Pickman's Apprentice: Paul Komoda vs Nick Gucker
Pickman's Apprentice is a quick drawing competition. Artists have 90 minutes in which to plan and execute an illustration based on a Lovecraftian beastie and a location. The audience will pick the winner and the pieces will be silent auctioned for charity.
Paul Komoda is a sculptor, illustrator, and designer inspired by a lifelong obsession with monsters, dreams and nightmares, medical anomalies, and the weirder side of the zoological spectrum. Over the years he's delved into jewelry, action figures, album artwork, erotic/grotesque illustration, and anatomically inspired body art. In the early 2000s he worked for H.R. Giger, on several jewelry and sculpture projects. More recently, he's done work for Sideshow Collectibles, Darkhorse Comics, Amalgamated Dynamics Incorporated, and had sculpted the miniatures for the H.P. Lovecraft inspired game, The Doom That Came to Atlantic City. He's also found himself putting his distinctive mark on some vinyl Kaiju figures for the company Dunk-Japan. Ongoing endeavors include furthere explorations into the realms of fine art and comics, as well as the publication of his sketchbook which has oft been described as a contemporary Necronomicon. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California.
When not occupied whispering to insects and cataloging esoteric ephemera, Nick Gucker is typically perched at his art table conjuring up nightmare visions and freakish delights out of ink, charcoal and acrylic media. His art has frequently appeared in the pages of Strange Aeons Magazine, The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction, Dark Discoveries and online publications including theLovecraft eZine. His illustrations embellished the innards of works by authors Cody Goodfellow, David Conyers and a few projects with Spectral Press in the UK. His paintings have been used for covers of books from Blysster Press, Sinister Grin, and others. Nick was the winner of the 2012 Pickman’s Apprentice Iron Artist challenge at the HP Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland and had the honor of creating the artwork for the 2013 HP Lovecraft Film Festival posters and T-shirts. Nick has also designed images for Skurvy Ink T-Shirts, honoring the works of various genre authors. Nick was featured in a gallery group show in Ketchikan, AK in Oct. of 2012 and his Lovecraftian pieces were on display in the Providence, RI Art Club in conjunction with NecronomiCon 2013. Recent gallery appearances include group shows at Krab Jab Studio and Cloud Gallery in Seattle curated by Yvette Endrijautzki. In addition to his published work, Nick’s unique, one-of-a-kind custom commission pieces grace the walls and limbs of various and sundry patrons of the arts from near and far.