Celephais

I know, I promised to update the blog frequently. The thing is, that I worked mainly on the website for the last few months and don't have any recent stuff to show, yet. Well, I might as well pick up some stuff from the beginning of this year as long as nothing new comes up! :)

You might wonder about the header image of this blog. The flying ship is part of a bigger image with the title "Celephais":

The image is inspired by a short Story of H.P. Lovecraft with the same title. H.P. Lovecraft is better known for his classic horror stories, especially the famous Cthulhu Mythos, but he also wrote some very interesting "dream journeys". One of them tells the story of a run-down nobleman who escapes into a dreamworld and finally gets lost in it.

''In a dream Kuranes saw the city in the valley, and the seacost beyond, and the snowy peak overlooking the sea, and the gaily painted galleys that sail out of the harbour towards distant regions where the sea meets the sky"

-from "Celephais" by H.P. Lovecraft

The story really fuled my imagination. When I read it, I saw the scenes in vivid color before me.

"For several days they glided undulatingly over the water, till finally they came to the horizon, where the sea meets the sky. Here the galley paused not at all, but floated easily in the blue of the sky among fleecy clouds tinted with rose. And far beneath the keel Kuranes could see strange lands and rivers and cities of surpassing beauty, spread indolently in the sunshine which seemed never to lessen or disappear. At lenght Athib told him that their journey was near it's end, and that they would soon enter the harbour of Serennian, the pink marble city of the clouds, which is built on that ethereal coast where the west wind flows into the sky."

-from "Celephais" by H.P. Lovecraft

Well, galleons that float to a city in the sky - I just had to paint that! In fact, the story features a lot of other sceneries that are visually attractive, like the city of the red-roofed pagodas or the desert plateau of Leng. I even started to make plans to illustrate the whole story. Here is a sketch of the story climax where the protagonist is fetched up by the knights of Celephais:



I don't know if I will really dig deeper into this project but I can definitely recommend this story to anyone who likes poetic fantasy tales.