Two New Unicorn Afire Colorways

The always popular Unicorn Afire print which lasted three editions has finally been put to bed and is sold out. In its place I have printed two brand-new colorways more in line with my current color scheme. The yellow & gold version is limited to 40 signed & numbered copies. The gold on black version is limited to 20 signed & numbered copies. Each is only $10 post-paid in my web store.

art zine EXCESSIVE VOYEURISM

http://shaltmira.weebly.com/art-zine.html

Releasing my first art zine this winter. A5, black & white. Oriented to perversions, abnormalities, pathologies.
Last date of admission for collaborations is 13th of September.  Interested? Let me know : shaltmira@terror.lt

The 2 others scratchboard made for LDC after Maya design (see older post)

Big Trouble In Little China Shirt

Front:

Back:

Design for Dysphoria Distro. Shirts coming soon!!!

Spare ribs of the Long Pig

It wasn't until the late Middle Ages when scientists started performing autopsies, that the wide-spread belief of men having one rib less than women was definitely debunked.

MY GOD IS A THROMMING GOD

Image number 7 in the ten print Prospectus Series (as is building on my homepage). this still has a some minor cleanup and detailing work to do, but for the sake of on-screen viewing it is as it should be.

I like it just as well flipped. What appears like a demon head in the upright image is actually more similar to an elephant skull in shape and design.

The Theta Case - Old & New

Ok, so last time I promised I'd post a comparison of the new and old versions of my latest comic. The original version was done in 1998 and basically was my first attempt at digital painting. I dind't really know what I was doing and it took me ages; I used some photos as reference and for the backgrounds.
The story was based on a dream I had which gave me the initial idea for the whole Ray Murphy storyline.

1998:




2011:

MOONLESS cover

Me and Crippa Almqvist did this cover for danish Doom/Stoner band MOONLESS...

Super limited silkscreenprinted tour edition, catch them now in europe

The Four Zoas

For this second post I show you my very first serious work with engraving, and specially linoleum. It was in 2008, for a show we had there about End of the World.
I need to say, if I started painting at the beginning of 1990', participating to exhibition for some years & drawing since I'm really young (like you I guess) I also spent 10 years learning my job and managing a professionnal studio. So there's only 4 years now that I re-do art for public show or publication, starting again with "my own style quest" with new technics.
Then I discovered linoleum like a beginner & when I was looking for woodcut, so I've done these first ones imitating old woodcuts, printing them on old paper from 16-17th c. I love doing imitation, detournements, playing with public perception & so on... but I prefer actually doing prints by my own style...
So, this is done after The Four Zoas, which are 4 symbolic entities found in hermetical sciences, & also used by William Blake as you could read there http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vala,_or_The_Four_Zoas

I used another definition of these Zoas which is something like : these 4 entities are the four principles who hide the real world, they're together ADAM (the Earth), physical reality which is hiding metaphysical reality to us... well, something like that ! For me that was a good occasion to show how peoples could be investigate by a very high opinion of themselves just because they do have this official meaning by the way of institutionnal labels. Simple example is someone who's looking at you like a worm because he sold a painting to the instituiton, which painting is hidden into a stadium watercloset, but no way, he is An Artist while you're just a simple human being... Same thing about "real musicians" & "artists" promoted by television and other media...



I've done this using different pieces of original woodcuts, spending lot of time to imitate frames etc. Original print is on old paper with sepia like ink, accompagnied by a gothic text and a drawing made after a famous Dürer print

uh well I need to better manage pictures... just clic on to see bigger

Saint Lydwine of Schiedam

Just experimenting with 'colouring' my art with a single layer of grey. This piece is a 'medaillon'-shape introductory thing (like the elaborate initials in medieval manuscripts) to one of the saint's stories that I have been doing the last few months. For me, this is a local saint. Of course I have been spicing up the classic stories. The wolf was entirely my idea.
Anyway, I used to be quite addicted to working with zip-a-tone in the analogue era as I would have liked to have my stuff published in full colour, but could not. Too damn expensive. So that became an alternative to colour. Now anything is possible, but I'd like to try a minimal approach for clarity's sake.

