As you know, dear listeners, greydogtales is all about the strange, from the mysterious world of longdogs and lurchers to the often less surprising world of weird art and fiction. In the run up to the Winter Solstice, we will have something for everyone (except extremely timid cat owners, perhaps).
Weird art will feature heavily in the next month or two, though fear not, lurchers and writers will not be forgotten. Descending to the “I” that is J Linseed Grant for a moment, I am delighted to open today with this highly appropriate illustration by Robyn Molyneaux. Robyn is a talented young Australian artist, and I hope to have more of her work to display in due course:
Having a planned programme is always a disastrous move, but over the next six or seven weeks we (that’s the entire greydogtales staff, including Django) hope to have illustrated main features on the following artists/creators, in a rather random order:
John Coulthart. John has been producing the most amazingly detailed illustrative work for some years, including Lovecraftian pieces such as those in his book, the redesigned The Haunter of the Dark. He tells us that he will soon be working on an illustrated edition of The House on the Borderland.
Raphael Ordonez. Raphael is both a writer and an artist with whom we came into contact over his interest in William Hope Hodgson. He says that some of his fiction is influenced by Hodgson, and his artistic work includes both unsettling paintings and naturalistic images.
M Wayne Miller. Wayne is well known in weird fiction circles for the striking illustrations which adorn many novels and collections, including his cover art for Willie Meikle, interviewed by greydogtales a couple of weeks ago.
Mansfield Dark, also known as Richard and Daniel Mansfield, is a UK team which produces disturbing short films and images, including some fascinating shadow puppetry and silhouette animation. Recent work includes a version of the M R James story Count Magnus.
Sebastian Cabrol. This talented Argentinian artist and illustrator is already familiar to greydogtales followers for his work illustrating editions of The Night Land and The House on the Borderland. We also have a commentary from Diego Arandojo, comic writer, film-maker and editor, on working with Sebastian.
We will be keeping it varied with more longdog posts, such as a feature on Lurcher SOS Sighthound Rescue, a centre in the South (we can’t all be perfect) of England, to show the sort of work which is needed. If you didn’t know, every one of our own dogs has been a rescue dog since 1982. See, we were young once!
And amongst other goodies, we hope to have an interview with the author James Stoddard, mentioned in the Hodgson tribute month as the author of The Night Land: A Story Retold, but also the author of fantasy books such as The High House and The False House.
Finally, a snippet which is too good to miss, given its title. You might remember a post a month or so ago, Game of Groans and Clanking Chains, which introduced some ghostly Yorkshire dogs.
Game of Groans & Clanking Chains
This August Nick Stone, a photographer from Norfolk, started a Public Archaeology Project called Black Dog Tales: Mapping the Grim and Other Stories. His website includes a wealth of information about the various incarnations of demon and spirit dogs, and is highly recommended. Nick and others write about many aspects of the grim, and new material is still being added – and welcomed, we understand. His site can be found here:
Thank you, and stay tuned…
Ooh, and all art is copyright by the artist, do remember, chaps!