Vampira

Vampira the very first Horror Host as portrayed by Maila Nurmi on television and in films.

When I finish construction of my time machine, I am going to go back in time and go on a date with Vampira.

Where will we go you ask?

What a silly question, We obviously will go even further back in time, to 1927 to see Lon Chaney Sr. in "London After Midnight." After which I will let her pick the next destination.

"But aren't you married?" you ask.

(You really are full of stupid questions today)

Yes, yes I am, and I have that part all figured out as well. I will of course be taking the Warden on this trip, I will after all need someone to distract James Dean while I put the moves on Vampira.

You see, it really is a well thought out plan.

For more information about Vampira, check out her page at Cult Sirens.com

UPDATE:It looks like Vampira's Attic is back online!

Be sure to check out http://vampirasattic.com

And if anyone out there knows where I might find some footage of Vampira in action (other than P9FOS) PLEASE let me know!

Dr. J. Van Helsing

As portrayed by Peter Cushing in Hammer Studios's 1960 classic "The Brides of Dracula" directed by Terence Fisher.

What can be said about the late great Peter Cushing, the man exuded an sort of calm coolness mixed with obsession that made him a perfect choice for Van Helsing.

His performance gives "The Brides of Dracula" a sense of urgency, despite the fact that his adversary has to be one of the least intimidating Vampires in cinematic history. David Peel's Baron Meinster has always been as frightening to me as a little boy with a bath towel cape and plastic fangs. And even though in the film Cushing is knocked to the ground not once, but twice by an old lady, he still manages to exuded a coolness... The man is Grand Moff Tarkin for pete's sake.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you Dr. Van Helsing, the original Fearless Vampire Killer.

Godzilla

What Monster Art site would be complete with out at least one ode to the King of the Monsters?

This one is a little rushed, but since its been so long since I have posted any new stuff I wanted to get it out there. This is the first of what I am sure will be many Godzilla portraits.

My love of the big G goes back as far as I can remember, before werewolves and vampires had entered my consciousness Godzilla had already plowed his way through my innocent mind and left a trail of destruction that I would never ever forget.

When I was in elementary school in Grand Junction, Colorado they would show 16 mm films in the gymnasium fridays after school, and more often then not the feature would be either a Godzilla or Gamera film. I often wonder exactly who it was in the community that was a Kaiju fan, I wish I could find him (or her) and thank them for giving me the opportunity to see these fantastic films for the first time on the relative big screen. I vividly remember sitting on the uncomfortable gym floor, eating 10¢ popcorn from a brown paper bag and just staring up in awe as the good people of Tokyo fought to save their city, or Gamera waged battle to protect the innocent children from a giant extraterrestrial threat.

Those were happy days indeed!

Todays portrait goes out to my good friend Dash, who is probably the biggest Godzilla fan I have ever met. If you haven't already done so you should stop by his site and check out some of his Monster Art.

Why's it been so quiet around here?

Sorry for the silence folks, its been a hell of a week.

Between my father being in the hospital (he's fine) and creating the two images above for Scary Monsters Magazine's Frankenstein 75th Anniversary special that will be coming out later this year, I just haven't had anytime to post or paint any other images.

But now that they are done and everything is okay I will (hopefully) be able to get back to a more regular schedule.

In the meantime please enjoy a sneak peak at my Karloff paintings, I'm pretty proud of them. I sent them off to Boris' daughter Sara, and she wrote back very excited about them.

Unfortunately for the time being I am only going to be posting the thumbnails, but I will be posting the full size versions after they appear in Scary Monsters.


Enjoy!

WANTED! More Readers Like...

You should do yourself a favor and check out "The Mordacious Art Of Patrick Kendall."

Patrick was kind enough to leave a comment here at ScOttRa's and through that I discovered his site.

And man the kids got chops!

His unbridled creativity seems to infect every page like a wildfire. In particular I'm quite fond of his Blob drawing technique, in which he scribbles out a blob with a marker, and then turns it into something. 99% of the time that something is a monster face.

His style is reminiscent of the old Whacky Packages that we all loved as wee monster kids, while simultaneously forging his own fresh look.

