Saturday, October 26, 2013

Narciso Espiritu - What Lives Under My Bed


"SHIVER"
My chihuahua, Pong, retreats to under the bed to hide from thunder and lightning.

Friday, October 25, 2013

Childhood Fears: Success


"Winner"
16"x20"
acrylic, ink, gouache on board



"Winner" detail

Scott Murphy - What Terrified You as a Child?


A couple days behind here, but I had a little extra time today to slip this in. 

I was scared of lots of things as a child...again with the overactive imagination.
But, one thing that really scarred me as a kid was the movie E.T. I'm really not even sure why, but ever since I was shown the movie at a very young age it sparked an intense fear of the character and aliens in general. My grandfather also had a weird leathery stuffed version of the character that sat on the couch and would just stare at me. I've still never seen the movie again to this day.

Kristina Carroll - What Terrified You as a Child

Run
18 x 24 Charcoal

Growing up, nearly every place I lived in had multiple floors and several of them required me to climb or descend stairs in order to get to and from my room either on a second floor or a basement. Even my ancient grade school had several floors with trembling creaking wooden stairs that I had to use to get to the bathrooms next to the creepy boiler room. While the worst stairs were always any basement stairs (obviously), pretty much any stairs seemed to trigger every scary story I had ever heard up to that point. Going down them was like a slow decent into inevitable horror- I knew something was going to be waiting down at the bottom.  (Especially when my bedroom was in the basement and I would go to bed after watching Unsolved Mysteries. ) Going up stairs, I was always being chased. Even now I occasionally have to feed the compulsion to run up stairs instead of walking.

Narciso Espiritu - What Terrified You as a Child?


(Okay, so I am supa-supa-late, but I'm starting! And I'm going out of order, but I don't necessarily think that matters here. I can say that I have finished or nearly finished all the challenges, and I will be posting them daily until Halloween. Since there's a total of six challenges, I think this will work out quite well.)

"BITES"
This Childhood Fear is based on the the first time I met a dog when I was maybe five or six-years old. This is all contrary to my behavior towards dogs now, because I love canines. When you're still learning about the world, though, it isn't best when the first dog you meet is a German Shepherd watchdog at a warehouse. No no. I was terrified of being bit by a dog, and the rest of the dog came with the dread of being attacked, so it was a long time before I was comfortable with dogs. 

Since then, I've romped and rolled with all kinds of breeds. I have many favorites, but I have a soft-spot for shorties (terriers, Corgis, Bostons, Pugs, etc.) and Rottweilers. Weird combo, I know.

.n

Jeffrey Alan Love - What Terrified You As A Child?

When I was little my parents made me watch "The Wizard of Oz" with them.  When the flying monkeys showed up I ran screaming from the room and hid under a bed for hours.  I have never watched "The Wizard of Oz" since...

Jensine Eckwall- What Terrified You as a Child?


As a kid, I had a lot of anxiety surrounding talking on the phone.  I have no idea what I was so scared of (being misinterpreted? Talking to the wrong person?  Not being able to see their face?) but I really dreaded it, for a long time.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Jorge Mascarenhas - What Terrified You as a Child?

Albert Einstein. Seriously! Every summer my parents would take us to this beach house in the small town of Ubatuba in Brazil. The room where me and my sister would stay had this hideous Albert Einstein painting. It was painted with mostly whites, his eyes where completely black and had the creepiest vibe. I refused to go into that room when the painting was hanging, so I always had my dad remove it. A handful of things scared me as a kid, but none would compare to the degree of terror I felt around that painting.

Daniel Nyari - What Terrified You As A Child?


Growing up in Austria, the Holiday tradition of Krampus was still heavily practiced, although the Austrian government actively restricted it deeming it inappropriate for children. For those unfamiliar, Krampus is a beast-like creature that comes around during the Holiday season (sometimes accompanied by Saint Nicholas), visits the homes of naughty children, beats and takes them away. The tradition is often accompanied by something called Krampuslauf in which celebrants, fueled by alcohol run around town scaring civilians. Parents would often allow these miscreants in homes of children and give them a "good scare in the name of fun". The idea of a home invasion terrified me and when it happened, it would always result in me trying to hide, being chased around and eventually hit by chains and bundles of birch branches. 

Scott Brundage- What Terrified You As A Child?

I read a lot of books about dinosaurs growing up. One, thinking it was being helpful in showing young kids the scale of how large a dinosaur was, used a house next to a silhouette of a T Rex to show it's size. Unfortunately, that particular house looked just like my parent's house. And the T Rex's face was level with the window that would have been my bedroom.

So... I was scared whenever my back was to my window for a good couple years. 

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Ricardo Lopez Ortiz- What Terrified You as A Child





As a child there was nothing scarier to me than the "Chupacabras", every night for about a period of 2 years there was "Chupacabra" sightings almost every other night. During that time, I would go to bed thinking that when I woke I'd find my dogs dead in our yard, with their blood sucked dry. 

