Meet Sam Shearon of The Dark Arts of Mister Sam Shearon in Hollywood

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mr. Sam Shearon.

Sam, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was born in Liverpool, England, United Kingdom… and according to my Mother I’ve been drawing monsters since I could hold a pencil. I’ve always had an affinity with the unexplained, the supernatural, horror and the darker side to science fiction.

I’ve gone through the entire British art and design school system. From high school, through college obtaining a diploma in art foundation studies and a bachelor’s degree with honors in visual communication, which turned out to also be a sort of study in the psychology of art and design as a language. I then went on to become a qualified art teacher with a post graduate certificate in education, but I found that to be quite time consuming and took away from what I really wanted to pursue at the time… my own art.

After leaving University and then ultimately the whole art educational system, I thought it was time I had my own art exhibition. SO in 2003 over a number of months, I created around forty five pieces of work including large paintings and also six foot tall demonic statues. All of this along with a number of ‘mutilated’ toy sculptures. Most of these creepy toy pieces were mainly bears that were made to look scary or horrific mixed together with animal bones, old car parts and of course, artificial blood and guts pouring out of them… There were many teddy bears nailed up to wooden posts with most having nails driven through their eyes.

This made the national news and articles appeared in both the Daily Telegraph and the other publications such as the Daily Star and various magazines and online publications. The solo exhibition entitled ‘A Walk on the Dark Side’ was also featured on the BBC radio one show and was extended to six weeks due to popular demand.

After this I continued to work on my own artwork for a few years, working behind a bar in my home town of Lytham St.Annes. I then started to branch out into the music industry and with the arrival of MySpace I was then able to reach out to some of my favorite bands and share my artwork with them. This was in the hope of creating official artwork for their album covers or merchandise.

Soon after this I was headhunted by a company called Bravado who hired me now and then as a freelancer, to create various t-shirt designs and merchandise elements for bands such as ‘HIM’ and ‘Iron Maiden’.

It was around this time I got in touch with a Los Angeles based band named ‘Godhead’ which was the first band to be signed to Marilyn Manson’s record label. I became great friends with the front-man for Godhead, Jason Charles Miller and am still very good friends with him to this day… In fact I’ve just created the artwork for his new solo record which marks ten years of creating various album sleeves for Jason. I actually created the last full Godhead album artwork back in 2008 before Jason went solo to become the successful country artist he is today.

I was invited out to Los Angeles by Jason to visit and with the money I’d just made from creating merchandise designs for Iron Maiden, I took the next plane out to Hollywood, California!

Over the last ten years I’ve made some incredible friends and connections and I’ve been fortunate to have gone on to create artwork officially for some of my most favorite bands and fellow creators.

Just some of these previous clients now include Clive Barker, Stan Lee, Rob Zombie, KISS, Doyle (Misfits), Powerman 5000, American Head Charge, Fear Factory, Biohazard, A Pale Horse Named Death, ESP Guitars, Pro Tone Pedals and Coffin Case guitar cases.

I’ve also created comic-book cover artwork for Mars Attacks, Judge Dredd, 30 Days of Night, ANGEL, Hellraiser and the X-Files among many others.

I’ve even found myself on the covers of magazines and recently my own billboards to promote my own adult coloring book: ‘Creepy Christmas’ published by the Vesuvian Media Group and of course, available via Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

All of this from reaching out to share what I love to do – create!

As of the last year or so I’ve gotten myself a manager as things have been getting pretty interesting in regards to certain attention I’ve been getting from certain producers in film and television.

Naturally I can’t say too much on that as much as my brain is near to exploding with excitement, but I can say that the last ten years of work has led me to a very exciting position where I’m now not only creating artwork and visual entertainment but I’m also script writing and storytelling for the screen.

It’s truly amazing what you can do in just ten years if you want it enough!

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Well, life always has those ups and downs of course, but it’s been generally pretty smooth to be fair.

As much as there are some very generous people in LA, I have also stumbled across some pretty nasty characters in the entertainment industry for sure…

Some try to use you or think that freelance means ‘free’… others think because you’re British that you’re something to show off or be on the arm of as though you’re a trophy.

Some even happily take your ideas and run with them, never giving you even the slightest mention, never a nod or a nudge to give credit where credit is due.

Some simply aim to profit from your hard work and parade you around as though they own you or they’re your BEST friend.

