Unfilmable.com: Pickman's Models

As Unfilmable.com has shown, Howard Phillips Lovecraft has inspired hordes of filmmakers in their quest to bring Cosmic Horror to the big (and small) screen, but his works have inspired artists to even greater heights (or abysmal depths), as they are not bound by budgetary or technological restraints. In fact, many of the artists represented here have worked in film, both Lovecraftian and not, but you may find that their greatest works remain those that have been dredged from limitless depths of their imagination (with a little encouragement from HPL, of course!)...

Welcome to Pickman's Models, Richard Upton invites you to stop by and see what keeps him awake at night...

. Toren Atkinson .

Toren Atkinson was raised on a 'beefalo' farm in Chilliwack BC and is now the lead singer for the H.P. Lovecraft-inspired rock band The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. He is the co-author and illustrator for the award-winning roleplaying game Spaceship Zero. Toren has worked as an illustrator for games like Call of Cthulhu and Dungeons & Dragons since the mid '90′s and studied comic production under Steve (Pounded/Queen & Country/Tales of the TMNT) Rolston. As an actor he's appeared in Stargate: Atlantis and provided voices for video games like Sword of the Stars and Fort Zombie. Current projects include 'funny animal' superhero property World Wildlife Federation of Justice.

Toren's Official Site

Cthulhu on the Rampage © Toren Atkinson

Pursuit © Toren Atkinson

. Andrea Bonazzi .

Born in 1968, Andrea Bonazzi lives in Genoa, Italy. Besides to raise Shoggoths, and in addition to try to smuggle good Weird Fiction in his country, he makes sinister sculptures, blasphemous alien idols and various Lovecraftian props often mixing his artworks in improbable photographic portraits of Weird and Fantasy authors. His works are widespread through the Internet, and sometimes printed in magazines and books around the world, from The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales to the book cover for the Japanese edition of Lin Carter's Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos, or the frontispiece for the forthcoming Aklonomicon.

Andrea's Official Site

Lovecraft At the Mountains of Madness © Andrea Bonazzi

Lovecraft and felis © Andrea Bonazzi

. Dave Carson .

Dave Carson has been involved in horror and Lovecraftian art since the 1970's. Dave began by contributing to various small press publications such as Fantasy Tales and the British Fantasy Society newsletters. His first professionally published work was in The Encyclopedia of Horror (Octopus Books, UK, 1981). Since that time he has contributed artwork to Shadows Over Innsmouth, Goth Chic: A Connoisseur's Guide to Dark Culture (Plexus, UK), Book of Dark Wisdom magazine, Fighting Fantasy: Beneath Nightmare Castle (Puffin Books, UK), Horrors Beyond, Horrors Beyond II (Elder Signs Press, USA), Fear magazine, the Dark Voices series from Pan Books, The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales (Robinson, UK), White Dwarf magazine, The Giant Book of Fantasy and The Supernatural (Parragon, UK). Dave also conceived, co-edited (with Stephen Jones) and illustrated H.P. Lovecraft's Book of Horror (Barnes & Noble, USA), and many Chaosium publications. His artwork was also featured in the documentary film The Eldritch Influence: The Life, Vision and Phenomena of H.P. Lovecraft (Hermetic Productions, USA), A Lovecraft Retrospective: Artists Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft (Millipede Press, USA), Digital Horror Painting Workshop (Ilex, UK). Past clients include Weirdbook Press, Dagon Press, Blitz Verlag, Interzone magazine, Palladium Books, Robinson Books, Nyctalops magazine, James Van Hise, Necronomicon Press, Chaosium, Games Workshop, Pan Books, Dead Letter Press , Whispers magazine, Octopus Books, Elder Signs Press, Fantasy Tales magazine, Kadath magazine, Rosemary Pardoe's Ghosts & Scholars magazine, Dave Reeder's Skeleton Crew magazine and others.

Dave Carson on facebook

. Rob Corless .