Random sketch from random sketchbook

Random sketch from random sketchbook, première mise en ligne par Gaspard Pitiot.

Monster Childhood Revisited

Hello, all! Lately, I've gotten back into recreating some old drawings that I did as a child. On the left, a drawing from 1974 of a horned monster attacking two buildings, some army men, and....a dump truck, a bulldozer, and a cement mixer. I'm pretty sure that the horned monster was my take on Gomora, from Ultraman. Anyway, on the right is a version I did today. Because of the strange inconsistencies in scale and perspective in the original, I had considered doing this piece as a medeival illumination or Dürer woodcut.

AU

Part of the 2011 Prospektus. First completed state. I still need to add veins of gold to the stone structure. I hope it won't take away from the design/structural integrity but it relates to the gold used to construct the castle and references the material engagement of man and how he uses the materials for his own lofty means ignoring the effects on the frailty of the surrounding nature.

For years I have fantasized a vectorized drawing system that could be added into my handmade drawings that was built of pre-existing parts. Like a side-scrolling video game or Lego it can be quickly edited, copied, rotated, added to, and scaled to fit in with anything upon which I am working. I finally turned that fantasy into a real system and found it quite satisfactory to build a castle with it to add to the hand-drawn portion of this piece, from which I believe it does no detract but only compliments.

Night Stroll

Here are a few panels of a new ray Murphy story that I've been working on lately. It's actually an extended remake of the very first one I did about this character. I decided to redo it because I want to make it work with the rest of the stories and there was a huge difference in style. It's also more than twice as long now and contains a bit more information about what (RM thinks) is going on. I'll post more of it soon, perhaps along with some of the old story.
This new version will be published in the Netherlands in PULPMAN #12.

Scraperboard

Hi there! I'm glad to be part of this excellent blog, I was looking for a place where we could have discussion about art instead of just posting dumb pictures...

Start publishing today with last project I done for Le dernier cri's Mexico book. I just started doing scratchboard some months ago, using a scalpel (bistouri), then a round blade instead of usual cutter, this give me special shapes. So I can work lines but also something like a photographic fuzzy style.

Drawings there are mainly just real stuff, copied from old maya's drawings and old photos from statues... I just try to do it with my own hand, plus adding some details to complete. Though these original drawings are incredibly modern & perfectly managed by the artists (ref. is "Maya Iconography" Princeton Press). I'll post some more later.

head 2

Sketchbook #39

Yet another sketchbook cover, painted front and rear with acrylics. Somehow, the front cover usually does not come out as naturally. I don't paint much so my technique gets a bit rusty.
Anyway, I can't keep myself from putting corpse-painted feral men through a lot of torture. Here is one being eaten by a giant viper pregnant with three little ones eating their way out (which was the medieval way of birth).
The elephant was thought of as a exemplary animal as it would not mate unless forced to. This is a cloven-hoofed evil variety however, protecting a Blemmyan.

COMICBOOK PANEL CARTOONS

Old comicbook panels with alternate text + some colour manipulation.

NEVER ALONE

I'm sorry for not posting for so long. In the beginning of this summer I moved in London, was difficult at first, I was really busy searching for job and so on. But I still manage to find time to draw. Here's one of my drawings, my co-worker asked to draw into his sketch book. So I did. It's like the preview of the heavy thoughts going around in my head lately. I'm planning to go back in Lithuania in autumn and I have some ideas about what I would like to do. One of them is that I want to make the wicked art zine and I'm interested if anyone would like to participate in this project? If you have some thoughts - write in comments or shaltmira@terror.lt

[NEVER ALONE. 2011. watercolour, ink]

Feral Woman and Centaur

Another medieval post from me, and it has nothing to do with Black Metal or any other kind of music. (Well, the Mediaeval Baebes perhaps)

Fufu might recognize this one as a remix of a page that I did for his Silent Anthology which is still being compiled. My good friend Romuald Sourisse in France is working on a series of these drawings for a show which we will have in September. Click the 'parchment' tag to see another sample, or go here for a good look at the process of medieval illumination:
http://librarii.org/spip.php?article46

First Album I've Been Involved With. Whoopie I Guess.

