Cracked

Fissures drawn along the crusted earth appear…

mere scratches on God’s own guarded ground.

Yet behind this benign facade so unrevealing,

bares a secret...

beneath the cryptic seam’s concealing:

Within the chasm cracked and yawning…

vile, slinking things are spawning.

Fiends that mark a lonely ambler’s stumbling stride…

to crack and crush his hollow bones,

then swallow him alive.

Cracked © 2010 Tom Hicke.

Written a while back, this piece brings to mind a wonderful and captivating poem that scared me silly as a child. I could barely stand to read it without slamming the over-sized children's book shut. If it's been a while since you dared... check out the inimitable Lewis Carrol's Jabberwocky.

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Quick Sketch_part 03

River Kobold and Slough Sprites don't usually get along.

Drawing is a dreaming awake. Pencil to paper can feel electric and ghostly like a magic lantern image only you can see until the drawing is complete. It is an intimate and strange sensation to see beings of some forgotten world crawl and writhe across your sketchbook page.

This fellow looks angry at having to sit for this sketch. Too bad.

This quickly inked goblin head [shown near actual size] was completed on vellum overlay for a student demonstration in my Pen, Brush, and Ink Illustration class this past semester.

 Fae-Men Designs © 2011 Tom Hicke.  

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Quick Sketch_part 02

Average 9 foot Cave Damon [on the right] and a particularly large and nasty Squalor [left.]

I usually get back to loose sketches to finish them more, even if they go unused for their assigned project. Recycling a sketch for another concept or finishing it could inspire something entirely different. [continued next post]

Fae-Men Designs © 2011 Tom Hicke.

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Quick Sketch_part 01

Crow Ogre standing next to a 6 foot man.

Back in school, creative compulsion didn't allow for paint drying time or procedural pauses. I found it both necessary and an easier solution to work on several paintings at once. My personal design process has an interesting correlation.  

I may cover several sketch book pages in an hour, only working as long as it takes to form a complete concept in as few lines as possible. Drawings can be put on hold at any time to quickly pursue a new idea they've inspired. Each day reaps finished work and seeds to sow for the next. [continued next post]

Fae-Men Designs © 2011 Tom Hicke.

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New Creature Skull Sketches

Two more unused rough skulls from the series.  [near actual size.]

For rough sketches, the tone and hatching combo appeals to me.

Video Game Concept Skulls © 2011 Tom Hicke.

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Swamp Thing

Watercolor works well to depict an  Elemental.

As I was growing up, Bernie Wrightson and Len Wein's Swamp Thing TM DC Comics, was an enormous influence on my work. Many comics fans comment on that when they see some of my horror sketches. I love Wrightson's art and artist's like Franklin Boothe, Jack Davis, and Roy Krenkel who influenced him greatly.

This miniature sketch of Swamp Thing was painted very loosely for an image only 1.5"x 2". Working loose, tight, large, small, with an airbrush, in oils, watercolor or whatever medium ...it's all stimulating and beautiful.  

 Two enlarged details below show some interesting and painterly suggestions from the subject at left.

A 1/2" Flat, a #5 Pointed Round and only four colors were used to paint the tiny portrait of  the Mossy Mammoth .

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