Rob Corless' art often treads into the dark and surreal, often with a nod of humour. His comics can be seen regularly in Strange Aeons Magazine and Danger Daze (Aus). As well as comics, Rob also creates fine art and recently had his first solo exhibition of his paintings at WWA Gallery in Culver City.

Rob's blog

Rob's Official Site

Demon City © Rob Corless

Lovecraft © Rob Corless

. Lee Davis .

Lee Davis is a writer and illustrator living in Virginia. His work appears regularly in Strange Aeons Magazine. He's illustrated the children's book If I Were Your Monster by horror novelist, Scott Nicholson and is currently finishing a second. He created the program and T-shirt design for an international science conference held in Massachusetts and in the past has done artwork for heavy metal albums and T-shirts. He's written a script for a comic being illustrated by Cameron Kirk, and is preparing to make some of his novels and serial fiction available. On the side he enjoys the Appalachian outdoors, watching too many horror movies and recording horrible music ... and pretending to be someone else writing about himself.

Lee's Official Site

Gaki © Lee Davis

. Mike Dubisch .

Artist Mike Dubisch is the creator of the Lovecraftian space fantasy graphic novel "Weirdling." Best known in the role playing game industry for his designs in "RIfts," "Beyond the Supernatural," "Dungeons & Dragons" and "Star Wars," Mike is a graduate of The School of Visual Arts, where he met his wife Carolyn Watson Dubisch. Together they co-create the award winning web comic "The People That Melt In The Rain." Mike's latest creation is a series of Cthulhu Mythos paintings and limited edition books titled collectively "The Black Velvet Necronomicon."

Mike's blog

Mike's art for sale

Mike on facebook

Mike on deviantART

. Nick Gucker.

Nick "The Hat" Gucker is an avid fan of horror in its various and sundry forms with a distinct interest in the weird and Lovecraftian elements of the genre. He has been involved with comics, story boarding, painting and illustrating with a focus on these peculiar and particular interests since graduating from The Art Institute of Seattle. Nick is a collector of Masonic and Shriner odds and ends and various bits and pieces of things that have passed this mortal coil. He also has a strange fascination with Godzilla and his foes, both reptilian and alien in origin. On a smaller scale, he is also an entomophile who does not discriminate between those of the six and eight legged variety. He is approximately 17% of the way to becoming a crazy cat lady.

In 2009 Nick joined Crypticon, Seattle's premier horror convention as a board member and primary artist and designer of all print media, posters and apparel.

In 2010 Nick became one of the many tentacled appendages of Strange Aeons magazine, working as the sole staff artist. Recent collaborations include illustrations for a comic and a short story with Los Angeles-based writer and raconteur Cody Goodfellow, artwork for a story by Sci-Fi mythos writer David Conyers for Perilous Press and various commission pieces.

Nick's Official Site

Cthulhu in Pursuit © Nick Gucker

Shoggoth Evolution © Nick Gucker

. Ann S Koi .

In a dark hovel hid in the foetid swamps of the south Puget Sound, Ann S Koi communicates with cantankerous space elves who coerce her into painting their freaky dark gods. To vent the resultant stress, she experiments unethically on the childhood memories of others.

Ann's Paintings

Ann on deviantART

Ann on Etsy

Truthseeker © Ann S Koi

Albtraums © Ann S Koi

. Lee Moyer .

Lee's work has been featured in many Spectrum annuals, Communication Arts and Design Graphics magazines, The Society of Illustrators, D'Artiste, the National Zoo and the Smithsonian Institution, and countless other books, magazines and compendia…

His film work can be found in Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown, the poster for Call of Cthulhu, the covers for two boxed sets of Laurel & Hardy films from 20th Century Fox, and the Spiderman 2 Special Edition DVD.

His theatre work includes world premiere posters for Stephen Sondheim, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stephen King, John Mellencamp, and Andre 3000.

He's illustrated authors as diverse as HP Lovecraft, Raymond Chandler, Philip Jose Farmer, Iain M. Banks, and George RR Martin.

His work in games includes Art Directing for Electronic Arts and Digital Addiction, as well as freelance work for Sony, Upper Deck, and Hasbro. He was one of the two lead concept designers for 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons.

