Finally I add highlights digitally with the brush tool. With some illustrations that can be a lot of work. This one didn’t involve much, mainly just catch lights in the eyes and the key around the cat’s neck.

Frank Belknap Long is the gentleman on the far right. After admitting that I hadn’t read much Smith yesterday I knew I’d have to do the same about Long so I reserved a collection of his stories from the library at the same time I reserved the Smith book. Long is creator of the Hounds of Tindalos and Chaugnar Faugn.

For this illustration I did a “cosmic” background separately – all digitally – and then pasted it as another layer behind the Seven. It was a lot of fun doing the background. I wanted something that emphasized the cosmic in cosmic horror. I initially thought of doing some tentacled horror but decided that that might overpower the humans in front of it. So I chose a Jack Kirbyesque set of planets. Well, Kirbyesque in my mind anyway.

The second figure from the right is Clark Ashton Smith. He’s another author whose work I’ve only read a little of. I read The Charnel God while I was doing illustrations for Ghouls but I don’t remember the specifics of any other Smith stories I might have read. So in between writing this sentence and the previous one I went over to the Seattle Library website and requested Return of the Sorcerer, the only Smith book that they have listed.

Next I create a fourth layer, also set to multiply, in which I add solid grays of varying percentages. Mostly I use grays to give depth and interest to the image. I rarely use digital grays for shadows. If all goes well I’ve already put in all my shadows before the image went into the computer.

Standing next to Lovecraft, third from the right is August Derleth. Poor August is figure of both praise and scorn among Lovecraft fans. He’s praised because he’s the guy who collected Lovecraft’s stories and published them as books. He could be credited with rescuing Lovecraft’s work from the obscurity. He’s scorned for, among other things, writing posthumous “collaborations” with Lovecraft – collaborations that often were no more than a few sentences or an idea from Lovecraft’s notes that Derleth spun off into a full fledged story. This might have been forgivable if Derleth’s stories were really good and expanded on Lovecraft’s ideas but that’s not considered to be the case. Derleth took Lovecraft’s organically created world of alien entities and dimensions and codified it into a Mythos where a pantheon of evil gods struggled with benevolent ones.

I’ve read a few of Derleth’s stories. They were entertaining in a pulp action way. I don’t begrudge him his version of the Mythos. I’m just less interested in it than other, more freeform and bizarre ones.

The third layer, that is the non-Gaussian blurred one, has the contrast increased so I get good solid blacks.

In the middle we have Lovecraft himself. At this point I’m pretty sure I’ve read all his stories including the ones that were revisions of other people’s stories. Except for the occasional excerpt I haven’t read any of his letters. He wrote far more letters (perhaps as many as 100 thousand, often many pages long) than he wrote stories and a good chunk of his correspondence has been collected and is in print.

For me, a big part of the appeal of the Cthulhu Mythos, is its collaborative nature. Anybody can write a story and add to it. That started with Lovecraft. He added his creations to the stories he revised. He referred to other’s creations in his stories. His friends referred to his creations in theirs. The Mythos is inconsistent and contradictory. Fans argue over which stories should be considered canon. While many Mythos stories are under copyright the Mythos itself is in public domain.

Once the image has been scanned into Photoshop and I’ve cleaned up any major problems I copy the first layer and duplicate it twice. The additional layers are both set to multiply so that they combine and compliment the layers below them. I use the Gaussian blur filter (set to five points) on one layer. That smooths out the image a little bit and makes the grey tones blend together a bit better.

The third author from the left is Robert E. Howard. Howard is most known for having created Conan the Barbarian but he also wrote some Mythos stories (and apparently maintained a very steady correspondence with Lovecraft). I assume that I’ve read some of them but I’m honestly not sure. If I did they were published singly in anthologies with other author’s stories. I’ve only intentionally read Howard in the last few years and that was an El Borak and a few Conan collections. I mostly enjoyed what I read but not so much that I felt I had to seek out more immediately.

With the sketch approved I finished up the pre-digital work by putting down blacks with ink and more varied shading with my trusty B pencils. And then I scanned it into Photoshop.

Adam, my editor and publisher, had made suggestions for objects that the authors could be holding that relate to their stories. Arthur Machen holds a Black Seal.

Robert Bloch, standing to the right of Machen, holds a skull and has a towel from the Bates Motel over his shoulder. Bloch is probably most known for having written the novel Psycho. I’ve never read Psycho. I tend to prefer my horror fiction to revolve around supernatural menaces rather than the horrors human beings inflict on each other.

Bloch wrote a number of “Cthulhu Mythos” stories, mostly at the beginning of his career. Given the number of horror anthologies I’ve consumed I’ve probably read more than one of them but the one that has stuck in my memory is Notebook Found in an Deserted House. I think I first read it in one of those old Alfred Hitchcock anthologies but a quick googling isn’t turning up any confirmation.

Bloch also wrote Strange Eons, a Mythos novel (if I remember correctly) about Nylarlathotep bringing about the end of the world. I didn’t care much for it when I read it as a teenager. Maybe if I read it now my opinion would be different.