Its kind of a strange feeling. This is what I was originally going to post. I've told next to no one I know in person, because people freak out over this kind of thing. As anyone here would know, with all the underground publishers specializing in all manner of media, operating out of sight in the dark corners of the internet, it is no big deal whatsoever to have one's pictures included in a publication of some kind. This release being a CD from a one-man band called Serpent Ascending, to be released in September on the I-Voidhanger record label. I simply contributed the artwork for the album. Luciano and his graphic designer, and Jarno, the musician for the band, obviously did most of the work.

Here is the cover. I may show interior shots sooner-or-later, but as of now I've been politely asked not to.



If you're into 80's style death metal you may find something in this band you really dig. The label is still very small, but has already put out some very strong releases. I recommend Urna's and Umbah's releases especially. At this rate, after some growth, they may be able to hold their own some of the larger Avante-Guard/Heavy/Abrasive/Weird music labels out there like Crucial Blast.

Here is the album page, followed by a link to the label itself.

http://www.i-voidhanger.com/serpent_ascending_the_enigma_unsettled.htm

http://www.i-voidhanger.com/index2.htm

Abrasive French Music.

Well, I was going to post something else Robert. When I saw your new post starting with a French band, I thought what the hell. I am not even sure if it will be anyone's cup of tea, but they're weird by popular terms, so certainly not as inappropriate as posting Enya tracks here. Some of my favorite violent French bands (many of which have very weird album covers as well, excellent).

Deathspell Omega

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7ENR2iGuy4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44h2n096Ohw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TUlsy6o0To

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxL3COk-MAI

Celeste

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWC11_YrZyo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--qchR-XI3o&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ry8wzp15LI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQrU6-nhUy4&feature=related

Blut Aus Nord

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T945ODhNk-U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH6KJEZc3G8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DN6Uv-C6wU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7CbRjDjDvI

On the off-chance any of you liked any of these. Try and track down CYT-Confessions of a Yearned Twilight. Hard to find, and relatively unknown and therefore usually not overpriced. Well-worth it.

More music links to come

Rise And Fall Of A Decade are my favourite French band of all. They did immensely elegant ethereal music with synthesized classical sounds and had a very light gothic touch. For great ethereal/dreampop sounds they deserve to be spoken of in the same breath as Cocteau Twins, Slowdive, This Mortal Coil, Chapterhouse, Cranes, Alison’s Halo, Lycia and Trance To The Sun. Sadly the singer died several years ago.
The first 3 albums are pure gold. Not a very great selection of their works on youtube but this is the best thing I could find to represent them...



My favourite King Of Fighters tune, from KOF2001.



My favourite Tiny Tim song.



I just discovered Vajra, a Keiji Haino band with a fascinating vocalist called Kan Mikami.



Ruins made a series of medleys. Firstly this their Prog Rock Medley which contains distinctive parts of 39 prog songs, including some slightly obscure stuff. Check the original page for details on each song referenced.



This is their Classical Medley.

...They also did medleys for Hard Rock, Black Sabbath and Mahavishnu Orchestra.

The first time I ever heard of Art Zoyd is when they did a soundtrack to Nosferatu on the first and only version of the film I have seen. It sounded almost too bizarre but the more I watched, the more the madness started to make sense. They did one for Faust that I have not heard. They are prog/rock in opposition.
I think the song below is one of the most irresistible things I’ve ever heard, gorgeous video but it has been cut short, it looks like it was made for something bigger than a regular music video.