He lives in Portland, Oregon with his dog Lego. He writes for the stage and plays a mean game of Scrabble when he can.

Lee's Official Site

Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown © Wyrd

Call of Cthulhu © HPLHS

. Andrew Ozkenel .

Andrew Ozkenel is a graduate of the Tom Savini Special Make-Up Effects Program and an avid H.P. Lovecraft fan (he has even portrayed him on screen in Tomb With a View). In film, Andrew has taken the role of actor, writer, prop maker, special effects make-up artist, set designer, sculptor and more. His art tends to lean toward the Lovecraftian, but he is also a devote student of Cryptozoology and the Paranormal. Andrew's latest project is Re-Animated States of America: The Magazine, which will showcase both his artistic and writing abilities.

Andrew's Official Site

Andrew on deviantART


Sea Beast © 2010 Andrew Ozkenel

. Marc Simonetti .

Marc Simonetti has been a professional artist for five years now, working in various fields including cover art, concept art for video games and films, and matte paintings for TV advertisements.

Marc's Official Site

. Tom Sullivan .

Tom Sullivan is the special effects legend behind Sam Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy and creator of the Book of the Dead. Mostly self taught, Tom's first significant illustration assignment was creating artwork and maquettes (small sculptures of monsters) for Bill Baetz's The Cry of Cthulhu, an unrealized Lovecraftian film project from the 70's. He has since done illustrations for Chaosium, for their game The Call of Cthulhu, and written and published a four part comic book called: Tom Sullivan's Books of the Dead: Devilhead. Lately, Tom has started acting in films, such as The Dread, The Absence of Light, A Sheer Agenda, Buddy Be Bop Vs. The Living Dead and Morrow Road.

Tom's Official Site

. Jason Thompson .

Jason Thompson (b.1974) discovered Lovecraft early in life before going on to work for 10 years as a manga editor for Viz Media. His likes Japanese comics (as seen in his book "Manga: The Complete Guide"), roleplaying games (as seen in "King of RPGs," his graphic novel series drawn by Victor Hao), and the works of Lovecraft and Dunsany (as seen in his comic adaptation of "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath," which was later adapted into a movie by Guerrilla Productions). He is currently working on a horror novel and a bunch of new comics.

Jason's Official Site

. Pete Von Sholly .

Pete Von Sholly's has done storyboards (and/or design) for over 100 feature films include Mars Attacks!, Disney's James and the Giant Peach, Darkman, The Mask, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, The Blob, Nightmare on Elm Street III and IV, The Waterdance, The Green Mile, Click, The Mist and more. (Don't forget THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION!) Pete has written and illustrated three quasi-fumetti graphic novels: : Morbid, Morbid Volume 2 and Extremely Weird Stories, (Dark Horse Comics) and three satiric magazines for TwoMorrows, Crazy Hip Groovy Go Go Way Out Monsters (2 issues) and Comic Book Nerd which parodies comics fans and fanzines. Self-published titles from Von Shollywood Press include Sergeanstein and his Maraudin' Monsters, Dinosaur Circus and Here Doesn't Come the Flying F-ck. His latest graphic novel, SPINECRAWLER, is forthcoming from IDW.

Pete's Official Site

Pete's blog

. Michael Zigerlig .

Michael Zigerlig visited the school of art in Berne, Switzerland where he grew up and still lives. He quit his apprentice as a graphic designer and mainly focused on Chinese martial arts the last ten years. At the age of 26 he recovered his passion for drawing and artwork and illustrated "The Call of Cthulhu" from H.P. Lovecraft.

A very huge influence to him were the works of H.R. Giger and the Brian Yuzna | Stuart Gordon H.P. Lovecraft movies such as Re-Animator, Dagon or From Beyond. At the moment he's writing and doing sketches for the new Brian Yuzna movie project "H.R. Giger's Necronomicon 3D" which is a collaborative project between Yuzna, Giger and Zigerlig.

Michael's Official Site