Shedding Light On The Resurrectionist - E.B.Hudspeth Interview by S.E.Lindberg

E.B.Hudspeth: Author & Illustrator of "The Ressurectionist"

E.B. Hudspeth’s novel/art-book combination “The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black” chronicles an artist/scientist as he “revives or brings to light again (aka resurrect)” a dormant beauty inside humanity.  With a horrific tale complementing beautiful anatomical drawings of hybrid creatures, he invites us to reconsider the boundaries (if any) between man & animal…between art & science.  We appreciate E.B.Hudspeth taking the time to “bring to light” the beauty in his art with this interview:

Motivations & Muses: Did a muse similar to Mary Shelly's affect you? Where you terrified by muses?

With The Modern Prometheus (1818), Mary Bryce Shelly grappled with the themes of Science, Art, and Spirit.   Her character Victor Frankenstein, the infamous artist and scientist, pieced together materials from cemeteries to create life via alchemy.  In her prologue, she described how her muse worked though her:

“My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw-with shut eyes, but acute mental vision-I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together.  I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion.   Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.  His success would terrify the artist.” - Mary Shelly ~1818

EBH: No, it sounds like Shelly’s muse would have terrified anyone. The whole thing came about as a simple curiosity. I wanted to know how the anatomy of a winged human would work. It was originally a study for a sculpture but then it turned into something more comprehensive. The artwork came first. After I had a pretty clear idea of the art direction, that’s when I worked on the story, focusing on the nineteenth century. I wanted the artist to have believed in this work, not just a piece of fantasy, to me, that’s where the heart of it is. You know immediately that who ever drew this took it seriously and that provokes a pretty interesting question.

The Process of Creation: Did the process of making the book further evolve your own philosophy on art or beauty?  

Spencer Black learned a lot about himself and humanity during his life, especially when he tried to produce new forms.  Did your views of art change as you realized your vision of the book?

EBH: Yes, my views on art are always changing and they change faster than I can improve as an artist. I feel as though the more I learn, the more respect and appreciation I gain and the more I need to improve. One thing I try not to take for granted in art is the history of esthetics. Their origins, the centuries required to refine them and then their tragic disappearance. There are curves and shapes and line weights that can be lost if we don’t pay attention. Looking back into the 19th century to research certain styles was a wonderful thing to do and a little sad. I am proud of my penmanship but it is nothing compared to the ornate flourish and decoration used commonly in letters.

E.B.Hudspeth: Author & Illustrator of "The Ressurectionist"

Art vs. the Artist: How much of E.B. Hudspeth is reflected in the character Dr. Spencer Black?

We know Dr. Black struggled to reveal dormant/recessive beauty to the public.  The below quote from Spencer seems to echo your motivation: 

"I hear them marvel at my work—my indignant science. I hear them call out in fear of what they see. And there are some gentlemen who doubt what I will tell them. They call me a liar and a charlatan or a quack. But in time the methods of science that I now employ to convince people will surely set them free—alas, this I cannot explain to the angry fools."

I assume you see beauty in the horrific drawings you produced (I do); how do you respond to those who need help seeing the beauty?   Can you help “bring to light” awareness. 

EBH: I am not sure how much of myself comes out in a character. There are certainly going to be things that I write that I am relating to personally. I think it’s common to feel like there is something special and powerful within us that we have a difficult time expressing. Dr. Black is giving the world something that he feels is no less valuable than food, but they won’t eat. I think this sense of rejection is something we all feel at some point in life. 

I wonder if beauty is only in the eye of the beholder. I am not trying to convince anyone. We all love different things and it would be terrible if we all agreed on what beauty was. I personally love the shape and form of organic life. Every specimen is a beautiful mystery, visually and intellectually.

I wanted the artwork in the book to play out as a character. You never really sympathize with Spencer Black until you see his drawings. It isn’t the context that makes you understand him, it’s the sincerity. There are things that artwork can do that other mediums cannot. The same is true for the other mediums i.e., music, writing, dance, etc., they all have their special traits.

E.B.Huspeth: Author & Illustrator of "The Resurrectionist"

Bounds of Humanity: Where does man begin and animal end?