Then there are those who sulk when you charge them a REAL fee because they also think that all artists carry the same price or hourly rate or worse, they think we all work at a low price purely for the ‘opportunity’.

I’ve met all kinds!

But that’s life and I take it as just part of learning to survive and I smile when I see it coming.

I try to guide others from my own experiences, but there’s nothing quite like jumping in head first to really understand how the world behind the show biz glamour really works.

Hollywood has its ‘comedy’ and ‘tragedy’ masks… but it also wears a veil.

I’ve heard some absolute horror stories.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
As a freelance artist or creator, I pride myself in creating artwork to a standard which both entertains and inspires others to fully immerse themselves into the worlds I’m portraying or creating. Whether this be a world of gods and monsters, with fictional creatures from Gothic horror or classical science fiction literature or perhaps the bio-mechanical, cyberpunk and post-apocalyptic world of neo-Victorianism and steampunk. I consider my creatures and characters to be very real! I believe that if you put your heart and soul into something and literally breathe life into it – then others believe it too!

I create portraits, cover artworks for books and comic-books, I create entire album sleeves for bands and solo musicians. I create artwork to sell an idea, to illustrate worlds that only exist inside people’s minds… I aim to make dreams come to life and walk off the page.

I’m known for artwork related to cryptozoology. For fleshing out and illustrating monsters from eye-witness reports… Bigfoot, Mothman, Lake monsters… all manner of unexplained sightings.

I’ve created many cover artworks and posters for the Cryptozoological documentary company ‘Small Town Monsters’ and various book covers for author David Weatherly.

I’m also known for comic-book cover artwork and album sleeve/cover artworks. Some of my most proud moments are creating for Clive Barker, Rob Zombie, the X-Files and the band ‘A Pale Horse Named Death’, ‘American Head Charge’ and Powerman 5000’… among many others… but those have to be my favourites.

Every year for ten years now, I’ve sat and signed autographs for free at various comic-con events. From New York to Long Beach… from LA to San Diego. This will in fact be the tenth year in a row signing at San Diego Comic-Con.

I think signing for free at these events is so VERY important and does in many ways set me apart from others – In that I don’t see why someone who’s already bought my book and then paid to attend an event to then line up so that they can have me sign their book or draw something in it for them, a quick sketch perhaps… I don’t see why I would charge them for that. I find the idea of charging for autographs actually pretty damning and disgusting.

That sets me apart from many others in my field sadly… but proudly.

What were you like growing up?
I grew up in the North West of England on the edge of a large forest in the town of Murdishaw, (pronounced ‘Murder Shore’) Many hundreds of years ago that was pretty much the capital place for people to be taken and hung until dead for their crimes… Murdishaw forest was reportedly haunted of course… and I didn’t doubt it!

At an early age, I was known as ‘the dinosaur boy’ at school, as I was fascinated by them and knew scores of dinosaur names and of course was constantly drawing them.

The interest in Natural history was encouraged from an early age and my collection of taxidermy and bones began very early on. I even received a stuffed Indian Cobra and Mongoose at age ten for Christmas!

Much to the horror and confusion of other children my age who wanted the latest video game or toy.

In my early teens I became fascinated with the supernatural and the unexplained and have since been obsessed with all things related. Ghosts, UFOs, Cryptozoology… you name it, I have a book on it on my shelf… or ten… or more. It’s been a huge part of my life and yes I’ve had a great many very strange experiences myself while both hunting these phenomenon down and by just going through life in general… I could fuel an industry with my own stories!

I spent most of my childhood wandering around natural history museums or fighting off night terrors. Spending most of my days with my head either buried in an adult horror book in the local library, (hiding behind a curtain because I wasn’t supposed to)… or glued to the small television at home watching Godzilla, He-Man, Dungeons and Dragons cartoons or Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans and various other Ray Harryhausen movies!

I was fascinated by Gremlins, Ghostbusters and not only the classic Universal monster movies but the whole British Hammer Horror movie series which has certainly influenced my view and portrayal of horror today.

The aim at this stage in my career is to continue to live a life of creating monsters and weaving stories that surround them!

Contact Info:

• Email:info@mister-sam.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/MisterSamShearon
• Facebook: facebook.com/MisterSamShearon
• Twitter: twitter.com/Sam_Shearon

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