

When I was a teenager my buddy Mac Melendez turned me onto this one. I'd previously dipped into The Great Shark Hunt without much real interest; this grabbed me like no other book had up to that point. I read it every day for months -- the book itself got me high a couple of years before I got into drugs.

I read it as fantasy adventure. And I knew -- knew! -- that this was what fun was all about. Recently a friend asked me what drugs I've done...

"Well, I've never done heroin. Never had enough opium to actually get off on it. And there's a whole bunch of psychedelics that came out in the nineties that I never did. Never had an adequate dose of Ecstasy. Came close to ether once. And I haven't had access to most pharmaceutical stuff."

That took less time than it would have taken to talk about what I have done. Fuck it; I'm a Californian who grew up in the Seventies. What the fuck did you expect? Drugs were our rite of passage.

Anyway. As a writer I look at two things -- the headlong flow of action and the use of vivid specific detail. Not to mention the drug-addled logic -- the protagonist sees a giant flying electric snake outside his hotel window. His reaction? "I want to study its habits." Fucking brilliant. And this is all highlit by the casual quality of his prose -- you can tell this was coming off the top of his head.

Got to say, though, I think Thompson would have been a lot better off if he'd copped to the fact that drug abuse was bad for him. So far as I can tell the great tragedy in his creative life was that he never wrote a great novel and I think the drugs had a lot to do with that. You need clarity and focus to work in long forms and being able to toss short pieces out without effort does not help you in that arena -- not that I'm pitching too heavily for sobriety. A lot of people do their best work during their times of maximum intake. But those folks tend towards the mayfly side of the longevity spectrum...

... and not all of their work is what it could have been.

And his stupid tough-guy pose was more than likely the cause of his pussying out at the end. That's what did it to fucking Hemingway as well... There's nothing more vulnerable than someone who can't cop to their vulnerability. Why do you think women live longer than men?

Still, who can read Fear And Loathing and not want to tour Las Vegas with an extensive pharmacopoeia and little interest in self-preservation? Not me, that's for darn sure.

Next:
ALLIGATOR ALLEY
DR. ADDER