The Curse of the Lost Print of the Ruby Skull

When I was getting prints made up a while ago I didn't put all of them out for sale immediately and I just realized this one has not been listed! I loved doing this painting -- I did it twice, as I had a commission for it once as well -- and I am happy to be able to offer a print now.

In addition to loving '70s craft books I also love pulp adventure stories from the first half of the 20th century. You know, the kind of things with titles like Spicy Mystery Stories - here's a site with a selection of them, though some of the art may be not-suitable-for-all-audiences, if you know what I mean. And also, many are public domain, so here is one of my faves:



There's also a thick, heavy and somewhat affordable book out called the Big Book of Adventure Stories that collects some choice tales from the past century. Fine literature is it not, necessarily, but it's a bloody good time. Sheena, Queen of the Jungle; Tarzan; The Scarlet Pimpernel; Conan the Barbarian and many more are in its pages.

I tend to read the turn of the century stories by people like H. Rider Haggard, which are admittedly antiquated by today's standards, but display a kind of creativity and curiosity about unexplored regions of the world that we just don't have today, since you can pretty much see the whole thing on Google Maps.

Finally, I love terrible movies, like Night of the Sorcerers, which is also not-for-all-audiences, but includes vampire women running around in slow motion in leopard skin bikinis. I still harbor some vague notion of making such an outfit for myself for Halloween. :P

I will probably do some more things inspired by this kind of crazy stuff, but I like it best when the ladies are in charge, and not being menaced by goons.

Octopus with a ray gun

It's a bit of a change of pace from the autumnal/Halloween theme, but I started this awhile ago and finished it while watching Doctor Who (The Androids of Tara). I didn't really have a good idea of what an old fashioned diving bell should look like, but as luck would have it I bought some old juvenalia adventure books this summer from the 1930s or 1940s and in one of them -- "Don Sturdy in the Land of Volcanoes" -- there is a frontispiece with a variety of strange pulp adventure novel drawings: a blimp, a volcano, a shark and a diving bell, and I was able to get a quick idea of what a suit might look like.

Of course, once you have an underwater volcano and are fraught with danger at every turn, such as a giant octopus, you need something to battle it, like a trident. Imagine our hero's surprise then when the octopus reveals that it wields an underwater raygun! Well I think I have all my adventure novel cliches covered with this one. I also included a turtle, as a tribute to the two turtles that we have as adopted pets.

For more about juvenalia from the early 20th century I recommend the Violet Books web site. Although the site no longer sells books, there are lots of essays and images that I've found to be a valuable resource for something like 10 years now. When there was a catalog listed I would print it out and use it as a wish list when I went to used book stores.