Edgar Allan Poe – Ultima Thule (Illustration for “Das Spukschloss” (The Haunted Palace) by Malte S. Sembten), 2012
Fassung 4
“March 22.- The darkness had materially increased, relieved only by the glare of the water thrown back from the white curtain before us. Many gigantic and pallidly white birds flew continuously now from beyond the veil, and their scream was the eternal Tekeli-li! as they retreated from our vision. Hereupon Nu-Nu stirred in the bottom of the boat; but upon touching him, we found his spirit departed. And now we rushed into the embraces of the cataract, where a chasm threw itself open to receive us. But there arose in our pathway a shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men. And the hue of the skin of the figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow.”
Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838)
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“Im Gegensatz zu den modernen Zeugen war Poe aus seinem Todeserlebnis nicht angstfrei und sinnerfüllt hervorgegangen. Dazu genügte ein Blick auf seine fotographischen Konterfeis der letzten Jahre, bis hin zu jener Daguerreotypie Edwin H. Manchesters vom 9. November 1848, die Sarah Helen Whitman das ›Ultima Thule‹-Portrait‹ taufte — ›als sei er eben noch dem äußersten Weltenrand des Schreckens entrissen worden‹, wie sie es beschrieb – und mit vier Zeilen seines Gedichtes ›Dreamland‹ aus dem Jahre 1844 versah:
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule —
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime
Out of SPACE — out of TIME.”
Malte S. Sembten, “Das Spukschloss” (The Haunted Palace)
Detail
Die drawing is an illustration for a short story collection by Malte S. Sembten to be published in 2013. My starting pont was the “Ultima Thule” Portrait of Poe, his novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and of course Malte’s short stories that includes references to both.
The image is a black ink drawing, drawn in negative, scanned and inverted with Photoshop, to get the white lines on black background. Because you don’t really get the picture while you are drawing, I scanned it several times to look at the interim results – fortunately, because only because of that the third version was preserved, which is maybe better than the finished one, though it is not quite what I intended, less light and “antarctic”.
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- Fassung 1 (invertiert)
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- Fassung 2 (invertiert)
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- Fassung 3 (invertiert)
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- Fassung 4 (fertige Zeichnung, nicht invertiert)
Illustration for the Short Story “Das Sandmädchen” (The Sandgirl) by Malte S. Sembten
Detail
The drawing is the first finished illustration for a story collection by Malte S. Sembten, to be published in 2013. There will be round about a dozen illustrations, one for each story.
I have worked with Malte now and then during the last 20 years, but this is the first time I have the pleasure to illustrate his stories.
Illustrations for Die Herren der Zeit (The Lords of Time) by Helmut W. Pesch, 2000
The novel, published in paperback by Bastei Lübbe, is the sequel to The Rings of Power – not quite so close to the Lord of the Rings as its predecessor (in the second part there’s a lot of time travelling going on), but still with substantial and, as in The Rings of Power, deliberately used Tolkien reminiscences.
The original drawings are missing, therefore I scanned the book pages.
Illustrations for “The Alchemy of the Throat” and “The Dripping of Sundered Wineskins” by Brian Hodge, 1999
The book Von Heiligen und Mördern, a collection of two loosely connected novellettes by Brian Hodge, was edited by Frank Festa as part of his Edition Metzengerstein and published by Blitz. Initially they were published within Poppy Z. Brite’s anthologies Love in Vain 1 (1994) und 2 (1995). The first novelette, “The Alchemy of the Throat” (Die Alchemie der Stimme), was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, the second,”The Dripping of Sundered Wineskins” (Von Heiligen und Mördern), for the World Fantasy Award.
I love both stories deeply, to work with them and to create these 13 drawings was pure joy.
The book cover was designed by Malte S. Sembten, based on two black-and-white, Celtic inspired initials that I painted with acrylic.
