Horror Artists Inspired by Myth and Folklore
When you’re hunting for inspiration, folklore isn’t just campfire stories and dusty legends – it’s a goldmine of eerie ideas that horror artists have been digging into for centuries. Some artists rely on gore and jump scares. Others glance at a crooked tree line and somehow make your soul feel mildly unsafe.
Studying how artists twist myth and folklore into horror isn’t about copying their work – it’s about borrowing fragments of atmosphere, symbolism, and storytelling for your own creations. Think of each artist’s style as another strange ingredient you can toss into your sketchbook cauldron.
You’re not here to magically transform into Goya overnight (unless you’re also secretly painting Spanish royalty, in which case I’d love to hear how that’s going). You’re here to explore how horror artists use folklore, superstition, rituals, and ancient fears to create imagery that lingers in your brain long after you’ve closed the sketchbook.
What You’ll Learn:
In this post, you’ll explore how legendary horror artists use shadows, folklore, surrealism, and unsettling visual tricks to create unforgettable nightmare fuel for their artwork.
- How Francisco Goya used darkness, contrast, and disturbing imagery to create psychological horror
- Why James Ensor’s masks and distorted crowds still feel deeply unsettling today
- How John Bauer transformed forests and folklore creatures into eerie storybook nightmares
- What makes Zdzisław Beksiński’s ruined landscapes and surreal architecture so haunting
- How Junji Ito turns ordinary patterns and repetition into terrifying obsessions
- Why Emily Carroll’s bold silhouettes and limited colour palettes create such strong atmosphere
- How different horror artists use lighting, composition, symbolism, texture, and scale to build fear
- Ways to borrow inspiration from famous artists without copying their work
- Horror art exercises and sketch ideas inspired by each artist featured in the post
- How combining techniques from multiple artists can help you develop your own horror art style
Why Study Artists in The First Place?
Looking at the work of other artists isn’t about copying or comparing yourself – it’s about learning small techniques and storytelling tricks you can add to your own toolkit. Think of it like peeking over someone’s shoulder, not to feel bad about your skills, but to quietly whisper: “Ooh… so that’s how they make shadows feel cursed.”
Every artist on this list has something specific you can borrow:
- Goya demonstrates how dramatic light and shadow can create an instant sense of dread.
- Ensor proves that masks don’t need to be realistic or perfect to feel deeply unsettling.
- Bauer reminds us that nature itself can feel more frightening than any monster.
The goal isn’t to draw exactly like them – it’s to borrow pieces of their atmosphere, symbolism, and visual storytelling, then remix those ideas into your own horror artwork.
Artist Spotlights:
1. Francisco Goya (1746-1828)
Why he Matters:
Francisco Goya explored fear, madness, violence, and human cruelty long before modern horror art existed. While he painted royal portraits earlier in his career, his later works became far darker and more disturbing. His famous Black Paintings series (created between 1819 – 1823) filled the walls of his home with grim, nightmarish imagery inspired by paranoia, suffering, and mortality.
One of his most infamous works, Saturn Devouring His Son, shows the Roman god Saturn consuming one of his children in a horrifying frenzy. Even today, the painting still feels raw, chaotic, and deeply unsettling.
Beginner Tip:
You don’t need gore to create fear. Goya often used deep shadows, harsh contrast, and distorted expressions to make his artwork feel oppressive and emotionally heavy. Try sketching a simple figure using dramatic lighting and large areas of darkness – sometimes what you can’t fully see is far scarier than what’s clearly visible.
Try This:
Draw a portrait where most of the face disappears into shadow. Push the dark areas further than feels comfortable and let only a few details emerge from the blackness – an eye, a grin, or part of a hand. Suggestion can often feel more disturbing than detail.
2. James Ensor (1860-1949)
Why he Matters:
James Ensor was a Belgian artist famous for filling his paintings with eerie carnival masks, skeletons, crowded scenes, and distorted faces. His work often blurred the line between comedy, satire, and horror, creating images that feel chaotic, uncomfortable, and strangely dreamlike.
