Sunday, December 29, 2013

Mary Russell



The Baker Street Babes have mentioned Laurie King’s Mary Russell series so many times and with such great affection on their podcast that I figured I finally needed to give it a go.  I’m a little shy of halfway through the first book, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, and I’m loving it so far.  So much so that I had to take a break from work to do a quick sketch of Russell as she appears in my mind from King’s descriptions.

The original art for this one is available for sale.  8.5x11," ink on 80# stock, shipped the Tuesday after purchase.  First come, first serve.

Pick the cost based on your location

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Directors: Kasi Lemmons, Rian Johnson, and John Ford



First, Kasi Lemmons, writer and director of the wonderful Eve’s Bayou (which, like the film of another director I’ll be posting up soon, does a fantastic job of doing a story about kids that feels like it’s made for kids despite not being so at all, just such a subtle handling of the heavy subject matter), who also directed Caveman’s Valentine - both pulling excellent performances from Samuel L. Jackson.  I haven’t seen her upcoming Black Nativity, but her work on the two previously mentioned pictures and Talk to Me will lead me to do so eventually, despite my general distaste for Christmas movies (not that I don’t love Christmas).


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Rian Johnson.
He made Brick, which would be enough to cement him on my favorites list regardless of what his subsequent projects were, but given that those projects include The Brothers Bloom,Looper, and the hotel episode of Terriers, well, Brick almost becomes a non-issue, doesn’t it?



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John Ford, director of such genre-defining and genre-busting westerns as Stagecoach and the Searchers, and a variety of other projects, including a pretty neat film called 7 Women, about seven very different people trying to survive in Warlord-era China in the 1920s.






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Monday, December 16, 2013

Shadow Over Innsmouth characters

One of my favorite scary stories is H.P. Lovecraft’s “A Shadow Over Innsmouth,” which is about a prissy youngster who goes antiquing in a town populated by (spolier!) fish people.  It’s chock full of dreadful buildup, and so I’ve been meaning to do some character sketches for it for some time.  Here are a few, including the narrator, the priest from the Esoteric Order of Dagon, alcoholoic nonagenarian Zadock Allen, the young grocery store manager, bus driver Joe Sargent, and a bunch of Innsmouth residents and Deep Ones (as the full-blown fish folk are called).  I also did a big Dagon, from the short story of the same name, whom I’ve heard described as a Deep One old enough to have grown to a massive size.  For scale, he should be about double the size as he’s depicted here, but I wanted him to fit, y’know.  











The original art for these are available for sale (each character is its own piece).  8.5x11," ink on 80# stock, shipped the Tuesday after purchase.  First come, first serve.  PLEASE INCLUDE A NOTE DESCRIBING THE CHARACTER THAT YOU WANT.  I will mark which ones are sold as soon as I'm available.  The prices are for the smaller figures; the larger Dagon drawing is on 11x17, and costs $100.

Sold so far:
#2 (Esoteric Order of Dagon Priest)
#5 (hunched fishy-faced sailor with pipe)


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Friday, December 13, 2013

Directors: Michael Curtiz



I was always flumuxed when I was younger that despite his having directed Casablanca, one of my very favorite films and a regular contender for the best film ever made, and nearly all of the best Errol Flynn movies (The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, Virginia City, Charge of the Light Brigade, the Sea Hawk, Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex), Michael Cutriz (born Mano Kaminer in Budapest in 1886) never seems to get the sort of recognition due to him by merit of his best projects.  He gets more love now than he used to in critical circles, but he’s still hardly a household name. The original art for this one is available for sale.  8.5x11," ink on 80# stock, shipped the Tuesday after purchase.  First come, first serve.

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Directors: Richard Lester



Today's director:  Richard Lester.
He made a bunch of the Beatles movies (maybe all of them), but I've never been into the Beatles enough to want to watch them.  He is, however, also the best period film director ever, by my money.  His Three Musketeers series from the mid-seventies (featuring an all-star cast including Charlton Heston, Raquel Welch, Michael York, Christopher Lee, Faye Dunaway, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Frank Finlay, and Spike Milligan) is the one of the best period films ever for total immersion (though I'd say that Gangs of New York, The Duelists, and Master and Commander do a bang-up job in that department, too) and his Robin and Marian is the best Robin Hood movie, bar none (written by James Goldman, who also penned The Lion in Winter).  
He also made a western, I just discovered, called Butch and Sundance: The Early Days, a prequel to the William Goldman (James' brother) Newman/Redford vehicle, which has never had as much appeal to me as it seems to do everyone else.  I've bought The Early Days but haven't had a chance to watch it yet.  Really looking forward to doing so.