Cover: © Blitz
Illustrations for 1000 unerklärliche Phänomene (1000 Unexplainable Phenomenons) by Kai Hövelmann, 1998
The juvenile non-fiction book was published in 1999 by Loewe, illustrated with 49 interior drawings. A Czech translation was published in 2001 by Nava, a Slovenian translation in 2004 by Mladinska knjiga. As you can see, the book displayed a wide range of themes: from aliens to Tut Ankh Amun’s curse, from mysteriously vanished airplanes to the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation…
Illustrations for a John Sinclair Anniversary Paperback Edition, Part 4 (Vol. 17–21), 1998/99
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- Bd. 17/1, Der Würfel des Unheils
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- Bd. 18/1, Die Mörder-Blumen
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- Bd. 19/3, Flucht in die Schädelwelt
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- Bd. 19/4, Im Land des Vampirs
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- Bd. 20/1, Die fliegenden Särge
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- Bd. 20/3, Das Elexier des Teufels
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- Bd. 20/4, Die Nacht der flammenden Augen
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- Bd. 20/5, Der Gigant von Atlantis
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- Bd. 20/8, Die Teufelsuhr
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- Bd. 21/1, Myxins Entführung
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- Bd. 21/2, Wer mit Gedanken töten kann
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- Bd. 21/3, Der Spiegel-Dämon
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- Bd. 21/5, Medusas Rache
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- Bd. 21/6, Der Zombie-Bus
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- Bd. 21/8, Die Bestien aus dem Geister-Sumpf
Vol. 18/5, Mr. Mondos Monster
A selection of 16 out of 50 illustrations for the John Sinclair anniversary paperbacks vol. 17–21. The edition was was chronological reprint of the original horror pulp series by Jason Dark (Helmut Rellergerd). Each book included 8 novels, the interior illustrations replaced the original color covers but were created independantly from their predecessors.
Altogether I illustrated 21 volumes with 169 drawings; more images in part 1, 2 und 3.
Overview of all John Sinclair books at gruselromane.de.
Illustrations for a John Sinclair Anniversary Paperback Edition, Part 3 (Vol. 12–16), 1997
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- Bd. 12/3, Die Geisterhand
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- Bd. 3/4, Todeszone London
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- Bd. 13/1, Kino des Schreckens
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- Bd. 13/2, Der Hexer von Paris
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- Bd. 13/5, Knochensaat
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- Bd. 14/4, Das Buch der grausamen Träume
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- Bd. 14/5, Tigerfrauen greifen an
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- Bd. 14/6, Schrei, wenn dich die Schatten fressen
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- Bd. 14/7, Die Werwolf-Insel
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- Bd. 15/4 Die Höllenkutsche
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- Bd. 16/3, Das letzte Duell
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- Bd. 15/7, Die Bestie von Soho
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- Bd. 15/8, Hügel der Gehenkten
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- Bd. 16/5, Das Eisgefängnis
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- Bd. 13/6, Die Horror-Cops
Bd. 14/2, Augen des Grauens
A selection of 16 out of 32 illustrations for the John Sinclair anniversary paperbacks, vol. 12–16. The edition was chronological reprint of the original horror pulp series by Jason Dark (Helmut Rellergerd). Each book included 8 novels, the interior illustrations replaced the original color covers but were not supposed to imitate them in any way.
Altogether I illustrated 21 volumes with 169 drawings; more images in part 1, 2 und 4.
Overview of all John Sinclair books at gruselromane.de.
Illustrations for Die Ringe der Macht (The Rings of Power) by Helmut W. Pesch & Horst von Allwörden, 1997
The novel was published in paperback by Bastei Lübbe paperback in 1997, and it is exactly what its title suggests: A deep bow to Tolkien.When I read the first 100 pages of of the manuscript back then I was slightly irritated by by the extent of references to The Fellowship of the Ring, but once I had accepted the whole thing as a deliberate pastiche, and since the novel later on develops in quite another direction, my irritation abated. The authors know exactly what they do, especially Helmut W. Pesch, whose doctoral dissertation “Fantasy – Theory and History of a Literary Genre” from 1981 is the German standard reference book on the subject. Since I had read the study years ago, I was all the more glad when Bastei commissioned the illustrations for the novel.
The sequel Die Herren der Zeit (The Lords of Time) was published in 2000.