There are real life analogues to the fictitious Spencer. Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) comes to mind. A dedicated, philosophical scientist with outstanding artistic skills, he documented thousands of life forms and published his beautiful plates in “Art Forms in Nature” (translated from German: Kunstforman der Natur). But then his fascination with Art-Nature caused an uproar when he tweaked his drawings of embryos in 1874. 

The setting in “The Resurrectionist” is ideal for redefining the nature of “man.” The turn of the 19th century was rich with advances in evolutionary theory, science, and even speculative fiction. Anatomists, philosophers, and scientists ruminated on how far to extrapolate Darwin’s assertions. Most understood that all vertebrates shared a common skeletal structure; but if animals and man were connected in their development, was it not reasonable to reconsider the existence of creatures termed mythological? Were centaurs real? Harpies? Demons? Spencer Black needed to know. You seemed to use him to lure us on this quest.  So, are there distinctions between man and animal?  

EBH: To get into the real scientific answers to this question you would need to ask someone else, someone far more qualified. I am happy to offer my observations, whatever they are worth. Your question is where a lot of the story was able to breathe. The oceans, so vast and mysterious and still unexplored… what lives in it? Today we entertain the possibility of weird or imagined creatures living somewhere in the world, image what it was like 150 years ago?

Anatomically, it is astounding what similarities occur in animals. The bones following remarkably similar patterns, hands become wings, feet become elongated lower legs etc. Eyes, teeth patterns, and reproductive systems all follow predictable rules. Among all of the animals there are a great deal of similarities. Scientists like Ernst Haeckel were amazing for their times. He did doctor his own work, which isn’t uncommon, especially if you believe in the work and its future— competition was fierce, as I am sure it still is today.

The nineteenth century was a good place to exploit the questions of what is the true origin of man. A question that we still aren’t 100%. It’s that 1% uncertainty where doctors like Spencer Black look for answers.

As far as distinctions, they exist in everything. This is how we quantify our world, we measure and name and make distinctions—there is nothing wrong with this. The danger is when we place values on everything.

More Art: Are there more resurrections in the future (i.e. more horrors to shed light on)? Can we expect more history of the Black family to be revealed?

EBH:  I am working on a sequel. It’s taking longer than I had hoped, but that’s only because I am very excited about it and I want it to be right. There will be more about the Black family. The first book was written and designed with a sequel in mind.

Stay tuned by following this site and checking out the author's website: http://ebhudspeth.com/

...and read S.E.Lindberg's Review of The Resurrectionist (link).

Art, Beauty, and Fantasy Fiction: An Interview with Janet E. Morris

I have been fascinated with many Horror/Fantasy writers' view on the themes of "Beauty" and "Art" (see essay Undercurrent of Dark Muses in Weird Fiction ). In short, Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, R.E. Howard...even Edgar Allen Poe...wrote essays/letters in which they professed their fiction as being Art with a level of Beauty. For them Beauty was defined more of an emotive-experience rather than something "pretty" or related to "sex/gender." These authors are interestingly (a) all men, and (b) rarely wrote about heroines, or from the female perspective.  

Via the Sword & Sorcery Group on Goodreads-com, I engaged author Janet Morris (JEM) about these themes. JEM has pushed people's expectations of sexuality and the role of women in fantasy fiction since 1976; she has since published more than 20 novels, many co-authored with her husband Chris Morris (including the Sacred Band of Stepsons of the Thieves World series; she also created and edited the Bangsian fantasy series Heroes in Hell).  She is still writing, recently contributing to Writing Fantasy Heroes: Powerful Advice from the Pros. Incidentally, her expanded editions of her Sacred Band books are being re-released now (Video Trailer).  She frequently interacts in the Sword & Sorcery Group on Goodreads-com, which is currently running a Groupread on Heroines (everyone is invited, so feel welcome to join).  Her below comment suggested she had a lot more to share:

"Men in woman-suits do not women make, and the novel's purpose in the world is to create story to carry forth common values and shared ethos; when those values are deformed, and that deformation taken for true, we all suffer." Janet E. Morris - 2013

JEM kindly agreed to an interview and simply overwhelmed me with her response.  She is a font of information, and her responses should appeal to readers and aspiring authors (incidentally, Alexandra Butcher recently posted an insightful, interview with JEM on a broader range of topics).  She shared loads of insights and inspirational messages, I highlighted a few in blue.  Thank you JEM for your continued passion for writing, and for sharing your philospohy on Beauty and Art in Fantasy Fiction:  

