FalcignoArt: Howard's Nightmare

Heyy-ooooo... how ya' doing everybody?

Couldn't help it, been listening to Howard Stern all day and it's stuck in my head.


I'm just getting back into the swing of things after having been at Wonderfest in Louisville, KY all weekend with my good friends. Back to reality. And trust me, all my experiences at Wonderfest with my friends aren't the way things are in reality, it's always very wild and crazy. But it was a damn good time indeed. The week and a half leading up to Wonderfest, I spent most evenings painting the new FalcignoArt piece, 'Howard's Nightmare'. It's a 1/1 scale resin wall or vertical mounted piece.

Here it is in sculptor Mike Falcigno's own words:

" Really, I was a bit nervous to drop this on everyone because it's NOT a straight up version of any one HPL creature. But, considering his writings always talk about beings too strange to be described by humans...it seemed safe to just create my own sculptural amalgamation of his various themes. For the record, my little back-story-( in a highly shortened version) goes like this: the screaming visage we are seeing here is a wayward traveler, and outsider that gets courted by a young lady (nubile of course!) to her shoreline mansion...only to be used as an unwilling sacrifice by the woman and her fellow townsfolk (an evil religious sect, as all small towns in New England secretly have!). So what you see here is the traveler (or what's left of him) after being strapped down into an elaborate ceremonial restraint apparatus. He gets tipped forward slightly, hanging over some sacred runes carved on the floor of the house, while the cult members chant and conjure a Lovecraftian beast from the "other side". The beast of course manifests itself into our dimension THROUGH the human host... quite literally I may add! "

I really enjoy most anything Lovecraftian, as they say, or inspired my H.P. Lovecraft's stories. Coupled with my friendship with Mike, I was happy to paint this great piece. It was molded and cast by Scott Whitworth, and a fantastic job he did, because cleanup was very quick which was nice, because I didn't have a lot of time to finish it up in time for Mike to display at the Wonderfest show.

Looking at the piece now after it's finished, I would've liked to add more color variations to the head dress, if you will. But at the time I was working on it, I felt like going in with too many contrasting elements to accent that area would detract from that terrible yawning visage, and that's where the action is at! Choosing to paint the teeth dark is odd, I know, but I did paint them to be light at first, and they didn't look right to me. They stood out far too much. Besides, I convinced myself that this otherworldly creature was bustin' through, and absorbing the hosts fluids, replacing it's own; which to me should be dark blueish black, like the ink of a cephalopod.

I applaud Mike for taking on this bizarre and outre subject matter. He did an excellent job designing and sculpting this one, and to see more of Mike's work, see his website at: falcignoart.com