It pleases me to see that people have been kinder to Yes in recent years, I’ve heard nice words from Battles(who have an obvious influence in their first album), Sonic Youth, Mark Eitzel (American Music Club), Keith Levene (Public Image Limited), Todd Rundgren, Ariel Pink and Nobuo Uematsu. Mark Kozelek did a cover in his Red House Painters days.

Stephen Thrower did a really lovely defence of them in an issue of Wire and on his blog he posts a slightly longer version. Some may know him as an alternative film journalist, others may know him from his Cyclobe and Coil music...
Thrower's short Yes tribute

Feral Metal Make Up

A fragment of a piece with Feral Men exhibiting effeminate behaviour.

And here is the finished drawing (without colours):



Lately I have been poking fun at the Black Metal thing, because corpsepaint seems to become my medieval feral men. This does not mean that I don't like the music. On the contrary, and the history about the early days of the phenomenon is particularly fascinating. There is a certain mystique around it that is rare in pop music. But then, mysticism goes well with a sense of humour (unlike dogmatism). The combination of the homophobia within the BM scene and applying make-up before every gig is just too good.

The inspiration for this piece comes from Donna Kossy's Strange Creations, to be more precise the chapter on Oscar Kiss-Maerth (yes, that sounds dangerously close to 'kiss my ass', but that was his real name) and DEVO (who took a lot of nuttiness from him). Kiss-Maerth was a morosoph who argued in his book The Beginning was the End that humans had become smarter in the course of evolution by eating the brains of slain enemies.
So here my canibal feral men are eating the poor nuns' brains, but that comes with certain unexpected side effects.

Nancy Comic

For Josh Bayer's Two Panel Nancy Anthology. He sent out a pile of Nancy panels to a bunch of artists and asked them to pick two, put one as the first panel of the comic, and one as the last panel of the comic, and then fill in the story in between! A lot of fun to do!!!

Empire of the Sun

MONSTER FACES

Incubus

This is just one portion of the movie Incubus directed by Leslie Stevens in 1965. William Shatner's inclusion does not make it interesting, but the fact that it is the only full-length film ever made in the language of Esperanto is.

PORK #3 OUT TODAY!!!

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

Bizarre Artwork by Mat Brown

Some of his more recent art has been largely withheld from the public eye for a book release. Here are a few links to examples of this extraordinarily strange artist.

http://drtenge.livejournal.com/621231.html#cutid1

http://www.cuttsgallery.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=38

A few examples.

New Work "Put me together"

Anyone for chess?

Working on the colours of a saint's story of eight pages. Here, Saint Teresa is bravely challenging five enemies of the faith for a game of chess: the wild man, the monkey, death, the devil and the Blemmyean. There will be captions (in Dutch, which hardly anyone on the planet could understand anyway) in the two top corners.

Do you change and experiment with your art tools often?

Every now and then I realise how long I have stuck to the same tools, most artists seem to stick to the same tools judging by their pictures or maybe they just strive for the same results with whatever they use. You get comfortable and stop thinking about how you could expand. The thing that encourages me to change is I think you often surprise yourself with what you can do when you try new tools and it feels great getting to know new tools with that confidence.

I used to love charcoal and graphite but it's difficult to get extreme precision with them. I used to be all about ink wash but I havent bothered with them for so long because I now have the patience to use bic pens to do the lighting that I used washes for, washes were often used as a lazy shortcut.

Right now I'm just a bic pen, watercolour, acrylic and gouache guy. I hate buying new tools only to find I cant use them very well, trying them out in the shop isnt a good test, you really need to create a picture before you know if you can work with them. I once used wax crayons and they were so much fun, but you have to wash your hands forever to get the colour out your skin after fingerpainting and smudging with them. I've been advised to do etching but I'm a bit reluctant to go into that whole process when pens are simpler. Although I hate making mistakes I like learning the discipline of making no mistakes and accepting consequences of a stupid mistake, instead of switching to tools that can erase any mistake.

Fantasic Animals