1. Were you aiming to recast/redefine the definition of beauty at all in your work? If so, would the Silistra series be the most representative? Link to JEM's answer-1
2. How exactly did you strategize writing fiction featuring a powerful woman without pandering to stereotypes (i.e. chic's in chainmail) or making her wear a "man-suit"?  Link to JEM's answer-2 
3. Have you ever thought of your own fiction as beautiful art? Link to JEM's answer-3 

Intro) JEM: Art is the process and Beauty the goal

Herein we’ll briefly explore Art and Beauty in fantastical literature, which may include fantasy and horror for purposes of discussion, not only historically, but how this single core issue is changing today: is Art and its associated Beauty still a valid goal in modern fiction, despite the vast quantity of fiction written by those aiming to capture the lowest common denominator of readership?

1) Was Estri & Silistra strategically conceived to create a new sort of female hero?

JEM: When I wrote High Couch of Silistra, I was twenty-five and loved being female; my body and mind were my laboratory, and I wanted to write the book I couldn’t find to read: not a book that was a clumsy attempt to treat a woman as a man, or as an enemy or competitor of men, or as a victim of men, but as someone powerful in a different society for genetic and political reasons; a protagonist whose sensuality and sexuality are at the heart of her world, and whose travails are self-created, so that I could explore the genetics of behavior: Estri, protagonist, is a courtesan and an adventuress, but not a sword-swinging hero tougher than any man around her. The books explore the differences and complementarities between men and women and the exercise of power, both personal and societal; they aren’t about a man who happens to live in a woman’s body. The Silistra Quartet is well discussed by Kaler in The Picara, where she compares the Silistra Quartet to the Picara model, from which it does purposely diverge.

My strategy was simply to write a book that spoke for a unique viewpoint, not for the “woman’s movement” (who were offended that it diverged from their politics) or the conservative male-backlash audience. Like Disraeli, I always write the book I want to read. In Silistra, all stereotypes are turned on their heads; emotion rules; sexuality is sometimes graphic as it pertains to power among and between sexes: it’s a book about people balancing free will against their hard-wired natures, not about women in man-suits or men in woman-suits. At the end of Wind from the Abyss, the third in the series, Estri’s counterpart Sereth reminds us, “We are all bound, the highest no less than the meanest.” Human extravagances and limitations are what, for me, Silistra is about, but it is not a series for the erotically-averse, or the intellectually timid.

Vallejo - High Couch of Silistra Cover Art

None of our heroines have ever worn chain mail:  Estri's chains are on her wait and sometimes on her writs; Shebat Kerrion, our science fantasy heroine of the Dream Dancer/Kerrion Consortium trilogy, is a newcomer to the space-faring culture where she wanders and a catalyst for change; the various Sacred Band of Stepsons heroines include Jihan, who has scale armor and a few supernatural powers appropriate to the daughter of the god of wind and wave; Kama has leather and linen armor, just like the men she serves among  (she wants to be a man so her father will respect her, but is a poet most of all); Cime wears god-forged armor or doeskin leathers, is a sorcerer-slayer by vocation, is also picaresque, and rules Tempus' heart and by extension, the Sacred Band at times.  It's not their weapons or outfits or special powers that make them heroic, but their goals and deeds, hopes and dreams.  When I saw the Boris High Couch cover for the first time, I was insulted that anyone could have derived the brass bra and Gucci boots image from my work. 

(this next paragraph is paraphrased from her Goodreads.com comment): I was a fine arts major in school. My first cover was the Boris High Couch, commissioned by Bantam for High Couch of Silistra. I didn't think it matched the description, so I got Bantam to arrange for me to talk to him and request changes (feathered wings to non-feathered, etc). He didn't like that. So we changed to someone else thereafter. I had always loved the Frazetta covers, and in Germany I had Chris Achilleos for the German versions of the Silistra series, then Frazetta for the German Tempus. But now that I have cover control, I'm choosing Rubens and ancient art that truly moves me. The new cover for Tempus, and The Sacred Band cover, and the Beyond sub-series with Rubens covera, are pleasing me because I can look at them for hours and always see something that evokes the heart of the stories within. Matching books to cover, when centuries separate book and cover creation, has been an adventure. Strangest experience was finding the three Rubens we're using for Beyond Sanctuary, Beyond the Veil, and Beyond Wizardwall and realizing that each of those three paintings fit one of the three books nearly perfectly.

