The scene
From Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897), Chapter 8. Mina wakes to find Lucy gone and runs up the endless steps to the East Cliff. On their favourite seat, in a blade of moonlight, Lucy lies asleep, and the thing over her raises its head. It is the moment Dracula stops being a rumour, and I wanted it to feel genuinely frightening.
The style
A Victorian mezzotint, the printmaking of the years Stoker was writing, where every light is scraped and burnished out of velvet black. I staged it like a silent horror film: one hard shaft of moonlight and a long shadow. The abbey ruins on the skyline are real and still stand on the East Cliff.
The inspiration
The look comes from Frank Short's mezzotint "Moonlight on a River" (1896), National Gallery of Art, Washington. I borrowed its grain, its burnished moonlight and its driving cloud. Its river, bridge and figures aren't here.
How it's made
I design each scene and refine it until it feels right. It's a print of a digital artwork made in the style of a mezzotint, not a hand-pulled mezzotint or an original print. A typeset caption under the picture names the book, the moment and the style that inspired it. Each one carries my printed "Chapter & Scene" signature in the margin.