These lovingly hand-painted resin figurines are based on the nightmarish characters that populate the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch (1450 – 1516) (Hieronymous Bosch on wikipedia)

They’re sort of like action figures for grown up kids who are just a bit artsy and just a bit twisted. Incidentally you can buy these figurines and MANY others at talariaenterprises.com

I’m really torn amongst several reactions: I’m confused, a bit disgusted, more than a bit intrigued and delighted and part of me just wants a whole SHELF of these weird little dust-catchers. How does it make you feel to see bits of “high culture” — especially pretty STRANGE and obscure culture — mass manufactured into easily consumable bits? How many of these things do YOU want? Which ones?

I picked up these hand-drawn match books at an “Alternative Art Fair” a couple months ago in Ypsilanti, MI and ever since then I have regretted that I didn’t buy more. Each matchbook features a different, hand drawn “Smokin’ Zombie.”  They’re the work of the artist Sean Bieri who has a blog over here at:   The Man Who Japed.  He does LOTS of cool stuff and is a member of HATCH, a collective of artists in Hamtramck that also does lots of cool stuff that I’d like to plug but to be honest the zombie matchbooks are the only things that are really nightmare-related. The HATCH table is one that I ALWAYS hit at the Alternative Art Fair.
I’m no longer a smoker but I’ve got lots of friends who are and I think these little gems would make great things to sort of slip in their coat pockets… if I had just bought them by the HANDFUL.

This Phantom of the Opera was the first monster model I completed as an adult. It’s a styrene plastic kit which means that it’s a bit of a challenge to assemble without encountering some unwanted gaps or jutting seams. I have some dental-sized rasps to even out the pieces that stick out. I used Squadron’s “Green Putty” gap filler for the gaps and a little extra fine sand paper to make everything smooth. I primered the kit with grey sandable primer, and boy howdy, shooting on a coat of primer REALLY reveals any surface flaws so I sanded more after that first coat.

Painting this kit was a blast since I finally had the patience of an adult, not to mention the ability to get the right materials. Acrylic paints are SO much easier to work with than the goopy enamels I used as a kid. Not to mention that hard, glossy sheen of the enamels is better suited to a hotrod than to a monster model. And another aspect of adult-level patience is that I looked at the model carefully before I assembled it and determined which parts should best be painted BEFORE they were assembled (the prisoner, the underside of the Phantom’s cloak…) I tried different techniques to make different areas of the kit feel like different materials, like dry brushing for highlights and washes for contrast. I sprayed a couple coats of flat lacquer on the model once the color was pretty much how I wanted it but then I brushed on a bit of high gloss lacquer to certain areas near the jail cell to make the stone look wet.

I only had memories of assembling a model as a kid, mostly of botching up something here or there, so I was really pleased if not amazed to watch this kit almost assemble itself.

In just about every aspect, The Addams Family kicked the pants of The Munsters, except when it came to theme song. The Addams Family has an embarrassing below average theme song if for no other reason than it tries pass off “ooky” as a real word. In contrast, The Munsters has that wonderfully cool yet creepy Transylvanian surf music instrumental. I could listen to stuff like that all day long.

This model of Lily Munster is a cautionary tale. The original modeling comes from an Aurora Models set of the Munsters’ living room recast during the 90′s by Polar Lights. (Incidentally there’s a far FAR cooler model of Lily sculpted by the dearly departed Jim Fawkes of Fairbanx Models. Why, oh why didn’t I buy one of them when I had the chance?) I started with Lily. I lovingly painted and then dry brushed the creases in her dress — the trick with painting highlights on red fabric is to use scarlet because if you simply lighten the base color with white you’ll end up with pink and that’ll just make the fabric look faded. I under painted her necklace with black and touched it with silver to make it look deeply tarnished. I added individual streaks of grey and white to hair and light blue strands to her ball of yarn. I thought she was just about finished…

..Until I looked up some reference material.

Lily’s gown is very very clearly something lightly toned, my guess a baby blue satin. Red was entirely the wrong choice. What’s more, I could have remembered that if I had just stopped to think before I grabbed my brush. I could have stripped the piece and started over, or actually I could have probably just primered the thing and painted on top but in the end, I went out and bought a whole new kit. It only was around $25 or so. I would have been much more upset if it had been one of those $100 resin beauties

She’s not too big (maybe 3 or 4″) or too obtrusive so I keep her around at the corner of my shelf to remind me to double-check that color scheme BEFORE I crack out the brushes.

One of the Grim Gnome’s hobbies is to assemble and paint models of classic horror figures. This one is a little obscure and so deserves a little commentary. Her name is Angel Fink and she was designed by Big Daddy Roth. Roth was one of the key figures in the hot rod movement and he came up with the Rat Fink characters. Angel Fink, I gather, mixed up the special blend of fuel for the hot rods.

I just thought she was a rather cool, stylized “witch.” I made a little cauldron for her out of Super-Sculpy and sprayed a little of that expanding foam stuff inside the cauldron so it looks like she’s presiding over a boiling batch of goo. To contrast the red of her gown, I painted the goo a nice, sickeningly fluorescent green.

OK one more illustration from my daughter. This one really blows me away. It’s a depiction of the moment of death, the moment when someone literally “gives up the ghost.” Her ghost here looks a lot like the ghost I posted in Gallery #1 but the context of it coming out of somebody’s wide open mouth makes it amazing. At least to me. I’m her father, of course.

Around the time when my daughter drew these sketches, we had a neighbor who was an artist. He saved scraps of art supplies for my daughter to play with. He claimed to see spirits and his contention was that my daughter also could see “them.” Of course when I asked her about this now she says “I have no idea what he was talking about.”

OK another one of my brilliant daughter’s illustrations. This one is obviously someone who is so scared their hair is standing on end.

Maybe. That’s pretty long hair.

Maybe it’s like Medusa, some one who we’re supposed to be afraid of. Either way, I thought it deserved its own post.

Why deny it? – the favoritism is OBVIOUS in my selections for the first entries to the Night Gallery. (Click on the thumbnails above to see larger versions. They’re EVEN BETTER than the small versions) These illustrations were done by my daughter several years ago on a rainy afternoon. Her artistic impulses needed just a little prodding so I suggested that she draw pictures of my Aurora monster models. Without so much as a second thought she sketched wonderful renditions of a human skeleton, Frankenstein’s monster, the Creature from the Black lagoon and many, many others. (She also sketched a “portrait” of her brother that consisted of a Playstation and a set of controllers.)

Where ever does she get her wit and talent?