I Needed A Way To Cope With The Year Of 2020 So I Started Creating These Creepy Illustrations (30 Pics)

When 2020 Felt Like a Haunted House, Art Became the Flashlight

The year 2020 did not exactly arrive with soft lighting and a friendly soundtrack. For many people, it felt more like stepping into a foggy forest where every branch looked suspiciously like a hand. The pandemic disrupted daily routines, social lives, work, school, and the comforting illusion that we had our calendars under control. In that strange new world, some people baked bread. Some reorganized their closets. Some learned sourdough starters have the emotional needs of a tiny Victorian ghost.

For Canadian multimedia illustrator Mark S. Gagne of Mindmelt Studio, the coping mechanism became something darker, stranger, and more memorable: creepy illustrations blended directly with photography. His series, often known as “Inked Photography,” combines abandoned places, natural landscapes, and eerie ink creatures that look as if they crawled out of the corners of anxiety itself. The result is a body of work that feels unsettling, whimsical, melancholic, and oddly comforting all at once.

The title “I Needed A Way To Cope With The Year Of 2020 So I Started Creating These Creepy Illustrations (30 Pics)” captures the mood perfectly. These are not just spooky drawings placed on random backgrounds. They are visual pressure valves. They turn isolation, depression, trauma, environmental worry, and pandemic unease into tiny shadow beings, towering guardians, and strange forest dwellers. In short: when the real world became weird, Gagne made the weirdness visible.

Who Is Mark S. Gagne, the Artist Behind the Creepy Illustrations?

Mark S. Gagne is a multimedia illustrator from Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, and the artist behind Mindmelt Studio, a creative brand built around “cute and creepy” artwork. His background includes fine arts study, photography, illustration, and a long-running fascination with abandoned places, decaying structures, forests, and the traces people leave behind. That combination matters because his work does not treat creepiness as cheap shock. Instead, it treats darkness as a place where hidden feelings can finally stand up and introduce themselves.

Gagne has described his art as closely connected to mental health. His biography explains that depression, anxiety, isolation, and the search for beauty in discarded places all shape his current body of work. That context gives the creepy illustrations emotional weight. The creatures are not monsters in the simple “run away before the sequel” sense. They are symbols. Some look timid. Some look watchful. Some seem lonely. Some appear to be waiting for the viewer to notice them, which is exactly what difficult emotions often do.

This is one reason the illustrations resonate. They are creepy, yes, but they are also strangely tender. You might look at one of the tall black figures and think, “Please do not follow me home.” Then, two seconds later, you might also think, “Actually, you look like you need a blanket and a snack.” That balance between fear and empathy is the secret sauce of the series.

What Makes the “Inked Photography” Series So Different?

The most interesting part of Gagne’s process is the fusion of two mediums: photography and pen-and-ink illustration. Many of the base images come from photographs he took while exploring abandoned locations or traveling across Ontario. After selecting an image, he prints the photograph, sketches ideas, studies the composition, and draws ink creatures directly onto the photo.

That handmade process creates a tactile quality that digital effects often struggle to imitate. The creatures do not feel pasted on. They feel discovered. A dark figure crouching by a doorway seems as if it has always lived there. A gathering of spirits under trees feels less like an added illustration and more like a secret the camera accidentally caught. The photo gives the scene reality; the ink gives it mythology.

Abandoned Places as Emotional Landscapes

Abandoned spaces are powerful because they already carry stories. A broken room, a weathered wall, or an empty field hints at time, memory, neglect, and loss. In Gagne’s hands, these places become emotional landscapes. A derelict building can represent trauma. A dark forest can represent uncertainty. A quiet room can represent isolation. Then the ink creatures arrive as visual metaphors for what lingers there.

This is why the series works so well as pandemic-era art. In 2020, many people felt trapped in familiar spaces that suddenly seemed unfamiliar. Homes became offices, classrooms, gyms, restaurants, and occasionally emotional pressure cookers. Empty streets and closed buildings looked like stills from a low-budget apocalypse movie, except the popcorn was stale and nobody knew when the credits would roll.

Why Creepy Art Can Be Comforting During Stressful Times

At first glance, creepy illustrations may seem like an odd way to cope with anxiety. Why add monsters to a year that already had plenty? But horror, dark fantasy, and surreal art can help people process fear in a controlled environment. A drawing cannot hurt you. A shadow creature in a photograph cannot send you an ominous calendar invite. It gives fear a shape, and once fear has a shape, it becomes easier to look at.

Psychologists and researchers have explored why people are drawn to horror during difficult periods. One idea is that horror can act as a kind of emotional rehearsal. Viewers encounter danger, uncertainty, and dread in a fictional or artistic form, then return safely to real life. During the pandemic, research on horror fans and morbid curiosity suggested that people who engage with frightening fiction may sometimes feel more psychologically prepared for real-world threats.

That does not mean everyone should immediately decorate their living room with shadow demons. Taste is personal, and Aunt Linda may have notes. But for many viewers, creepy art offers a safe container for emotions that are difficult to express directly: dread, grief, isolation, anger, helplessness, and the strange humor of surviving a historically chaotic year.

