poster art for the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival
Hello!
I just had the great opportunity to create the artwork for the 2010 H.P. Lovecraft film festival! Previous artists have included Berni Wrightson (Swamp Thing) and Mike Mignola (Hellboy), so it doesn't take a great stretch of the imagination to see how this would be quite a flattering honor. The event has run in Portland since 1995, but starting this year it will also run in Los Angeles. Word has it the festival may spread elsewhere if there are willing venues and organizers. With fingers crossed, my recent short Eldritch Light & Shadow may be accepted into this year's festivals!
The requirements for the poster were to convey something of Lovecraft and film (viewing, making, etc)- the Lovecraft part was easy enough though I wanted it to be a bit more colorful to catch eyes because it's an advertisement. I settled on a small film crew, probably some "extreme documentarians", risking it all to win some footage of a Lovecraftian entity. I painted the creature first, I chose Shub-Niggurath because I hadn't painted her before and it also has a lot of the classic trappings of Lovecraft's creatures. As with some of my Yog-Sothoth paintings, I went for a more epic landscape approach.
I was uncertain about the execution of the crew, who I decided would be using some sort of precarious crane to get a good vantage point, so I painted it without the crew:
(11x17" acrylic) Then I painted the crew on a separate piece of illustration board, scanned it and dropped it over the painting in photoshop. This allows me to use the painting in both ways, and with photoshop I can experiment with the size angle and placement:
I feel it contains a bit more humor than much of my work, but I like how it satisfied many of the connected sentiments of the Mythos (the otherworldly, the wondrous, the grotesque, the infinite and the people who dare to meddle with it). It also provides a nice sense of scale, which adds to the impact of the creature/god.
I'm told the posters are at the printers, and if things are run as they have in the past they ought to be for sale (at the festival and/or online at some point), and the L.A. version will look a lot like this:
Below is some information about the festivals:
_______________________________________________________________________
Los Angeles fest = Saturday, September 11, 2pm-late at the art deco Warner Grand Theater in San Pedro.
Tickets are $20 until August 11, $25 after
Featuring six of the first and best films from the past 14 years of Portland festivals in two blocks. Also includes a performance by Astra dance (an Edgar Allan Poe-inspired dance theater troupe) and the after party at the Victorian era styled Whale & Ale pub.
main site: http://www.hplfilmfestival.com/ October 1-2-3, 2010 at the Hollywood Theatre, Portland Oregon
Tickets, schedule, guest list, etc., for the Los Angeles HPLFF: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/117721
_______________________________________________________________________
Next up... painting with cheese... I mean it this time!!
~Paul
I just had the great opportunity to create the artwork for the 2010 H.P. Lovecraft film festival! Previous artists have included Berni Wrightson (Swamp Thing) and Mike Mignola (Hellboy), so it doesn't take a great stretch of the imagination to see how this would be quite a flattering honor. The event has run in Portland since 1995, but starting this year it will also run in Los Angeles. Word has it the festival may spread elsewhere if there are willing venues and organizers. With fingers crossed, my recent short Eldritch Light & Shadow may be accepted into this year's festivals!
The requirements for the poster were to convey something of Lovecraft and film (viewing, making, etc)- the Lovecraft part was easy enough though I wanted it to be a bit more colorful to catch eyes because it's an advertisement. I settled on a small film crew, probably some "extreme documentarians", risking it all to win some footage of a Lovecraftian entity. I painted the creature first, I chose Shub-Niggurath because I hadn't painted her before and it also has a lot of the classic trappings of Lovecraft's creatures. As with some of my Yog-Sothoth paintings, I went for a more epic landscape approach.
I was uncertain about the execution of the crew, who I decided would be using some sort of precarious crane to get a good vantage point, so I painted it without the crew:
(11x17" acrylic) Then I painted the crew on a separate piece of illustration board, scanned it and dropped it over the painting in photoshop. This allows me to use the painting in both ways, and with photoshop I can experiment with the size angle and placement:
I feel it contains a bit more humor than much of my work, but I like how it satisfied many of the connected sentiments of the Mythos (the otherworldly, the wondrous, the grotesque, the infinite and the people who dare to meddle with it). It also provides a nice sense of scale, which adds to the impact of the creature/god.
I'm told the posters are at the printers, and if things are run as they have in the past they ought to be for sale (at the festival and/or online at some point), and the L.A. version will look a lot like this:
Below is some information about the festivals:
_______________________________________________________________________
Los Angeles fest = Saturday, September 11, 2pm-late at the art deco Warner Grand Theater in San Pedro.
Tickets are $20 until August 11, $25 after
Featuring six of the first and best films from the past 14 years of Portland festivals in two blocks. Also includes a performance by Astra dance (an Edgar Allan Poe-inspired dance theater troupe) and the after party at the Victorian era styled Whale & Ale pub.
main site: http://www.hplfilmfestival.com/ October 1-2-3, 2010 at the Hollywood Theatre, Portland Oregon
Tickets, schedule, guest list, etc., for the Los Angeles HPLFF: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/117721
_______________________________________________________________________
Next up... painting with cheese... I mean it this time!!
~Paul
Congrats on getting the poster! It looks fantastic. Much more humorous than your other work but in all the right ways.
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This is great. The way you don't try to capture the entirety of Shub-Niggurath, increases the sense of scale even more, like she's to big to be contained. Are those stars inside the mouth, like there is an entire universe contained within?
Let me know when prints are available.
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Thanks, Scott!
If something is cropped and uncontainable by the picture plane, the imagination can fill in it's limitlessness- and that's useful because I can't possibly paint that. Those are stars, I felt that would help convey the multidimensional nature of Shub-Niggurath as well as include more aspects of Lovecraft's creations. Did she swallow a galaxy? Is the mouth a portal to another place?
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