SEL asks whether I’m aiming to recast/redefine the definition of beauty in my work and, if so, would the Silistra series be the most representative? The answer to that is simple: like everyone concerned with writing Art, I am always striving, always hoping to improve, always experimenting, pushing my limits, trying to reach Homeric heights – but for me in my time, not by copying him in his. What is most beautiful about literature as Art is its ability to transport, to materialize a vision, whole cloth, in the reader’s mind, and I’m still working on doing that. The most representative of my books is probably my most recent novel, written with Chris Morris, The Sacred Band, grappling as it does with what is common to all, and unique in some: taking hold of mythos and ethos, sexuality of every sort, and exploring power and emotion at their best and worst. My favorite of my books is  I, the Sun, biographical novel of Suppiluliumas, Great King of Hatti, because his own words set my soul afire, and the task – flavoring my style with his writings, creating a relative chronology, and bringing so many historical people to life – was unparalleled in its demands on my ability. My favorite science fiction book, Outpassage, written with Chris Morris, is my greatest success so far with writing a group of futuristic, strong, heroic and villainous female characters.

My female characters, no more or less than my male characters, speak for themselves, not for a grand plan to redress centuries of perceived grievances, or to be role models for a future of retributive bile, where men and women are retaught their roles, and those roles are precisely the same. If, indeed, Art is the process and Beauty the goal, and if ‘common values’ can still be transferred to future generations through literature, then only reality and its study can yield fantasy worth reading, and making women into men and men into women won’t have my desired result: a book that satisfies me, since I must go first into any adventure I write, and live there. 

2) Have you ever thought of your own fiction as beautiful art?

JEM: My answer is simple: Of course I do. And of course it is valid to consciously strive for greatness in any art-form, and literature most of all, since literature carries our culture forward, gives voice to our inner selves most directly, speaks for us in no uncertain terms to a future yet unformed.  I think of my own work as a search for Art and strive for beauty in every line: for power, lyricism, brutality, mythos and ethos, and I do this by invoking character, not diatribe. 

3) Is Art and Beauty present in classic fantasy?

JEM: Certainly each man’s essays and letters (i.e. from Lovecraft, Howard, Smith, & Poe) reveal their intent to create Art with a level of Beauty in their fiction. Consider these among other writers equally persuaded that they were writing Art with Beauty. The Western Canon, and back to the earliest myths of Gilgamesh, give us fantasy and horror stories with Art and Beauty: since these are ‘literature’, we don’t refer to them as Horror or Fantasy anymore, despite the faeries in Spenser, the witches and ghosts in Shakespeare, the devils and demons in Milton.

Art with a level of Beauty (where Beauty is emotional impact and Art is a process of transcendent composition) does not exist in every piece of fiction, but it exists in many more fictions than today’s pernicious genre-fication would lead one to believe, or the ghetto-izers of literature would prefer. However, look sharp: if the book is really good, people will not call it Horror or Fantasy very long. For instance, is Moby Dick Horrific Fantasy? To me it is. Does Conan carry the flag of fantastical creation forward, and even include the emotional context and kick necessary in Art? Absolutely, although the non-Howard Conan stories written by others so far do not.

If Art is, as Zola famously observed, life seen through a temperament, then Howard’s Conan is Art. The spare prose and raw power of that work stimulated many to try to copy it whole cloth, resulting in a cripplingly limited vision of how Howard emplaces impact that has created a genre of crude imitators. No matter: Conan can take one’s breath away, and replace it with his own. The loaded style of Poe is peerless, in his darkly forsaken world, as much an echo of New England’s own inherent darkness as of the phantasms he evokes. Arthur Conan Doyle observed through the mouth of Sherlock Holmes that: ‘Where there is no imagination, there is no horror.’ Writing fantasy (whether one may become the next Dante or Poe or Homer), or reading it, requires imagination, and creating Art and Beauty is the goal of an informed imagination.

