J. J. Grandville
A few weeks back I found this image and was curious who made it. Having found out it was by J.J Grandville, I've since discovered many other strange and surreal works by him. According to one website he is apparently known as "the Father of Surrealism". I guess that would make Hieronymus Bosch the grandfather? Anyway, to find out more about this French caricaturist from the 1800's, click here.

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2 Smaller pictures can be seen here. Additional images can be seen here here here and here.

Many more links to work by this artist can be found at BibliOdyssey.

Thanks to William A. Davison at
www.recordism.com for naming this artist for me.

Peter Klucik





















One of the most interesting artists I've discovered this year, Klucik has made a wide selection of imagery exploring many strange beasts. His unpublished illustrations for J.R.R Tolkien's "The Hobbit" are filled with incredible details of this strange fantasy world and all the unusual monsters and weird characters who inhabit it.

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Single Drawing
Single Drawing

Shen Shaomin
I recently stumbled across this amazing artist of bizarre imaginary monster skeletons. Although there isn't a real website dedicated to this artist, which is a real shame, I have been able to find a few pages that have some of his art on display.

This page seems to have the best selection of his work.

This page has links to some video footage taken of Shaomin's sculptures. The camera moves around the works so you get a great perspective on what these actually look like.

Suzanne from Wurzeltod has taken some good pictures of a collection of Shaomin's work that was on display.

Single Picture
Single Picture

Bentolman
Many vastly intricate drawings of Lovecraftian environments and large surreal portraits. Be sure to check out this collaborative drawing series titled "Novus Natura". Really insanely detailed pen drawings of strange worlds.

Matt Furie
From things that look like this, to situations like this and this.
To the large landscape view that can be seen here, you never know what to expect in a Furie painting. Furie's art to me seems like a mixture of The Muppet Show, Paper Rodeo and Max Ernst, a very weird combination.

Interview with Furie can be read here

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More Furie art can be seen here.

You can purchase a Furie zine here.

Judson Huss
"Judson Huss was born in Durham, North Carolina in 1942. He later studied at various art and design schools, before he grew dissatisfied with the 'modernist' direction of his instruction and traveled to Europe. It was there that he discovered the Old Masters and later, the contemporary fantastic artists, such as Ernst Fuchs and the French Visionaries. It was this visual epipheny that propelled Huss in the fantastique direction he continues pursue. This artist has evolved into a virtuoso of masterful abilites and vibrant imaginationings. As filmmaker Terry Gilliam remarked, "Judson Huss is a new Old Master."

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The Mojave Triptych - oil on panel, 1982.

Marcelo Bordese





















"I do not construct the beings that inhabit in my paintings, I destroy them. Their delicious and final pulp is the dish served in a banquet where I am at the same time , creator, executioner, chef, and fellow diner.
Against nature (contranatura) is humor and disfigurement. The creatures of this fauna suffer the unconfortableness of their experimental anatomies, and with them, for them andf in them, the saltpeter of their existential displeasure. Involuntary grotesque, they find in the metamorphosis, their only hope. They are nobody's anatomy lesson. They experience the absurd, the silence and the complexity; in fact, that particular dirt that means be alive.
The smart fatality of the modifications, with it own rules and/or private scatology, ejects these creatures towards a situation of withdrawing humor, humor used like a shelter, not as an exit. Humor but not comically; humor that is the voluptuocity of contempt. That provokes not laugh, but grimace and break down." quote taken from here.

There's many incredibly disturbing creatures in this gallery such as the martian like thing posted above with rooster corpses spraying out of the eye sockets.


You'll find varous artworks by Bordese here here and here.
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Ray Harryhausen
The most interesting monsters of the 20th century by far were being animated on the screen by Ray Harryhausen. His amazing skills in the stop motion animation technique brought to life dozens of bizarre creatures. Something many people may not be aware of is the amazing conceptual artwork Ray has made to conceptualize the visions he brought to the screen.

This incredible fan site dedicated to the work of Harryhausen has compiled a great collection of the conceptual artwork made for each of his films. Click on the following film titles to see the conceptual artwork associated with each one.

The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad - The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad - Sinbad and the Eye Of The Tiger - Jason And The Argonauts - Clash Of The Titans - Mysterious Island - Earth Vs The Flying Saucer - First Men In The Moon - 20 Million Miles To Earth - The Valley Of The Gwangi - It Came From Beneath The Sea - The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms - One Million Years B.C.

There's also a great section dedicated to all the creatures in Harryhausen's films. Check it out here.

Click on the name of any creature in this list and a pop up window showing a short animated clip of that creature will appear, pretty cool.

You can purchase prints of Harryhausen's artwork at this site.

There is a small gallery of Harryhausen art over here.

And there is apparently a book that was published recently that focuses on the "sketches, key drawings, storyboards, and preliminary clay models" side of Harryhausen's work.