Art as Therapy: Not a Magic Wand, but a Very Useful Lantern

Art therapy is a recognized mental health profession that uses active art-making, creative process, psychological theory, and human experience within a therapeutic relationship. Even outside formal therapy, creative expression can help people slow down, focus attention, and translate emotional chaos into something visible. Drawing, painting, writing, crafting, and photography all provide a way to say, “Here is what I cannot quite explain in a normal sentence.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many adults experienced heightened anxiety and depression symptoms. Public health data showed that symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder increased among U.S. adults from August 2020 into early 2021. The American Psychological Association also described 2020 as a national mental health crisis, with the coronavirus pandemic reported as a major source of stress for many Americans.

In that context, Gagne’s creepy illustrations feel like more than entertainment. They are an example of how artists can metabolize difficult years through creative work. The ink creatures are not pretending everything is fine. They are saying, “No, things are strange. Let’s make the strange honest.” That honesty can be surprisingly soothing.

Why Making Something Helps

Making art can restore a sense of agency. When life feels uncontrollable, the blank page becomes one small place where choices still exist. A line can go left or right. A creature can be tall or tiny. A forest can become haunted or hopeful. This may sound simple, but simple things matter when the world feels too large to manage.

Creative work also provides structure. The artist chooses a photograph, sketches possibilities, places a figure, adds details, and decides when the image is finished. That sequence creates rhythm. Rhythm can become grounding. Grounding can become relief. Relief, even temporary relief, is not a small thing.

The Beauty of “Cute and Creepy”

One of the strongest features of Gagne’s work is the tension between cute and creepy. The creatures are dark, inky, and mysterious, but many have gentle body language. Some look curious rather than cruel. Some look like guardians. Some appear shy, like woodland spirits who would haunt your attic but also help you find your keys.

This balance is important for user experience as much as artistic meaning. Pure horror can push viewers away. Pure cuteness can become forgettable. But cute-creepy art creates a magnetic contradiction. You want to look closer, even when the image makes your imagination mutter, “Bad idea, friend.” That second look is where the details reveal themselves.

Examples of Memorable Image Concepts

Several titles from the series show how Gagne builds mood through language as well as visuals. “The Guardians at Dusk” suggests protection and twilight mystery. “Spirit Tree” turns nature into a haunted presence. “Such Curious Critters” adds humor and personality. “Will You Reach the Axe in Time?” brings suspense with the energy of a horror movie scene paused at the worst possible moment. “They Came Out of the Walls” takes a familiar domestic space and makes it wonderfully wrong.

These titles are SEO-friendly in their own way because they are descriptive, emotional, and memorable. They give viewers a hook before the image even loads. More importantly, they make the creatures feel like characters rather than decorative shadows.

Environmental Anxiety and the Monsters We Might Deserve

Another layer of the series involves environmental concern. Gagne has connected his strange creatures to the idea that humanity has made a mess of the planet. In that reading, the creatures are not invaders. They are witnesses. They inhabit forests, ruins, and forgotten corners, quietly observing what people have built, damaged, and abandoned.

This gives the creepy illustrations an eco-gothic flavor. The monsters are not simply scary because they are unknown. They are scary because they may know us too well. They may be asking why the forest is shrinking, why the building was left to rot, why the air feels heavier than it should. They are the visual equivalent of nature clearing its throat in a meeting where humanity has been talking too loudly for centuries.

That environmental undertone makes the work feel contemporary. Modern creepy art often reflects modern fears: climate change, loneliness, surveillance, burnout, trauma, and the feeling that something is off even when the room is quiet. Gagne’s ink creatures fit neatly into that cultural moment without becoming preachy. They do not lecture. They lurk. Sometimes lurking is more effective.

Why the Series Connected With Online Audiences

Online audiences love art that rewards attention. In a fast-scrolling digital world, the best images make people stop, zoom in, and send the post to a friend with a message like, “This is creepy, but also somehow me on a Monday.” Gagne’s series is built for that kind of engagement. The viewer first sees a photograph, then notices the creature, then notices the creature’s posture, eyes, placement, and relationship to the space.

The images also invite interpretation. Are the beings ghosts? Guardians? Trauma made visible? Forest spirits? Anxiety gremlins with excellent posture? The work does not force one answer. That openness allows viewers to bring their own experiences to the images. Someone dealing with depression may see loneliness. Someone thinking about environmental damage may see nature’s revenge. Someone who simply loves horror may see a delicious little nightmare snack.

This interpretive flexibility is excellent for shareability. People share art when it feels personal but not overly specific. Gagne’s creatures are emotionally clear enough to connect and mysterious enough to keep people talking.

Lessons Creators Can Learn From These Creepy Illustrations

For artists, bloggers, and content creators, this project offers several useful lessons. First, personal work often connects because it carries emotional truth. Gagne did not create generic monsters for the algorithm. He created from anxiety, memory, place, and fascination. That authenticity gives the series depth.

