Sketchy Thoughts | July 1, 2026

July 8, 2026

This week's Sketchy Thoughts draws from the classic house of horrors. Creepshow posters, zombie hands, and creeping shadows. We push into uncomfortable territory with ships, poltergeists, and a blooming juxtaposition of darkness and beauty. It takes us to the cliffs edge.

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Sketchy Thoughts | July 1, 2026
Documenting the week of June 24-30

On occasion we all feel a touch of something lurking over our shoulder. Perhaps the urge for something that is just out of reach. A phantom limb or secret stalker lurking in the shadows. 99% of the time it is our imagination at work. Turning the darkness into a playground of thought. This week the featured works deal in a theme that dances around this idea, like a candlelight flickering in a modest breeze.

Daily Art | Month June 24-30

This week I dipped into some classic horror themed pieces for inspiration. While looking over the artwork for the Creepshow movie poster, the art style resonated with me and called out for me to work on the window creeper.

It was really fun to extend this into some of my hatching work. Something I’ve been trying to do more of. Any opportunity to practice this is a welcomed offering. Although the original inspiration came from the Creepshow image, I did not want to copy it exactly so I to liberty from it to improvise a bit as I dug further into the remaining elements.

The more began to consider what direction could be next the more I really wanted to tackle the ship on the shelf. I’ve drawn a ship in the past and it was a lot of fun and quite difficult. After the last ship attempt was completed I remember feeling it was quite lucky to get through it. So I decided to go ahead and tackle the toy ship on the shelf. Perhaps a confidence booster or a way to continue pushing myself into uncomfortable territory.

After tackling the ship, my next thought was the empty spot on the wall. This could be a highlight of the piece. The blank in the previous image serves as a highlight or light source. I thought that that looked fine and it felt complete, but decided to go for something appearing inside the room. A companion for what is happening outside the window. After all, this is only our imagination, right? So enters an additional creeper or some type of poltergeist. Weather it be imagination of the child or perhaps a physical incarnation, well, that is for the viewer to decide.

Same image with the pen in a different location.

Continuing the theme of classic horror, I found an image from “Screams From The Past” horror comic and really wanted to work on a zombie hand it featured reaching out to grab a person. It seemed like it had a lot of texture and something that interested me was the possibility for starting with it and building in the background later.

We interrupt this program to introduce an item that was drawn for a friend. Last year they had mentioned that they were interested in purchasing something of mine, but I was not fully committed to letting it go. When they ordered a copy of my art book this week, I decided to include a reimagined version of the original that they liked. Hopefully it arrived safely and they found, and they enjoyed the surprise.

It was pretty exciting to look at these two pieces side by side and see the growth and change that has happened over the last seven months.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled program! I wanted something that would sit in contrast to the zombie hand. The thought that having a nice group of flowers would be a good juxtaposition for this work. Was not fully committed to what would happen in the background just yet, but I knew that I wanted some type of darkness and beauty in collaboration on the peace so I started here.

Took my time and worked on the shading for the flowers and the landscape. It took quite a long time and kept me busy. The end result made me very happy with it.

We will have to pick the rest of this story up in the next edition. We have been lucky that most of these have landed at a pace of finished work in time for the blog. For now, we have to wait to see what happens next week. Just like the classic theater serials, I’m leaving you with a cliffhanger!

Will our creeping grabber bloom into a luscious lily? Perhaps our Wilting Wisteria will graduate to a Corpse Flower? Tune in next week to find out! Until then…

Side by side of the “Electric Hand”

Original - Nov 12, 2025 / Reimagined - June 28, 2026

Referenced poster and comic art for this weeks inspirations. Unfortunately, I am having trouble nailing down the cover artist for the Forbidden Horror Comics cover. If anyone can help me with that, I will gladly update this section once confirmed.

Here is a link to the Grimmcore Studios page.