Now, what do we mean by Beauty? The most beautiful line I have ever read is from Hamlet: “And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” In Poe, it’s “Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore! Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore.’” Howard stabs for your heart with his Beauty, evoking a barbarian soul in “To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women”, but consider Howard’s “Fire and wind come from the sky, from the gods of the sky. But Crom is your god, Crom and he lives in the earth. Once, giants lived in the earth, Conan. And in the darkness of chaos, they fooled Crom, and they took from him the enigma of steel. Crom was angered. And the Earth shook. Fire and wind struck down these giants, and they threw their bodies into the waters, but in their rage, the gods forgot the secret of steel and left it on the battlefield. We who found it are just men. Not gods. Not giants. Just men. The secret of steel has always carried with it a mystery. You must learn its riddle, Conan. You must learn its discipline. For no one – no one in this world can you trust. Not men, not women, not beasts.” In my own work I can show you my strivings for Art and Beauty more easily, since I know it best: “The chapel is dim, full of the god. So many of Tempus’ own ghosts are here. He bows his head and greets them one by one. Shades and revenants from years gone by crowd in, murmuring like the dead he carries in his heart. A gilded chariot gleams in the chapel’s soft light: a prop for a show he disdains, in these days when it is so hard for him to keep man and god separate, distinct from one another; when so many, many wraiths come with him, walk with him, ride with him from battlefield to battlefield, war to war.” or: “Woe betide the soul who loves too much, wants too much, dares too much. Soon now comes the hour of doom for some, victory for others.”

"Beauty requires that we breathe into our characters a unique view of the human condition, and show how that character experiences and suffers the world around him (her)."  Janet E. Morris - 2013

So where does Art reside, and where Beauty? Art is the process and Beauty the result. These together reside in the totality of thought; in the dark of the soul; in the voice of your Muse and, finally, if you are very lucky, on the page. If you are male or female, and writing fantasy fiction today, are you at an advantage or a disadvantage in the marketplace? The answer should be ‘no,’ but now and previously, may be ‘yes,’ depending on how separate you can keep yourself from political correctness and societal pressure to write trite stereotypes, not characters. Is the first great fantasy writer “J” from the Old Testament? Probably. Harold Bloom thinks “J” was female, and says so. What makes Bloom think so? A lifetime of scholarship. I recommend to you his “The Book of J” so you can find out for yourself. Where does the Art and Beauty reside in the Old Testament? Try the oldest translation you can find of the ‘burning bush’ scene. Homer’s Iliad, the most male of tales, changed the world because Alexander of Macedon considered its treatise on war-fighting so much his inspiration that he carried it with him on campaign. Before the Iliad, the myths of powerful women in Greek, and before them in Hittite and Egyptian and Akkadian mythologies, abounded. After Homer, the age of early male heroes increasingly defined literature, but these heroes were aided and abetted by female goddesses, muses, nereids, all more powerful than the men who served them. Then came the inscription at Delphi: “Keep woman under rule.” Why? Perhaps women sibyls and rulers had abused their men, perhaps the warlord overcame the sorceress. After Constantine and his New Testament redactions, modern patriarchy took hold with a vengeance, eradicating not only the Gnostic Gospel of Mary, but much else that made women and men equally important – in the eyes of literature, at least.

"Today, the writer, be that author male or female, makes a choice, at the outset: to reach for greatness and challenge an audience, or even change them; or to please a common denominator of audience by writing a familiar tale told artlessly. It is rare to attempt both, even rarer to achieve both.

So why try for Art and Beauty, when what most people want is a short, easy read, simple and direct? For some, Art is its own reward, and Beauty brings Art to the life in the mind. Before these art-seeking souls today, a wilderness stretches: many more craftsmen exist than artists, and the good, invariably, is the enemy of the great." Janet E. Morris - 2013

Weird, Dark Art Design: Implicit vs. Explicit Gore and Horror

Note this is Part of a series:

#1) Dark Muses I: The undercurrent of "Art" in Weird literature 

#2: Dark Muses II: Creative Forces Driving Science and Art

#3:  Historical Anatomy: Composing Bodies and Representing the Invisible Soul 

#4) Weird, Dark Art Design: Implicit vs. Explicit Gore and Horror (you are here) 

