It may have been delayed by a week but the Coulthart calendar for 2016 arrives earlier in the year than some of its predecessors. A few months ago I had no idea what I was going to do for a calendar this year; I had a lot of work in progress, and more scheduled for the autumn, so creating all-new artwork wasn’t the best idea. Then on the plane back from Providence I thought, “Oh, yeah…Lovecraft…” So here’s a selection of Lovecraftian artwork old and new. The most recent pieces are from the front and back cover of the NecronomiCon convention booklet; among the older works there are two paintings which weren’t intended to be illustrative of The Weird but can be if you give them suitable labels, hence The Yellow King for February (see the pages at larger size here). The capitals on the cover are from the wonderful collaged set designed by Roman Cieslewicz, and which can be found in Dover’s Bizarre and Ornamental Alphabets.
I’ve mentioned the problem caused by CafePress cancelling the line of portrait-oriented calendar templates that I’d been using for several years. The calendar templates at Zazzle didn’t quite match the old CafePress ones but with some fine-tuning of the options I’ve got as close as I could. There’s a slight disadvantage in the way the dates are overlaid on the artwork but then the artwork is already pierced by a hole at the top so this seems negligible. Zazzle’s template improves on CafePress by offering a range of coloured pages and coloured wire-binding so I’ve gone for a none-more-black interior. Zazzle also lets you design a back cover which means this is the first calendar where I’ve been able to provide credits and dates for all the pictures. Buyers also have the option of choosing their own regional holidays; CafePress is resolutely US-centric with all its products. The purchase page is here.
For the moment all the previous calendars, including the popular Psychedelic Alice ones, are unavailable although I’ll be moving them to Zazzle when I have a spare moment. Watch this space.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Lovecraft archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Of cards and calendars