Tim Paul - What Terrified You as A Child

I was terrified of taking a bath at night, alone. I would spend all of Saturday watching horror movie double features. And when it was time to take a bath, my active imagination would kick in. I was convinced that if I ran the water, it would make to much noise, and some horrible monster, like a werewolf would come and kill me. So I would sit there naked in the empty tub. Eventually I would come downstairs pretending I had taken a bath.


Dawn Carlos - What Terrified You As A Child?




So when I was a kid, I had many many fears, but the one I recall having the most experiences with, was I was terrified of getting left somewhere. My mom spent a lot of time watching the Lifetime network and she'd see all these shows about abductions and kidnappings and drama-ey stuff like that, the usual stuff lifetime original movies usually covered and I was usually around playing with my toys when she'd watch those shows. I was also one of those kids who couldnt watch that one scene from Bambi and the scene in Dumbo, where he gets cradled by his mom through the cage. There have been a couple instances in my childhood where Ive experienced such fear, namely, getting lost and crying all over the Luxor Casino in Las Vegas, because I couldn't find my siblings right away, an airport one where I very very very briefly lost my mom in the crowd and this elevator scene...

I was in an elevator with my parents, being my unaware space-case headed little self, at my Aunt's house in Foster City,CA where I had spent every other summer growing up. We were headed somewhere, since we were riding the elevator down to the parking lot. Elevator goes DING! we arrive at the parking lot, and I dont look up enough in time to see the elevator doors closing. When I do however, I realise my parents are on the other side and i was still  behind these giant metal doors and it was terrifying...when I was a kid that was. In hindsight, it was all pretty silly, considering there was only 1 parking lot floor, and i could have easily just pressed "P" to go down again. But it scared the crap out of me at that age, and I felt like illustrating this, rather than some spiky toothed alien snake thing, like the one from many 80's and 90's horror movies, coming out of the toilet bowl, which is why for a time, I refused to flush toilets. Until I realized that my mom being mad was more terrifying than all the terrifying aliens combined...

                 

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Carly Janine Mazur - What Terrified You as a Child?

8"x10" oil and acrylic on board

Like Bryndon, I had no irrational fears growing up other than the existential mystery of death after losing relatives and pets at a young age. Now that life is a little more complicated than it was in childhood, I have more complex fears that every adult has. My greatest fear is losing hope; losing that spark I work hard to maintain, giving into stress and anxiety and just plain giving up.

Monday, October 21, 2013

Anna Christenson- What Terrified You As a Child


When I was in elementary school they would have these fire safety education classes that the fire department would present.  Usually with some fairly safe but mildly intimating movie about making sure your fire detectors worked.  For some reason, they'd always give me nightmares for a few nights afterwards- where I was afraid my room would catch on fire, and then would be filled with water as it was put out, and I'd drown.

So- a somewhat dramatized version of those dreams.

Bryndon Everett - What Terrified you as a child




I am not trying to make myself sound all cool, but I really wasn't terrified of anything as a kid.
Not heights, not the dark, not death, monsters, ghosts, nothing. I was a little bit of an oddity, I suppose.
which works out fairly well, as this week has been SO hectic fr me that I really didn't have much time to create anything anyhow.
BUT I have sketched up this quickie, of the mighty Cthulhu respectfully dressed, acting as my official representative, to both literally, and figuratively bow out of this weeks challenge.
Please forgive me, I intend to come back with something worthwile next week.

My Favorite Horror Story - Daniel Nyari


My favorite horror story is David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me - the story [SPOLER ALERT] of High School girl Laura Palmer and her quick descent into hell via the incestuous relationship with her father. To cope with it she co-opts a language of cruelty and sexual intimidation, bent on destroying her innocence before the figurative monster of her consition can. She is the lost "Alice in Terror-Land", pinballing between abject despair, femme-fatale tough talk, canny seductiveness, and straight-up being a monster. What makes this story so tragic is that the film documents the last days before her eventual death and our collective knowledge that Laura's fate is certain eliminates any classical suspense, leaving us only with sadness. The story becomes a memorialization of a tragedy confirmed. A true nightmare.



Sunday, October 20, 2013

2013 Challenge #5 and #6 "Illustrate a Phobia." and "Halloween Story"

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."

-H.P. LOVECRAFT


Art for Challenge # 4 begins going up Monday the  21st.  The subject is: "What Terrified you as a Child?"

Challenge #5 (for the week of October 28th) is: "Illustrate a Phobia".

Challenge #6 (for Halloween on October 31st) is: "Illustrate a Halloween memory or write your own scary story to illustrate".

Guest Art!

We've had some great responses to some of our challenges on Twitter so I decided we should take a post to highlight a few of them.


Taryn Cozzy has a creepy recurring nightmare of plunging into an abyss. You can follow Taryn at @appelope



 Rebekah Bennington's answer for the What Lives Under Your Bed challenge is "What if we are the monsters?" Follow Rebekah at  @rebekieb