Rather than relying on monsters, Ensor used human expressions, theatrical masks, and exaggerated crowds to create tension. Many of his paintings feel like stepping into a celebration where something has gone deeply wrong. Long before modern horror films existed, his work explored the uncanny feeling of people hiding behind false faces.
Beginner Tip:
You don’t need gore to make characters unsettling. Ensor proved that masks, exaggerated smiles, empty eyes, and unnatural expressions can be just as disturbing. Try sketching faces that feel slightly wrong rather than completely monstrous.
Try This:
Draw a crowded scene where every figure wears a different mask. Make some expressions too cheerful, others blank and emotionless, and a few subtly distorted. The more normal the scene appears at first glance, the creepier the strange details become.
3. John Bauer (1882-1918)
Why he Matters:
John Bauer was a Swedish illustrator best known for his haunting fairy-tale artwork inspired by Scandinavian folklore. His paintings and illustrations often featured enormous trolls, dense forests, misty landscapes, and tiny human figures dwarfed by nature.
What makes Bauer’s work so effective is the atmosphere. His forests feel ancient, quiet, and alive, while his creatures seem naturally woven into the landscape rather than simply placed inside it. Even though many of his illustrations were created for children’s fairy tales, they still carry an eerie sense of mystery and isolation that strongly connects to folk horror aesthetics.
Beginner Tip:
Experiment with scale, silhouette, and atmosphere. Bauer often made humans appear tiny compared to towering trees or looming creatures, which instantly created vulnerability and tension. A dark forest can feel far more threatening when the environment itself seems bigger than the characters inside it.
Try This:
Sketch a forest path disappearing into heavy shadows. Add a large troll-like figure partially hidden between the trees so it blends naturally into the environment. The creature should feel discovered rather than announced.
4. Zdzisław Beksiński (1929-2005)
Why he Matters:
Zdzisław Beksiński was a Polish artist known for painting surreal, dystopian landscapes filled with decaying architecture, skeletal figures, twisted forms, and vast empty spaces. His artwork often feels like the aftermath of some forgotten catastrophe – silent, crumbling, and deeply unsettling.
One of the most fascinating things about Beksiński’s work is that he rarely gave his paintings official titles, allowing viewers to interpret the imagery for themselves. Rather than telling clear stories, his art creates mood through texture, atmosphere, and ambiguity. Many of his pieces blend gothic ruins, organic shapes, and dreamlike nightmare imagery into scenes that feel both ancient and apocalyptic.
Beginner Tip:
Don’t focus too much on perfect detail. Beksiński often used rough textures, distorted forms, and layered decay to create emotion and unease. Scratched marks, broken silhouettes, and weathered surfaces can make artwork feel far more haunting than clean lines ever could.
Try This:
Sketch an abandoned structure such as a cathedral, tower, or archway, then slowly distort it. Add collapsed walls, stretched shapes, heavy shadows, or strange skeletal forms emerging from the environment. The goal isn’t realism – it’s atmosphere.
5. Junji Ito (born 1963)
Why he Matters:
Junji Ito is one of Japan’s most influential horror manga artists, known for turning ordinary ideas into sources of overwhelming dread. His most famous work, Uzumaki (1998–1999), follows a small town slowly consumed by spirals – not through traditional monsters, but through obsession, repetition, and psychological horror.
What makes Ito’s work so effective is how he takes familiar things and pushes them just far enough to become disturbing. Spirals, holes, hair, faces, and even simple expressions become terrifying through repetition and detail. His artwork combines incredibly precise linework with surreal body horror, eerie pacing, and deeply uncomfortable imagery that lingers in your brain long after reading.
Beginner Tip:
Try using repetition to build tension. Repeating a simple shape, pattern, or symbol over and over can make an image feel unnatural and obsessive, especially when it slowly spreads across the scene.
Try This:
Draw a normal everyday setting, then introduce one repeated detail that gradually takes over the image – spirals in wallpaper, cracks spreading across faces, or strange patterns appearing in clothing and shadows. The horror comes from escalation, not instant shock.
6. Emily Carroll (born 1983)
Why She Matters:
Emily Carroll is a Canadian comic artist and writer best known for her horror collection Through the Woods (2014). Her work blends fairy tales, folklore, ghost stories, and psychological horror into illustrations that feel both beautiful and deeply unsettling.
