How to Illustrate Clive Barker: A 'Gutted' Special

Today on greydogtales, we do indeed discover how to illustrate Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell and a host of other great writers. We kid you not. It’s another exclusive in our Weird Art theme, with ace artist and designer Luke Spooner of Carrion House, and Crystal Lake Publishing.

We’re a hard-nosed, demanding pack, so when we heard about the new anthology Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories from Crystal Lake, we asked not what we could do for them, but what they could do for us. Instead of delivering a kick up the backside, those nice folk responded most generously with a whole folder of artwork for the book, some of which hadn’t yet been revealed. Which was very cool of them.

And in our usual over-excited way, we went a step further. We bothered the guy behind all the interior illustrations, Luke Spooner, and he went out of his way at short notice to talk to us about his work on the anthology. Sometimes you could almost like people, couldn’t you?

The book comes out this week, and here’s the line-up:

Stephanie M. Wytovich — “The Morning After Was Filled with Bone”
Brian Kirk — “Picking Splinters from a Sex Slave”
Lisa Mannetti — “Arbeit Macht Frei”
Neil Gaiman — “The Problem of Susan”
Christopher Coake — “Dominion”
Mercedes M. Yardley — “Water Thy Bones”
Paul Tremblay — “A Haunted House is a Wheel Upon Which Some Are Broken”
Damien Angelica Walters — “On the Other Side of the Door, Everything Changes”
Richard Thomas — “Repent”
Clive Barker — “Coming to Grief”
John F.D. Taff — “Cards for His Spokes, Coins for His Fare”
Amanda Gowin — “Cellar’s Dog”
Kevin Lucia — “When We All Meet at the Ofrenda”
Maria Alexander — “Hey, Little Sister”
Josh Malerman — “The One You Live With”
Ramsey Campbell — “The Place of Revelation”

The cover art by Caitlin Hackett is striking in itself, but the stories inside also have black and white art tailored to the content. Neat.

So in this feature we show off a dozen of those pieces to excite and intrigue you, accompanied by our interview with Luke. Because we’d like to give Luke and Carrion House the more detailed greydogtales treatment at some point, we’re just here for Gutted today.

13101226_10153946909892702_1720290938_n — luke spooner

greydog: Luke, hi. How did you come to be involved in the Gutted project. On your radar, or a chance encounter?

luke: I have a great working relationship with the author and editor Richard Thomas and it was through him that I got to work with Crystal Lake Publishing, on a collection of stories by Richard called Tribulations. Joe Mynhardt, the man behind Crystal Lake, must have approved of the illustrations I put together for that collection because a month or so later he asked whether I would be available for another; an anthology consisting of many interesting authors and narrative styles which turned out to be Gutted.

He later told me that the likes of Gaiman and Barker were involved which intrigued, and impressed me in equal measure as publishers often use those sorts of big names as lures when trying to recruit people to work on their projects. I also found out that one of the editors on the project was Doug Murano, another past collaborator of mine, so I instantly felt at home as well as confident in the project as a whole.

greydog: It’s a great line-up of writers, with some very established names. Is a job a job, or do you feel more pressured when illustrating people like Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell and Clive Barker?

luke: It will come as no surprise to learn that there is pressure when illustrating for the likes of the names listed above but the weight of that pressure is not due to the renown they carry with them. The most difficult part is trying to ignore all of the other connotations of style and preconceived notions that are triggered in your mind as an artist when you hear those particular names.

The struggle to ignore every visual associated with them is tough but necessary; as an illustrator it is my role to be a translator of the words in each story, I have to help them find a visual form and the reason I am approached is for the style that my work has attached to it. Therefore – if I start illustrating a Gaiman story and constantly try to replicate the style of another illustrator whom I know has worked alongside his work before me to great effect then I am in effect making my involvement redundant, reducing my chance of yielding an impressive, original interpretation.

greydog: This isn’t just a couple of pictures to break up the text, is it? You’ve produced a whole series of really striking images to match the stories. Challenging, or did the images flow easily?

luke: I read all of the stories sequentially, made extensive notes as I went, then sat down to work on the illustrations, also in sequence, allowing each to inform the next as I feel it helps to gives a sense of a series in the end result as opposed to a random assortment of images that are tentatively linked to one another through the fact they all happen to be in black and white.

The stories are all by separate authors and are therefore already disconnected to some degree, however they are in this particular collection for a reason – whether it happens to be tone, theme, character etc. By making a conscious effort to bind them to each other through their respective illustrations in style I am (hopefully) helping to enforce that feeling of a collection and reduce the distance between them.

greydog: Unfair question – any stories which stood out for you, which really hit the spot when it comes to your own tastes in weird and horror?

luke: ‘Coming To Grief’ by Clive Barker was a surprising story as it was not what I expected given his back catalogue of work. I am perhaps not as well versed as some in his history and style but I am aware of how he is viewed, respected and received by a lot of people. Due to this I was ready for something quite different to the story contained in Gutted and it served to better my understanding of him as an author which I think is the mark of any good story.

greydog: We’re showing virtually all the Gutted illustrations as part of this feature. Do you have a favourite of your own?

luke: The Place Of Revelation was the only illustration, out of the entire series, that manifested instantaneously once the pencil hit the paper. The story lent itself very well to being visualised, both in language and in content/theme so my job as illustrator was pretty much just to sit back and let it happen. It is also that only illustration that I feel could have acted as a cover illustration to the collection as well as the illustration for its’ respective story had the cover not already been decided; it shows small, fragile humanity staring at something far greater and more incomprehensible than itself or anything it has ever experienced before and that thing is staring right back. It shows a closeness to the dark that I think is present in all of the stories contained within this anthology.

greydog: And finally, would you be up for a full feature on greydogtales, showing the full range of your work, when we get our act together at this end?

luke: Of course. I shall soon be uploading all sorts of new work to my main portfolio and supporting sites so there’ll be lots to talk about.