Richard Wells

@slipperyjack.bsky.social

6473 Followers 742 Following

Sometimes I do graphic design stuff for telly and film. Other times I make spooky lino prints and things you can buy if you want... đź“ŤBlack Country (middle of the UK) https://linktr.ee/SlipperyJack

Bike man helping ol' sausage fingers out of the TARDIS.
Rows of paperbacks of John Bowen's The Girls on a Birmingham Recommends shelf in Waterstones.
Lino cut in progress. Some kind of demon with a long forked tail.
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Self-Portrait with Masks, 1903
The darkness of the night accompanies Léon Spilliaert on his solitary wanderings in Ostend or when—tormented by stomach pain—he roams the silent rooms of his own home. The darkness causes the forms to blur. Spilliaert paints and draws the night, the streetlights, and the moonlight onto the objects using a very personal technique, combining various materials: colored pencil, pastel, watercolor, gouache, and washed Indian ink. They create endless gradations between light and darkness. The compelling search for his identity prompts him to create a series of expressive self-portraits in a very oppressive atmosphere. In *Self-Portrait with Mirror*, Spilliaert seems to slip away into the darkness, and we see only a shadow of the artist seized by fear. We see Spilliaert with large hollow eyes and an open mouth that seems to be gasping for breath. In the pale green darkness, the face has become a mask. In the large gilded mirror behind the artist, we see a timepiece under a glass dome. Time ticks away, death draws menacingly close, and the artist seeks our attention with his startled gaze, looking for something to hold onto in the spinning room that is otherwise so familiar to him.
Nosferatu in Delft
My favourite scene of the film, the doomed group dressed in their finery invite Lucy to a last supper, all the while surrounded by thousands of rats. This was shot in a rear courtyard at 55 Oude Delft, now another student housing block.
We’re now fully in Delft’s main market square for the next sequence (my favourite passage of the film). High shot taken from one of the three viewing points along the 376 narrow winding steps up the tower of the Nieuwe Kerk. Notice the disappearance of the statue of Hugo Grotius. He was moved closer to the Church (just out of shot) during a redevelopment of the square in 2004. A major downgrade, in my opinion!
A polystone horned skull statue and four sheet ghosts from York Ghost Merchants.
Dracula creeps abroad in Wismar! This is Delft’s main market square, with a view of the City Hall.
While Jonathan makes his way back home, Dracula has made his way to Wismar aboard a ship (renamed the Contamana, a reference to the ship that inspired Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo). A ratty trojan horse! This sequence was shot in the town of Schiedam, about 23 miles south of Delft. The shot is taken on Lange Haven near the ugly Taanbrug footbridge (installed in 2017) that now spoils the view! The building with the spire is The St. John the Baptist Church, better known as the Havenkerk, built 1822.
The exterior of Mina’s house (this is one of the Dracula adaptations where Mina and Lucy inexplicably switch names). The building is the Museum Paul Tétar van Elven at 67 Koornmarkt, established in 1927. You can see a plaque for Paul Tétar van Elven on the exterior wall later in the film when Lucy (Isabelle Adjani) is out sleepwalking.
The opening credits take place over this shot taken from the Kaakbrug bridge looking down the Hippolytusbuurt, just to the left of the excellent Blauwe Roos antiques shop.
Rembrandt cameo in Schalcken the Painter
A woman sits reading a large book in an empty room with her back to a window. At the window out in the darkness a boy looks through.
A woman of indefinable age, seen from behind, leans against a window where a child’s face stealthily appears in the half-darkness. She seems to be trying to communicate with the little girl by placing her hand on the windowpane.
Title page of Tales Accursed a Folk Horror Anthology with a pen drawing of a goat with applied gold leaf.
The Devil's Den neolithic dolmen with a Polaroid camera in the foreground.
Sam Neill with his cat Boo.
Sweet cover art by Rafa Orrico DĂ­ez
Doofus in front of piles of book boxes.
Title page of Tales Accursed: a Folk Horror Anthology defaced with a pen drawing of the Mari Lwyd with gold leaf gilding.
You, the Living (2007)
Film poster for Rams.
Sam Neill in Possession.
Lino print. A dark figure with a black cat reaches out towards a lady in the foreground.
Lino print. A mysterious dark figure in 17th century dress holds open a flaming book. A goat looks on.
Gaper on the front of a pharmacy in Delft.
17th century Delft tile. A man (or more likely a child) walking on stilts.
Hand painted 17th century Delft tile featuring a lady wearing a huik.
Antiques shop in Amsterdam.
17th century Delft tile depicting a gladiator with sword and shield.
The Geographer (Dutch: De geograaf) is a painting created by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer in 1668–1669, and is now in the collection of the Städel museum in Frankfurt, Germany.
Antique 17th century hand painted antique Delft tile depicting a gladiator with a blade and I think using his helmet as a shield in his other hand.
M.C. Escher, Seated Man with a Cat on his Lap, woodcut, 1919
Interlocked fish
Alan Tudyk followed me on Instagram because of a post about medieval church pillar biters.
It's the title page of my Folk Horror anthology with a gilded pen drawing of a goat.
Blue tarpaulin phantom in an old church.
A man crouching down in front of an oven with his mouth gaping open. Proverb: To outgape the oven.
Choir stalls in Amsterdam Oude Kerk.
Stone demonic face above a carved Safe Deposit sign.
Much of Carolein Smit's work deals with transience and makes use of art-historical symbolism. This is also true of this "witjeswand", inspired by the late medieval motif of the Dance of Death and 18th-century Jasperware; blue and white tableware produced by the British firm Wedgwood. Smit explores the tension between guilt and innocence, power and powerlessness, life and death.
Poster for the exhibition featuring the classic dance of death woodcut.
A Boy Bringing Bread (c. 1663) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch painter Pieter de Hooch. It is an example of Dutch Golden Age painting and is part of The Wallace Collection, on display at East Galleries II in London. The painting was likely painted soon after De Hooch's arrival in Amsterdam from Delft in the early 1660s.
It's Pieter de Hooch's gaff!
An apple tart with whipped cream at Chiqueolatte Den Haag near the Escher Museum.