Second, combining mediums can create a signature style. Photography plus ink illustration is simple to understand but visually distinctive. It gives the audience an easy way to describe the work: creepy ink creatures drawn into real photographs. In SEO terms, that clarity matters. In artistic terms, it gives the work an identity.

Third, darkness does not have to be hopeless. The best creepy art often contains humor, tenderness, and beauty. Gagne’s creatures may be strange, but they are not empty. They feel alive with emotion. That emotional complexity is what separates memorable creepy illustrations from basic jump-scare content.

How to Start a Similar Creative Coping Practice

If this series inspires you, you do not need abandoned buildings, professional equipment, or a personal forest full of photogenic ghosts. Start with what you have. Take a photo of a room corner, a sidewalk, a tree, a window, or an old chair. Print it, or import it into a drawing app. Then ask yourself what emotion lives in that space. Is it worry? Grief? boredom? Hope? Draw that feeling as a creature, symbol, object, or pattern.

The goal is not perfection. The goal is translation. Turn the invisible into something visible. Give anxiety a hat. Give loneliness antlers. Give burnout six legs and a tiny coffee cup. Once the feeling is outside your head, you can relate to it differently. You may even laugh at it, which is not a cure, but it is a very respectable little rebellion.

Added Experience: Living With 2020 Through Creepy Creative Rituals

Looking back at 2020, one of the strangest parts was how quickly ordinary objects became emotionally charged. A grocery cart felt like a mission vehicle. A door handle became a tiny villain. A quiet street looked cinematic in the worst possible genre. People were surrounded by familiar things, but the meaning of those things changed almost overnight. That is exactly why creepy illustrations based on real photographs feel so appropriate for the period. They do not invent a separate fantasy world. They reveal the fantasy, fear, and uncertainty already hiding inside the real one.

Many people discovered that coping did not always look calm or pretty. It did not always mean yoga at sunrise or journaling in perfect handwriting beside a suspiciously photogenic cup of tea. Sometimes coping looked like making strange drawings at midnight. Sometimes it meant laughing at dark jokes because the alternative was staring blankly at the ceiling. Sometimes it meant creating something creepy because “cheerful” felt dishonest.

That is the value of a project like Gagne’s “Inked Photography.” It gives permission for creative coping to be messy, eerie, funny, and emotionally complicated. Not every healing image needs a rainbow. Some healing images need a tall shadow creature standing in a ruined doorway like it has been waiting patiently for you to admit you are tired.

For viewers, these creepy illustrations can feel like a mirror of pandemic emotions. Isolation appears in empty rooms. Anxiety appears in watchful eyes. Trauma appears in cracked walls and figures that seem half-present, half-remembered. Environmental grief appears in forests and abandoned structures where nature and decay are locked in a slow conversation. Yet the images are not only sad. Their creatures often seem curious, gentle, or protective. They suggest that darkness is not always an enemy. Sometimes darkness is simply where unspoken feelings gather until we are ready to see them.

Creating or viewing this kind of art can also become a ritual. A person might take one photo each day, draw one small figure, and write one sentence about what the image means. Over time, those images become a visual diary. Instead of recording only events, they record atmosphere: the heaviness of a week, the weird humor of a bad day, the relief of surviving another news cycle. That diary may not solve every problem, but it creates evidence of endurance. It says, “I was here. I felt this. I made something from it.”

The experience of 2020 also showed that community can form around shared strangeness. When people saw creepy pandemic art online, they were not only admiring technique. They were recognizing a mood. Comment sections became small gathering places where viewers could say, “Yes, this is exactly how it felt.” That recognition matters. Art does not need to explain everything to help people feel less alone. Sometimes it only needs to point at the monster in the corner so everyone can agree that, yes, the monster is there, and yes, it has surprisingly expressive eyes.

In the end, creepy illustration became a fitting language for a year that often felt unreal. It allowed fear to become form, anxiety to become character, and abandoned spaces to become emotional stages. Mark S. Gagne’s work reminds us that coping is not always about escaping darkness. Sometimes it is about walking into it with a pen, a photograph, and enough curiosity to ask what kind of creature might be waiting there.

Conclusion: The Strange Comfort of Drawing Monsters

“I Needed A Way To Cope With The Year Of 2020 So I Started Creating These Creepy Illustrations (30 Pics)” is more than a catchy title. It is a compact summary of how creativity can help people survive difficult times. Mark S. Gagne’s inked photography turns abandoned locations, forests, and quiet rooms into stages for emotional creatures that are frightening, funny, sad, and beautiful.

The series succeeds because it does not flatten 2020 into a simple story. It acknowledges anxiety, depression, isolation, trauma, environmental worry, and the exhaustion of living through uncertainty. But it also finds imagination inside that heaviness. The monsters do not erase fear; they make fear visible enough to understand. And once fear becomes visible, it becomes a little less powerful.

That is why creepy art can be so comforting. It tells the truth sideways. It lets people approach difficult feelings through metaphor, mood, and visual play. Whether you are an artist, a horror fan, a mental health advocate, or someone who just enjoys a good shadow creature with emotional depth, Gagne’s work offers a reminder worth keeping: when life gets weird, making something weird can be a very human way to cope.

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