OK, so aside from Dinosaurs, I have a bit of thing for Gothic Horror stories. No, no, no, not Gothic Romance… Never that. Gothic Horror! Turn of the century kind of stuff (the LAST century, not this one, geez). OK, so now that we’re talking about the same thing, I read a lot of this stuff. Short stories usually. And uh, well… I read them mostly because I like drawing monsters. Ahem, anyway, I just finished reading The Jewel of the Seven Stars by Bram Stoker… and it was pretty darn good.

Since most of this stuff isn’t a full on novel, I thought it’d be a lot of fun to try making cover illustrations for them instead of illustrations to fit in with the text (like I’ve been doing with Dracula). So far I like it a lot cause you can sum up the story in one image. Ah-HA! But there’s a catch!! You gotta make sure you don’t give too much away! Maybe TEASE the audience… make them WANT to read it…

Anyhow, here’s how the process went…

Background colour.

Add the red.

Now the black!

Three colours and you’re done? HA! This is the first time I’ve ever done a three-colour print. It could use a little tweaking here and there, but I think it turned out pretty great. Take a look!

Cardboard? HA!

And last I gave it a shot on cardboard. I don’t know what it is, but I love printing on cardboard. Oh baby. But I can only do it when I get to the end of a pad of paper. Ooohh, there’s always a catch.

Well hello! This week I’ve got a real jawbreaker of a knuckle-ball for you folks… Check out this print I made!

It turns out that 90lb computer paper is AWESOME for block printing!

Oooooooh, it’s a Mosasur! If you haven’t been listening, I kinda love these horrible, terrifying monsters. Being of course a marine reptile RATHER than a Dinosaur, they were coolest thing on the block riiiight before everything died. You know, 65 million years ago or what-have-you.

Anyhow, I thought I’d try something a little different. All my other dino block prints are just the bones, so this time I thought I’d try an outline of what the old boy might look like (strictly hearsay of course) and then carve out the part that we know for sure, the bones. Turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself. I was a little worried about the details. But then again I made this with the intention of putting it on a t-shirt, so we’ll see how that goes.

The next two are on construction paper. Just remember, if you ever grow up to be an artist, construction paper, white glue, and the like are just as useful now as they were when you were in kindergarten. And brush your teeth, don’t forget about that, either.

If it wasn't for the fact that construction paper will fade to gray after 10 minutes of light exposure, it would be pretty sweet, too.

I messed around a bit with the orientation of it, and I think the yellow one was a lot closer. But this a BIG lino block. This sucker barely fits on an 8 1/2 x 11. Construction paper is bigger than that though. Yessss.

So since the last time I mentioned the Mosasaur on here, I’ve learned something EVEN MORE RIDICULOUS about it, and you can see it pretty well in this print (the black one more than the others). The Mosasaur actually had a second jaw on the roof of it’s mouth that moved INDEPENDENTLY from the top and bottom rows of teeth. It was smaller and more set back towards the throat than the other sets of teeath and it’s purpose was to clamp down on prey and hold it in place as it opened it’s mouth wider to swallow it’s prey. Soooo, what it comes down to is, if the Mosasaur bites you once, just once, you’re through. You’re eaten. You have no hope of getting away because it has an extra freaking jaw, full of backward facing teeth that hold you down (slippery little fish that you are) while it gets a better grip with it’s BIGGER teeth.

Oh, wow.

WEIRD SIDENOTE: I was just listening to my favourite Cryptozoology podcast, THE CRYPTID FACTOR (If you’ve never listened to it, you really should… the episodes are posted here. One episode is pretty good. Two is charming. Three and you’re a loyal, loyal fan. Just keeps getting funnier), and they were talking about a new theory that the Mosasaur STILL EXISTS off the coast of New Zealand. Uhhhhh… Kinda weird since it’s pretty much my favourite dino-type fellow, but also my absolute LAST choice for something I’d want to exist at the same time as. My own personal skepticism in this case being that if man was EVER able to successfully cross a body of water, it was because there weren’t any Mosasaurs around to eat them. Apparently there’s a chance that this is a much smaller off-shoot of it’s massive ancestors and is possibly warm blooded, which does make it much more likely to have survived all this time (warm blood being the reason early whales were able to escape from their greatest predators into colder, arctic waters and therefore survive until today).

I’m gonna look into this.

SO! There I was Friday afternoon… hours away from a gallery opening (my first one! …awwww, he’s growing up) and needing some kind of a business card… so what do I do? Shoot! I made me some business cards! Check ‘em out, go on! Go on!

Classy little suckers, aren’t they? Website on the inside, the death pose on the outside…

Is that coreycanvas thing in the corner really necessary?

How did I do it, you ask? Well I’ll tell you!

I had to cut down some 8.5 x 11 card stock, score it along the back, fold it… carve a lino block with my website… here’s where it gets tricky…

The next step was to wreck two of them cause a stencil I had of the death pose dino from a while back really, really didn’t work. So at the very last minute I carved a new dino out of a lino block (another failed Dracula illustration put to good use).

Long story short, I stole the idea of a lino block business card from my dear brother (credit where credit is due). But I put a pretty severe Corey twist on it, if you know what I mean.

Not bad for three hours of work. I made exactly 50. The coolest part is that I can always carve another block or two and add some more information for future business carding.

Oh goodness, here we have the third of my Dracula illustrations. Perhaps I should mention again how fantastic this book really is… It’s fantastic.

Right now I’m reading another story by Bram Stoker, “The Jewel of the Seven Stars.” Oh man, when he gets going, that man can really spin a yarn, if you know what I mean…

So I’ve been hearing a lot about Dinosaurs lately… Which is something because I’ve always got my ears open for anything to do with our dear departed friends, the Dinosaurs, and I’ve been hearing more than usual. There’s a lot to cover here, so I’m gonna make this a two-part post.

Well for one thing, they’re always discovering new Dinosaurs here and there, and that’s pretty awesome… but my old pal Chad sent me this link to a National Geographic article the other day which JUST happened to coincide with a show I watched on the National Geographic channel about these weirdo death pits from the Jurassic period. They contained a lot of “Guanlong” fossils, an ancestor of the T-Rex…

Which brings me to my point this week. Right AFTER the show about the death pits was a show about the strange developments in Dinosaur anatomy just before their extinction. Dinosaurs were diversifying so much at that time that certain parts of their bodies were becoming seemingly useless according to the imaginations of archaeologists today. For example, the tiny arms on the Tyrannosaurus Rex. What could they possibly do with those things?

What they apparently came up with was that a T-Rex used it’s tiny arms during mating to “tickle” it’s mate.

In 24 years, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Thanks, National Geographic.

Here’s a picture of a T-Rex…

I somehow doubt a Tyrannosaurus is ticklish, but hey, what do I know? I just draw pictures.

More dinos next week!