"Pickman's Model" is one of H. P. Lovecraft's most popular stories. It regularly gets rewritten, used as the basis for another story, and incorporated in a general Lovecraftian setting.
Comic Books
- "The Ghoul" (Psycho #15): The S.S. Captain Cook is attacked by ghouls in the iceberg-riddled north of the Atlantic Ocean. The ghouls' design is based on that of Lovecraft's drawings for "Pickman's Model".
- Granny Gumshoe (National Comics #58): The comic story incorporates elements of "Pickman's Model" and a hint of "The Outsider (1926)". Indigo van Morbidd draws such monstrous paintings that anyone who looks at them faints, though Granny Gumshoe is immune because she's colorblind. She goes to investigate and is introduced to Van Morbidd's model, a monster so monstrous that looking at his own painting terrifies him harmless.
- "Portrait of Death" (Weird Terror #1): Journalist Pat Carter investigates a series of murders that lead her to the painter Eric Gilman. He reveals that he paints actual monster living in the tunnels below "an old New England city". Gilman himself is behind the murders because he pays his models with blood. When he's done with a particular model, he poisons the blood to be rid of them.
- "VII: The Picture" (Providence #7): Robert Black goes to Boston to meet the photographer Ronald Underwood Pitman, who also dabbles a little in the art of painting. A recurring motif in his paintings are the saprovores, hairy creatures that devour humans and that are "downstairs from world, upstairs from dream." They actually exist and are friends of Pitman.
Films — Live-action
- Chilean Gothic: Investigative journalist Gabriel Martínez follows a curious series of clues left behind by his dead colleague Aníbal Neira. They lead him to the American painter Richard Upton Pickman who moved from Boston to Santiago and from there to Chiloé and who makes paintings of creatures from local folklore.
- In the Mouth of Madness: The protagonists stay at Pickman's Inn in Hobb's End.
Literature
- "Pickman's Other Model" by Caitlin R. Kiernan: Following the events of "Pickman's Model", Thurber kills himself in 1929 and Eliot, referred to as Mr. Blackman, starts an investigation based on what Thurber told him about Pickman. Through this, he meets the movie actress Vera Endecott, the eponymous other model.
- It: An artist named Pickman takes part in the 1929 ambush of the Bradley Gang at the Derry city square.
Video Games
- Back to the Dawn: Pickman the Iguana is one of two characters named after characters in H.P Lovecraft's works, the other being Wilbur the Goat referencing The Dunwich Horror.
- Blood (1997): Pickman's Rare Books And Maps is a store in two levels: Wrong Side of the Tracks and Mall of the Dead.
- Blood II: The Chosen: One level is called Pickman St. Station.
- Cyberpunk 2077: During a radio segment, Maximum Mike is talking about the idea that all the art in museums is all forgeries and the originals are being stored off-world. For emphasis, he mentions a bunch of artists, one of which is named Pickman.
- Fallout 4: A man in Boston named Pickman kills raiders, collects their heads, and uses their blood to make disturbing paintings, which he puts up for display in "Pickman's Gallery".
- Identity V: Call of the Abyss III is a Lovecraftian themed tournament with an emphasis on "Pickman's Model". Here, Pickman was an earthly painter with a poor career who ended up as the Netherwalker in the Abyss and became obsessed with his model, a dancer, when she contracted the erosion. This caused flowers to grow from her body, turning her into a living embodiment of Les Fleurs du mal and Pickman's eternal muse. Pickman serves her and the erosion with his paintings that he sends back to corrupt the earthly plane.
- Laplace no Ma: The humans Richard Upton Pickman and Joanna Sullivan are a couple with an unhealthy dynamic, and to get away Pickman leaves for Newcam, Massachusetts and enters Weathertop Mansion, where he willingly turns into a ghoul. Joanna comes after him, which provokes Pickman to go even deeper into the mansion, never to be seen again.
- The Sinking City: The sidequest Functional Brain Cylinders requires Reed to track down six functional cylinders containing the brains of as many individuals. Cylinder Alpha-Six is found in the boneyard next to a painting and contains the brain of R. Pickman for send-off to Epsilon Tauri.
- Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones: Pickman Ghouls wander around in Arkham, in particular inside the Marsh & Sons Warehouse.
- World of Horror: "Perilous Parable of the Peculiar Painting" is a mystery that takes place at the mansion of the painter Mamiya Ichiro. As it turns out, Ichiro's paintings are portals to other dimensions from which he invites real monsters.