____________________
Frazetta's "Warrior with Ball and Chain" --Where is the Gore?

Weird artists have consistently felt misunderstood by the masses, and readily defended their interests as healthy, without evil intent. Just decades ago, renowned fantasy cover artist Frank Frazetta combated the apparent immaturity associated with his art, as he is quoted in his retrospective book Icon:

"They're positive my art my work is bloody and terrible, and I say 'oh Yeah? Find it!' And they can't.  There's merely the suggestion of it, a little splash of red on a sword, a spot in the snow, and that's it.  I don't paint heads rolling around, or severed limbs... In spite of the subject or violence, I want every painting to be a thing of beauty."  (i)

"Sometimes I wonder what people really see when they look at my art.  I mean, I know I exaggerate my figures for effect, make them in ways they may not normally move, push things a little to heighten the excitement.  And I can get away with the exaggeration and still make you believe in the reality of the scenes because I know how to draw.  I know my anatomy.  I know how real people and real animals move.  But these guys who are trying to 'do' me, boy!  Arms and legs the size of trees; blood and guts everywhere, that's not what I do.  My figures are muscular, but for chrissake, they're not ridiculous. And despite the violence in my art I want people to look at it and say, 'It's beautiful!' and forget about the situation.  I want them to look at it for the sheer beauty and symmetry and the wonderful shapes and color and rhythm, and that's all they will see.   They don't think about the fact it's a battle scene.  It's taste that separates the men from the boys..." (ii)

Frazetta posed that a portion who admired and attempted to imitate his work did not understand why his designs were effective.

Offer an experience, not a photograph 

The effect of horror is best gained when the sensation is most intangible. To put the horror in visible shape, no matter how gibbous or mistily, is to lessen the effect. I paint an ordinary tumble-down farmhouse with the hint of a ghastly face at a window; but this house-this house-needs no such mummery or charlatanry; it exudes an aura of abnormality-that is, to a man sensitive to such impression. (iii)

So wrote R.E. Howard who funneled his views of weird art though his characters, as in the above quote from The House in the Oaks (a story posthumously finished by August Derleth).

Conveying aesthetic events is a key success criteria expressed by many weird artists.  Dark fantastical art serves as an experiential map that appeals to the futile hopes of readers who, mindful of the terror but driven by conviction, want to understand the human spirit. Those who think dark art is scary and evil or necessarily gory, those who reprehend it, are merely ignorant. Perhaps those called by dark muses care to endure the terrific process of speculating, researching, and mediating the unknown by reading and writing. Those not willing to experience weird art, but are willing to critic or trivialize it, may just be terrified to explore the human spirit.

Today's mass market genres of fantasy and horror fiction arguably grew from a single 'weird' source nearly a hundred years ago during the depression era; pulp magazines were emerging as a new mass medium, and short stories by authors like H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert Ervin Howard carved new boundaries around the realm of fiction. What might interest unfamiliar with weird fiction are the motivations that lured many readers: a desire for answers and the fear of discovering them. Mass market horror and fantasy genres that later evolved from weird fiction are no longer defined by this, for the genres have grown into new territories and audiences that include markets for children, young adults, and consumers insistent on purchasing trilogies. Clark Ashton Smith, weird author, artist, and contemporary of Lovecraft and Howard captured the beauty of the weird tale:

Mr. Lovecraft has stated very lucidly and succinctly the essential value and validity of the horror story as literary art, and there is no need to recapitulate his conclusions. It has often occurred to me that the interest in tales of horror and weirdness is a manifestation of the adventure impulse so thoroughly curbed in most of us by physical circumstances. In particular, it evinces a desire-perhaps a deep-lying spiritual need-to transcend the common limitations of time, space, and matter. It might be argued that this craving is not, as many shallow modernists suppose, a desire to escape from reality, but an impulse to penetrate the verities which lie beneath the surface of things; to grapple with, and to dominate, the awful mysteries of mortal existence. The attitude of those who would reprehend a liking for horror and eeriness and would dismiss it as morbid and unhealthy, is simply ludicrous. The true morbidity, the true unhealthiness, lies on the other side. (iv)

References

• i Frazetta, F., Ed. (1998). ICON: A Retrospective. Grass Valley, C.A., Underwood Books. p98
• iii Frazetta, F., Ed. (1998). ICON: A Retrospective. Grass Valley, C.A., Underwood Books. p158
• iii Howard, R. E. (2001). The House In The Oaks, Nameless Cults. Oakland, CA, Chaosium Publications. P168.
• iv Machen, A. (1973). Planets and Dimensions: Collected Essays of Clark Ashton Smith, Mirage Press

Microscopists by day- Illustrators by night

UPDATE: 2013 - Robotslayer Paperback and iOS app have since become available!