What makes Carroll’s art stand out is how she uses contrast, silence, and negative space to create tension. Her bold black shadows, limited colour palettes, and sharp silhouettes make ordinary forests, bedrooms, and hallways feel dangerous. Instead of relying on gore, she builds dread slowly – like the feeling that something is watching you from just beyond the trees.
Beginner Tip:
Simplify your shapes and focus on mood first. Strong silhouettes and high contrast can often feel creepier than overloading a drawing with detail.
Try This:
Take a peaceful fairytale-style scene and slowly twist it into something threatening. Add heavy shadows, strange proportions, or an unnatural figure hidden in the background. Sometimes the scariest thing is what almost blends in.
Art Prompt – Borrowed Shadows
Pick one artist from this list and borrow a single technique or mood from their work. Then twist it into your own original horror idea.
For example, you could use Goya’s dramatic shadows for a modern scarecrow ritual, Ensor’s distorted masks in a crowded village festival, or Emily Carroll’s bold silhouettes in a dark fairytale forest. The goal isn’t to copy their artwork – it’s to study how they create unease and remix those ideas into something uniquely yours.
Think of it less like tracing and more like stealing ingredients from six extremely haunted kitchens.
Conclusion – Steal the Tricks, Not the Souls
Studying horror artists is like rummaging through a haunted toolbox – every one of them hands you a new, slightly cursed technique to experiment with. Goya gives you shadows sharp enough to cut, Ensor drops off nightmare masks, Bauer fills forests with lurking creatures, Beksiński whispers “add more ruins,” Ito turns harmless patterns into obsessions, and Carroll proves fairytales were never safe to begin with.
The goal isn’t to copy their artwork – it’s to study how they create fear, then twist those techniques into something uniquely yours. Mix them together, experiment, and see what strange thing crawls out of your sketchbook. Steal the tricks, not the souls… unless you’ve already lit the candles and opened the Ouija board.
Big Challenge:
Pick three artists from this list and combine elements of their styles into one drawing. Maybe you use Goya’s dramatic lighting, Ensor’s distorted masks, and Bauer’s eerie forests in a single scene. Or mash together Beksiński’s ruined landscapes, Ito’s obsessive repetition, and Carroll’s bold silhouettes for a twisted fairytale nightmare.
The only rule is that there are no rules. The stranger and more unsettling the final piece feels, the better.
What You’ve Learned:
- Francisco Goya used extreme shadows and unsettling imagery to create psychological dread and nightmarish scenes.
- James Ensor turned masks, distorted faces, and chaotic crowds into horror, proving that discomfort can be stranger than gore.
- John Bauer used forests, scale, and folklore creatures to make nature feel mysterious, ancient, and threatening.
- Zdzisław Beksiński created surreal ruined landscapes and skeletal architecture, showing how atmosphere alone can feel deeply disturbing.
- Junji Ito transformed ordinary shapes and patterns into horror, especially through repetition, obsession, and creeping unease.
- Emily Carroll uses bold silhouettes, limited colour palettes, and simple shapes to create eerie fairytale-inspired horror.
- Studying horror artists helps you understand how mood and fear are built visually, through lighting, composition, symbolism, texture, and scale.
- You don’t need to copy an artist’s work to learn from them, because borrowing techniques and adapting them into your own ideas is part of developing your style.
- Combining inspiration from multiple artists can lead to more original horror artwork, especially when mixing different moods, textures, and visual themes.
- Some of the strongest horror art comes from atmosphere and suggestion, not just monsters, gore, or shock value.
Keep Exploring Folklore in Horror Art
Dive deeper into eerie traditions, ancient symbols, and unsettling folklore with more guides from the Folklore and Mythology in Horror Art series:
- Traditional Horror Art Styles: Woodblock, Folk Patterns and Ancient Symbols
Explore old-world techniques, ancient markings, and traditional design elements that still feel strangely cursed centuries later. - Folk Horror Aesthetics: Rituals, Masks and Rural Dread in Art
Discover isolated villages, crude masks, unsettling ceremonies, and the kind of countryside energy that politely tells you to leave before sunset.
