The Vulture’s Prize…McKinley Illustration

Writhing, twisted vines, thorns and sinews wrap themselves around your imagination in McKinley Illustration‘s fantastic universe. This Missouri-based illustrator blends dark and psychedelic imagery to create pieces that flow with circular wholeness while dripping with malevolent chaos. He works in ink, and creates intensely layered images, composed of tiny details that fill the entire page and bring movement to his subjects. You can see the things growing in his pictures, hear their slippery squirming and feel the breeze of their movements. McKinley’s work has an epic quality to it, in that a long story is told in each piece. The pieces I found in his Book of Revelations series are a perfect example of this – he is literally telling a massive and disturbing story in each illustration. My personal favorite is the 7-eyed ram with it’s corona of leaves – it reminds me of stained glass church windows, but way more awesome than the ones I stared at during my forced brainwashing as a child. The tangled forest behind the ram seems to climb as you are looking at it, and you can see the earth beneath its’ feet spinning. For a taste of sinister psychedelica, check out the gallery after the jump…