Interview with fellow microscopist/illustrator, Vince Kamp

I begin with a call-out to the world-renowned microscope stage developers: Linkam Scientific.  Many industries require the ability to accurately perturb material or biological specimens with temperature, shear, tensile stress, exposure to radiation, humidity, etc.; and the Linkam crew enables viewing of microstructure via optical microscopy and many spectroscopic methods while doing so.  Rheologists and biologists alike adore their fine craftsmanship.  Linkam's products are available in the U.S. from many dealers including the McCrone Research Center (Walter McCrone was a famous "chemical microscopist" responsible for analyzing the pigments within the Shroud of Turin). Check out the Linkam online TV channel for more: 

LinkamTV

Turns out, although I have been interacting with Linkam since the late 90's, I did not know until recently that Operations Director Vince Kamp has been churning away on his own illustrated children's book. I was delighted to learn that he has a similar workflow: (1) sketch by hand onto paper, (2) scan, (3) color/texturize digitally.  His style is natural; it looks naturally painted with oil paints. So here goes my informal interview with him:


Vince's Robot Slayer Pic's

SEL: Vince, how do you construct your paintings? 
VK: As far as my process is concerned, well I sketch everything in pencil and then scan and import into PS.  I block in background colour and then block in my characters, I work from dark to light and use only one brush, a sort of splatter brush that mimics a traditional brush, set to 90% opacity and use pressure sensitivity on my tablet (wacom cintiq, 12") [SEL: Cripes!  I want one of those!].  I have messed around with water based colouring pencils and oil pastels but not for my online stuff.

Side bar:  This mixed media approach of (1) sketching, (2) scaning, (3) digitally coloring is getting popular. 

So here goes another call out to the friendly Brits.  They have an entire professional magazine dedicated to like artists; and it's rooted in fnatasy and sci-fi art.  Check out the ImagineFX website (their magazines are distributed in Barnes & Noble too).

• ImagineFX example tutorial, from sketch-to-color in PS
• Death Dealer tutorial
• Other ImagineFX PDF Workshops

ImagineFX Tutorial

SEL: You are too humble for words, and your sarcasm is thick...but delivery dry (especially via email).  Please clarify how you get your digital colors to look like real paint.

VK: I'm heavily influenced by traditional painting techniques and though I'm completely untrained and don't know what I'm doing [SEL: UK humor?], the books I study almost exclusively focus on light and colour in oil painting.  So I guess I'm saying my pics may not look so digital because I try to paint in a traditional way of using layers of paint and blending.  I almost never use all the various tweaking filters in PS as I would love to one day have the time to paint properly on canvas. I don't want to rely on digital tools to get the look I want.  If I ever get round to being able to create a beautiful oil painting I think I would feel like I could really exploit everything in PS to produce much better pictures, but I would like to earn that right by studying all the fundamentals first.  Understanding colour and light is just so fascinating and I don't believe I've even scratched the surface, it's insanely frustrating.

SEL: Your style is perfect for a kid's book, I can't wait to see how Leo the Robot Slayer emerges.  Does any work inspire this style? 

VK: Even though my pics are all cartooney I love Vermeer and Rembrandt and many of the more obscure post renaissance painters from in and around my Dad's village in Holland.  I know I'm waffling but I thought I would give you an idea of how I think when I'm colouring my pics as the process itself is really very simple.  One brush, 90% opacity.  If you haven't already, check out James Gurney's light and color http://www.amazon.co.uk/Color-Light-Guide-Realist-Painter/dp/0740797719. By the way, the comment that my pictures don't look digital is probably the greatest compliment I have received so far, as that is ultimately what I'm desperately trying to achieve.