They're alive!

I enjoy dropping in over at The Horror Blog for the high quality of the spirited conversation about all things horrorific, which manages to be impassioned and informed without becoming precious, self-possessed or mean-spirited. (Memo to self: learn from example.) The blog is also a great clubhouse for some of my favorite bloggers and creative people on the Internet. Lately, Ive also been digging the illustrations of Horror Blog head honcho, Steven.

I find horror and monster illustrations to be a real mixed bag. For every piece that transcends the whole photocopy thing that too many "artists" strive for there are hundreds of subpar attempts that aren't much better than tracing. Suitably impressed with what I've seen, I reached out to Steven to ask him about his work, his influences and what drives him to set pen to paper.

A: I've been digging the illustrations on your blog lately. I draw a little and have since I was young but I don't have the patience to follow through, to reduce a complex idea or a feeling about a subject to its clean essentials, the way your illustrations do. Have you been at this long?

S: My mom paints, so when I was a baby she created a series of flash cards for me. I wish I still had them, they were lovely. That was probably directly responsible for my preference for visualcommunication over writing. After that came comics, the earliest I can remember being issues of Pink Panther and Spider-Man that my parents bought in one of those plastic packs you'd get at department stores. I think they bought them for me for a car trip. If they had known then what it would lead to I imagine they would have chosen something different. Everyone in my life was very supportive and this only encouraged me to doodle constantly.

A: I suppose it's essential to an artistic sensibility to get worked up about things at an early age, to be sent out on the hunt for information or inspiration. And before the Internet, you literally had to go out there, like a detective, and crack the spines of books.

S: From numerous trips to the library and used bookstores I eventually compiled a list of my favourite comic and animation artists, most of whom have been influential in one way or another, though you wouldn't know it to see my work. They include Charles Schulz, Bill Mauldin, Harold Gray, Jack Kirby, Al Hirschfeld, Walt Kelly, Owen Fitzgerald, my cousin Jim, Paul Conrad, Joe Kubert, John Buscema, Hugo Pratt, Osamu Tezuka, David Mazzucchelli, Alex Toth, Milton Caniff, Noel Sickles, Milt Kahl, Ward Kimball, Jim Tyer, Rod Scribner, Harry Lucey, Jack Cole, Peter Arno, Hank Ketchum and too many others to list.

A: Hell of a list.

S: Unfortunately, this interest in researching the history of comics and animation led to less drawing time, which has also resulted in a decline in my draftsmanship over the years, to the point that I feel like I'm starting over. Luckily, I'm already employed in a very creative occupation, so I don't feel a desperate need to express myself adequately in yet another medium and can instead focus on having some fun and repeating the same mistakes I made when I was five.

A: You recently announced a sort of semi-retirement from blogging...

S: Part of the reason I've cut back on my blogging is to get back into it. I'm still at a point where my grasp of anatomy is very weak and I have to resort to photo reference. I hate it. So I try and cover it up by drawing once from reference to get a feel and then give it a second shot; simplifying shapes, creating interesting curves, and exaggerating the pose. Hopefully one day I'll be less of a slave to reference.

A: What an interesting thing to say, "a slave to reference." Who doesn't feel like that, whether writing or drawing? What I like about your drawing is that it achieves the same goal that I aim for in writing... to take something existing, something known - a movie, a moment in a movie, a character in that movie - something known, familiar, over-familiar and surround it with, for want of a better phrase, an interpretive corona that goes beyond the original thing, that elevates the subject without condescension. I always hated the drawings in Midnight Marquee that painstakingly recreated a classic horror scene but stopped there, with simple recreation. I used to think, "We already had the picture, who do we need this?" I don't feel that way about your work, which feels to me transcendent. While so much horror art is like looking at an embalmed corpse (and not in the good way), your stuff is alive, it breathes.

S: I've never felt very comfortable with written communication, preferring visuals, so writing for the blog is very difficult for me. I'm really envious of other people and their ability to knock this shit out. I think my discomfort with writing results in my having less of a distinctive "interpretive corona" than most. I'm glad it comes through in my drawing.

A: I love the love of women that I get from your illustrations of Suzanne Pleshette from THE BIRDS or Lynn Lowry from THEY CAME FROM WITHIN, and of course your Bride of Frankenstein.

S: The Bride of Frankenstein drawing is based on my girlfriend, not Elsa Lanchester. It's the first time I feel I "got" her in a drawing, and it's the only one so far I'm really happy with.