H.P. Lovecraft Art
The world of art and artists inspired by HP Lovecraft is at least as big as the world of Lovecraftian fiction and horror. Lovecraft’s stories are dotted with visions of the horrible, monsters that defy description, and cults of people driven insane by what they’ve witnessed. Naturally, visual artists who come across Lovecraft’s writing and the stories of the Cthulhu Mythos are going to be interested in this bizarre alternate universe, this mythology of the macabre.
HP Lovecraft art pops up all over the place, from heavy metal record covers and inserts to nightmarish designs on tattoo shop walls. Some HP Lovecraft art is more functional, like the props designed by fans to go along with their Call of Cthulhu RPG adventures.
Artist renderings of Cthulhu, the clown jester of the Mythos, range from the Lovecraftian (like this image, which includes only those elements described by Lovecraft and the Mythos, including a Kraken-like appearance) to the more comical (like this crochet Cthulhu and everything in between. Cthulhu and other Lovecraft monsters pop up in blacklight posters and other wall adornments all the time.
What Is HP Lovecraft Art?
The Lovecraftian artist most familiar to the average person is HR Giger. He’s won Academy Awards for his work on movies like Alien and his dark horror-fantasy style is easy to pick out of a crowd. Giger’s art may be Lovecraftian at times. It is often dark, pessimistic, and highly-detailed, and lends itself easily to the Lovecraftian label. But HR Giger didn’t create all that many specifically Lovecraft-influenced pieces.
Real HP Lovecraft art draws its entire inspiration from Cthulhu Mythos texts and other HP Lovecraft writings. For the most part, HP Lovecraft art has the same tenets as Lovecraftian fiction and horror. Humanity’s role in the cosmos is diminished, horrific situations and terrible monsters fill the page, and classic Cthulhu Mythos characters run the show.
Here’s a quick look at a few of the most famous Lovecraft artists.
Paul Carrick
Paul Carrick’s work is familiar to anyone who has picked up anything related to the Cthulhu Mythos in the last few decades. He drew the cover art for Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu, Mind Venture’s Don’t Look Back: Terror is Never Far Behind, and Pagan Publishing’s The Unspeakable Oath, just to name a few. His website is a great place to get an eyeful of Lovecraft-inspired art, particularly the statuettes of Cthulhu and other Mythos figures.
Allen Koszowski
Allen Koszowski’s work isn’t entirely Lovecraftian, but he’s a good example of a working artist who occasionally draws inspiration from the Mythos. Koszowski’s Lovecraft art consists mainly of black-and-white pen and ink drawings. Check out this gallery of his Cthulhu artwork, gathered in one place from his main site.
Michael Whelan
Whelan’s done work for all sorts of horror, fantasy, and sci-fi writers including Stephen King, HP Lovecraft, and Robert Heinlein. Lovecraft fans know his work best as the covers for several Lovecraft editions, including Lovecraft’s Nightmare A which was split up and used for a number of different Lovecraft book covers.
More Examples of HP Lovecraft Art Online
Temple of Dagon Featured Artists
Some of the artists featured here are well known, like Paul Carrick’s seven illustration taken directly from his website. A group of seventeen oil paintings done by an artist identifying himself as simply Gwabryel is particularly surprising, different from most Lovecraftian art but sharing the same sense of horror and dread.
The Gallery of the Nether Real
Featuring exhibits by Lovecraftian artists John Coulthart, Jim Doughty, Dave Carson, Mikkel Petersen and others is hosted here in separate galleries for easy viewing. Artists at this gallery work in all media, from oil to ink to pencil.
Centipede Press HP Lovecraft Art
This is probably the most complete archive of the very best art inspired by HP Lovecraft. Released by Centipede Press, A Lovecraft Retrospective is a 400 page collection of color and black & white illustration and art inspired by Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. Centipede Press says the art in this retrospective comes from “eighty years” of Lovecraft art, including art from pulps like Weird Tales, paperback Lovecraft book covers from the 1960s and 1970s, movies, fan art, and anywhere else you can think of.
Artists in Centipede Press’ A Lovecraft Retrospective include Michael Whelan,H.R. Giger, Lee Brown Coye, Virgil Finlay, Gahan Wilson, J.K. Potter, John Coulthart, and Ian Miller among others. This is a beautiful archive that sells for around $400 brand-new, though you can find used editions for sale at much lower prices if you aren’t concerned with buying a brand-new book. The book appeared in several fancy editions, including a deluxe edition bound in leather and signed by 50 of the most famous Lovecraftian artists.
Only 1,200 copies of the standard edition of A Lovecraft Retrospective were printed, and according to Centipede Press, as of this writing only 30 copies remain unsold.
HP Lovecraft’s Favorite Artists
Those who draw, paint, and sculpt with their head in the clouds of the Cthulhu Mythos should check out Lovecraft’s own favorite artists for some idea of the man’s artistic vision. Lovecraft’s correspondence was so legendarily thorough, we know his specific opinions on different artists, including ones he really respected.
Virgil Finlay
Finlay did lots of work for Weird Tales, the magazine where Lovecraft got his start. Lovecraft said of Finlay that he was “most unusual & brilliant.” Lovecraft was certain that in “future years . . . he will become an artist of distinction,” and kept some of Finlay’s art in his own writing space. Finlay won several awards, including a Best Professional Artist Hugo given retroactively for his work in 1946.
Goya
Lovecraft wrote, of Goya, that he “ . . . went even farther than Hogarth in depicting human bestiality.” Goya’s paintings are famously raw, brutal, even violent, depicting humanity at its best and at its worst. Goya’s style made him a natural Lovecraftian, though Goya himself died long before Lovecraft was born.
Nicholas Roerich
A surprising favorite of Lovecraft’s are the sometimes bright, sometimes optimistic primitive paintings and sketches of Nicholas Roerich. Check out his 1924 “Burning of Darkness” for an idea of the kind of thing Lovecraft liked about Roerich’s art: the texture of the darkness, the isolation of the human figures. Much of Roerich’s work seems out of line with Lovecraftian themes, but in his spiritual paintings, Roerich embodied many of the features of Lovecraftian horror.
As long as artists look to writers for inspiration, Lovecraftian art will have a place in the visual arts. Lovecraft’s scope is wide, the depth of his mythology practically unknowable, and Lovecraft’s writings and the Cthulhu Mythos give visual artists a never-ending territory of inspiration to draw from. years.