Hot Love...Craft

[Enshohma]

Hello All, I hope you all read this and share some much needed feedback on this article, becuase as you'll see...Lovecraft hurts the creatuve mind and cause maddness upon sight.

I must admit, as much as I love giant monsters, I'm only familiar with the works of 1920s horror and fantasy writer H.P. Lovecraft in a purely clinical sense, doing tons of research without really reading any of his short stories, with the slight exception of The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath...which I skimmed through. With that said, Gugs, hideous race of hairy giants from that tale, were the first Lovecraftian based characters to be done as Kaiju Portraits.

http://enshohma.deviantart.com/art/Gug- ... e-79758749

And pleased with the way that picture came, I decided to take a hand at other giant horrors from the H.P. Collection.

Hopefully some true fans of his works can share their opinions on my interpretations of his unutterable monsters...true, a lot of his creations are vague, more so then a Stephen King monster, and most of what we think is Lovecraft is also not always correct. Probably explain why Gugs were so easy to do...Kadath is in a way a self contained fantasy story, despite HPL using a lot of elements and even characters from his more famous Cthulhu Mythos.

Speaking of which, here is the most famous of his creations Cthulhu himself from the 1928 short story Call Of Cthulhu.



Now like the Gugs, I took various artists versions of the monster and tried to do an amalgam, though at the same time try to make it a recognizable Cthulhu. So I went with the stereotypic octo-headed Gargoyle image (which isn't totally accurate), but added the spiky bumps seen on some real octopi to give that dragon-look that's lacking from most versions of the character but always in HPL's descriptions. The skull-like nostrils are a more contemporary element that looked to good for me to pass up.



Now although this is the Kaiju Portrait version of the Great One (no, not JG of The Honeymooners), I couldn't resist doing my own personal Cthulhu, which resulted in this illustration to be, which I incorporated a lot of sea life elements into the design, including the holes of a coral reefs for it's stomach and again the spiky dragon-like bumps on octopi skin, along with having the tendrils be less like a real animal, thus keeping true to the 'feelers' description of the original text. I'm pretty happy with the 'Raf-Cthulhu' but feel the fatter hands in the Kaiju Portrait are much better. Should have changed that before I inked it, huh?



Less successful however is my take on the Great Water Lizard dubbed Bokrug, from the 1919 short story The Doom That Came To Sarnath. Unlike most of HPL's monsters, who were great beings on unspeakable evil or indifferent or alien cosmic things, Bokrug is practically a Daimajin-like anti hero creature from his Dream-Cycle stories, like the Gugs of Kadath.



Bokrug was the worshipped god of the strange inhabitants of Ib, who sadly were wiped out in an act of hateful genocide by the human settlers of Sarnath, which would become a mighty city afterwards. Ten centuries later however, at the height of its prime, Sarnath was beset by strange disturbances during a anniversary celebration of Ib's destruction. Some were able to flee the city, but those who remained behind disappeared in a cataclysm so grand that only rubble and smaller water lizards remained...along with the long lost idol of Bokrug, who mysteriously appeared after so long. Since then, Bokrug was the chief god of where Sarnath use to stand and the nearby city of Ilarnek.

Payback's a B1tch!

Despite the cool story, my sketch of Bokrug leaves a lot to be desired; I originally wanted a water iguana as the basis, but ended up doing a monitor lizard-like body instead. And I took a risk with the 'chine-tentacles' and devil-like horns that other artists have incorporated into their versions of the Great Water Lizard. I don't know, but it doesn't work for me...your thoughts?



-More Coming Soon-

[Emperor Kedzuel]

These are excellent sketches. Can't wait till you finish them.

[Enshohma]

[Enshohma]

And now just a bit more...

A redo on the Dreamland's resident lizard god from the sea who isn't named Godzilla, Bokrug. Decided to drop the tentacled chin with simple (and way easier to draw) seaweed growth. Also, despite looking a little bit friendlier then the first sketch, this Bokrug feels more reptilian to me. Also took a quick crack at the Bokrug statue shrine mentioned in the story The Doom That Came To Sannath:





As, mentioned before, my knowledge on Lovecraft is clinical and without going to much into the actual stories themselves...which makes me a hypocrite among other things. But I do some research before I attempt these sketches, and thanks to Zigra's recommendation of the lesser known snake god Yig and additional information, I was able to do something with this guy. Here's what Zigra had to say on Yig...

[QUOTE=Zigra;300750]I'd highly recommend Lovecraft's stories The Curse of Yig and The Mound (which he ghost-wrote for Zelia Bishop) as these are the stories that deal with Yig the most. Admittedly, he's a bit harder to draw simply because his form is so open to interpretation. He can pretty much appear in any form related to snakes, whether it be a snake-man, or a gigantic snake of some sort.

It should be interesting, and perhaps even helpful to note that many writers and Mythos scholars speculate that Yig and Set the Serpent God from Robert E. Howard's Conan stories are in fact one and the same. This comes from Howard strongly implying that Set is one of Lovecraft's Great Old Ones, and from Howard stating that Set fathered all snakes on Earth (something Yig was suppose to have done in Lovecraft's world). This identification is also helped by the fact that Lovecraft strongly implied that all the major snake deities around the world (such as Quetzalcouatl) are just alias of Yig. And if Set and Yig are indeed the same, then it's probable that the Great Serpent worshiped by the serpent men and Thusla Doom in Howard's Kull stories is also another aspect of Yig.

Here's a good article that explores the history of the serpent-folk and their connection to Yig in various fiction-

[/QUOTE]

And here's my attempt based on the info I gathered...which as you can see, I mistakenly dubbed Zig as well. I went with the idea that Yig is connected to the works of Robert E. Howard and thus made the serpent deity more in tune with fantasy action then cosmic alien horror, though hoping that he still comes off as nightmarish as old feeler face and friends. With that said, Quetzalcouatl was also a big inspiration behind my Yig design.



Extra info:

Finally, second only to Cthulhu in popularity is the extremely insane Shoggoth, from the novella In the Mountains of Madness. Unlike most of the Lovecraft monsters, Shoggoths are not god-like star horrors, but the rouge amoeba-like creations of an ancient alien race dubbed the Elder Things. The Elder Things are long since died or / and left the Earth behind, but one of their ruined cities remained deep within Antarctica, where the stories's protagonists decide to explore (the poor fools).

Now by the very description from Lovecraft himself, Shoggoths have no real form, as they are truly more amorphous then the Blob ever was, as it's always changing with every inch it moves upon, though multiple forming eyes and human-like organs are prominent as it does, though changing upon themselves as well.

I was hesitant to do the Shoggoths in any accurate way, until I actually sat down and read the story itself and chose not to show a Shoggoth fully, but only a small portion of it hanging from the top of the picture. I also came close to not doing cartoonish eyes for the creature, but realizing my style it hard to avoid, I did anime type eyes to the design and I must say, it works quite well, even if there are some realistic ones hanging about.

And yes, instead of a simple character sketch which would have also been a basis for a Kaiju Portrait, I did a real set piece featuring not only the multi-forming terror, but also the man-sized albino and blind penguins from the tale which amazing most other Lovecraft fans tend to leave out of their 'beastiaries'.

Poor, dumb albino and blind man-sized penguins...



I think I've done enough Lovecraft monsters for now, though I would like to do all the Ultraman monsters and aliens directly based on \the Mythos...but that's another time and possible other thread.