I wish I had a tenth of his creativity!

Be sure to check out his site here.

Damien Thorn

Damien Thorn as portrayed by Harvey Stephens in Richard Donner's 1976 film "The Omen."

I hate the fact that the original version is being forgotten amidst all the hype of the remake, and that my tribute to Damien on today 06/06/06 could be seen as embracing all that sub-par nonsense. I struggled with it and thought about doing something else like the Demon from "Curse of the Demon," but when you get right down to it there really was only ever one choice, and it was Damien.

I remember watching "The Omen" on HBO several times when I was a kid, and a lot of it was lost one me (I didn't grow up with anything resembling a religious upbringing, so I didn't really get that whole aspect of it) Damien to me was just another monster that would have to be put down. But I remember being really creeped out by the film. I believe that this was the first film I saw David Warner in, whom later would become one of my favorite actors.

It would have been nice if the suits in Hollyweird would have spent the money on a digital remastering of the original and released it to theaters for a week instead of making (from what I hear) a piece of garbage remake.

A couple of interesting sidenotes:

"The Omen" also stars Doctor Who #2 Patrick Troughton as Father Brennan.

It is said that Harvey Stephens got the part as the antichrist because during auditions he punched director Donner in the testicles.

There is a legend that the production suffered from a curse... check out more info here.

The Dolls Of The Dead

Announcing a new edition to the family! The Warden knitted this amazing figure for me this last weekend, and the idea has snowballed into plans for an entire line of handcrtafted "The Dolls Of The Dead."

Be sure to look for more info here soon.

In the meantime enjoy this sneak peek, and please feel free to leave her comments about it here.

A Look At "Zombies! feast"

On a whim I picked up IDW's new title "Zombies! feast" yesterday at The Vault of Midnight (Who, by the way, have made the move into their amazing new store. Of all the comic shops I have ever had the pleasure to check out, I have to say the new digs are at the top of the list. If you find yourself in the A2 area be sure to check them out!) Anyway, as I was saying... Anybody who knows me knows that I'm a sucker for Zombies. Now if you are familiar with Zombie comics of late then you know that means I have been burnt my fair share of times spending money on crap with a cool cover...

But I'm happy to report that isn't the case with "Zombies! feast"

Shane McCarthy's writing style lends itself well to the genre, and he manages to keep the tension up throughout what is a very slowly paced book. Hardly anything happens in this first issue, in fact the characters only interact with a single zombie through the whole book. This is not a complaint, in fact, I mean it as praise. McCarthy seems to be more interested in setting up his story then just taking the easy way out and flooding the panels with random gore and zombie attacks.

And Chris Bolton's art does a fine job of telling the story, although some would argue that his stuff is occasionally amateurish looking, I found it to be fresh, and his panel to panel storytelling really flows. The book even does one of my pet peeves in comics, that being the obvious use of computers to manipulate the art work, but I found myself not really minding because I was so engrossed in the book.

Unfortunately this book will suffer the inevitable comparisons to Robert Kirkman & Tony Moore's "The Walking Dead" because they both seem to take their subject matter seriously. But that isn't really fair, that's like comparing me to Basil Gogos!

I'm really looking forward to issue #2!

To find a comic store near you please visit Diamond's Comic Shop locator service.

The Crawlers

The Crawlers from Neil Marshall's film "The Descent."

I recently had the opportunity to watch the UK DVD of Neil's follow up to 2002's "Dog Soldiers." And initially I enjoyed the hell out of it.

I loved the atmosphere, and the pacing, and at first glance the savage Gollumesque Crawlers did an adequate job of providing the proverbial "rock" against the cave's hard place...

But, unfortunately after thinking about it the next day, and through discussions with friends it does really start to fall apart. And sadly fails to live up to the brilliance of "Dog Soldiers." But if you can turn a blind eye to the film's many faults and just let yourself enjoy it's eerie claustrophobic popcorn creepiness I recommend heading out to the theatre when it gets it's US release this August. Sadly the US version has had the original ending chopped off in favor of a cheap "jump" scare, but all in all, this is still one of the best horror films in recent memory.