Moon Horrors

The brief was to use Photoshop to create 2 illustrations for the Ted Hughes grim poem 'Moon Horrors'.

Here is the first, which I wanted to be a more traditional style of narrative illustration.

The Moon Hero

Moon Horrors 

Ted Hughes

When he has dined,

The man-eating tiger leaves certain signs,

But nothing betrays the moon’s hideous number nines.

Nobody knows where they sleep off their immense meals.

They strike so fatally nobody knows one feels.

One eyed, one legged they start out of the ground with such a shout

The chosen victim’s eyes instantly fall out.

They do not leave so much as a hair 

But smack their chops and go off 

Thinner than ever with grotesque hops.

Now the shark will take a snack by shearing off half a swimmer.

Over the moon presides a predator even grimmer.

Descending without warning from the interstellar heavens

Whirling like lathes arrive the fearful horde of number sevens

Whatever they touch, whether owl or elephant, poet or scientist

The wretched victim wilts instantly to a puff of purple mist.

And before he can utter a cry or say goodbye to kith and kin

Those thin gut number sevens have sucked him ravenously in.

Mosquitoes seem dreadful for they drink at a man as he sleeps.

Night and day over the moon a far craftier horror creeps.

It is hard to know what species of creature you would have to be 

To escape the attentions of the moon’s horrible number three.

He attacks as a nightmare and the sleeper dreams he is being turned inside out

And sucked dry like an orange 

And when he wakes it has all come about.

Ever-afterwards he is perfectly hollow and dry while his precious insides nourish some gross number three wherever that monster now resides.

But the thing that specializes in hunting down the great hero

Is the flying strangler: silent zero.

It is luckily quite rare, perhaps there is only one. 

According to legend it lives sleepily coiled round the sun.

But when a moon hero appears it descend and hovers just over his head.

His enemies call it a halo, 

But his friends see it and tremble with dread.

And sure enough, in the very best of his days, 

That zero drops around his neck, tightens and whirls away with him

Into the sun’s blaze.