The original art for this one is available for sale.  8.5x11," ink on 80# stock, shipped the Tuesday after purchase.  First come, first serve.

Pick the cost based on your location

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Directors: John Huston

So I drew a bunch of directors that I like.  Figured I’d throw ‘em up over the next week or two.



First up, John Huston, because he’s the first director I ever read about at length.  I had seenThe Man Who Would Be King (easily Sean Connery’s finest film role) and The African Queen(my favorite Katherine Hepburn movie, if not my favorite performance - I still might like her in The Lion in Winter more) and liked both of them a lot, so when I stumbled across this book on Huston at my school library I gave it a read, which led me to other books.  

Huston significantly influenced by art in a very tangible way.  He famously desaturated the color in his adaptation of Moby Dick by overlaying a black and white version of the film atop a color one, giving the sea story a grim and stark palette.  I read that, and thought “Well, I’ll do that in photoshop, with layers.”  I started making a duplicate of my garish color layers, desaturating it, and adjusting the opacity atop the color layer.  That led me to adjusting the color balance on that desaturated layer - sometimes I’d make it sepia, or blue, or red, but always I overlaid a monochromatic duplicate atop a literal palette.  Now I don’t have to do that anymore, but I still use the process to develop new palettes in their entireity, with a few manual tweaks here and there.  Thanks, John Huston!

The original art for this one is available for sale.  8.5x11," ink on 80# stock, shipped the Tuesday after purchase.  First come, first serve.  SOLD!

Monday, November 18, 2013

Character-a-Day: July Johnson and Roscoe Brown

So I’m posting up a character design per day from Larry McMurtry’s wonderful western novel Lonesome Dove, and I realized that I was starting to fall into the movie trap.  Like Harry Potter, the casting on the Lonesome Dove movie (miniseries) is so good and so spot on to the book that it’s tough to envision any other incarnation of the characters, which is one of the reasons that I like trying to design characters that have already been designed, to see if I can stray from the adaptation (especially if it’s a good one) without losing the essence of the characters.  
The first, unsuccessful pass at July and Roscoe's designs

Well, with my first pass at July (done some time ago) and Roscoe, I fell into the movie trap.  Roscoe’s a bit on the heavy side, July is thin.  I didn’t even realize this until I was rereading the passage where Roscoe hooks up with the zestful farmer, and she points out how he’s be a good match because he’s skinny, and that’ll make it easier to drag his corpse to a grave once she works him to death (that farmer, Louisa Brooks, is one of my two favorite supporting characters).  I didn’t draw him skinny.  I fell into two easy solutions - one, taking the movie route, and two, making a character fat because he’s a slow-witted bumpkin.  I’m especially mad at myself for the latter.
The second finished pass at July and Roscoe.  I like this one much better.

Anyway, I made Roscoe skinny, which meant that July needed to change in order to better contrast his “partner” Roscoe.  So I made him a little beefier.  I think this works for the character - his age, early twenties, merits it, and it’ll make him seem more useful on Clara’s ranch later in the book.
Anyway, some thoughts on decision-making.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Lonesome Dove characters - Gus, Call, Deets, Newt, and Pea Eye

I listen to a lot of audiobooks while I’m working, and Lonesome Dove has been one of my very favorites (I read it on paper when I was in high school or college, but I prefer the audio reading).  Anyway, for the next week or two I’m going to post one Lonesome Dove character per day.  

Now, here's something troublesome - I've already been posting these on my other social media platforms, notably twitter.  I tend to remember to post things on twitter and forget to do so on my blog.  So if you don't follow me on there, and you're keen to see new stuff as soon as I make it, may I recommend followin' me via that link above.

Anyway, to catch up, I'll post a few year.  Now, the Gus and Call characters were drawn some time ago, and I've already put 'em up on the internet, but given that they're part of a set of sort I thought it best to repost them.  Anyway, hope you enjoy!













Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Glowing Louisiana Bayou Monster


"There were legends of a hidden lake unglimpsed by mortal sight, in which dwelt a huge, formless white polypous thing with luminous eyes…"

From H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu.  Having spent the first half of my childhood playing in creeks and swamps and bayous growing up in Louisiana, I’ve always been especially drawn to horror stories set amongst the pines and cyprus, mostly ‘cause I was always just a little bit worried that I’d run into a monster when I stayed out there after dark.

 I know this guy ain’t exactly formless, but hey, artistic license.  

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Peter and Joseph Crogan, 1900

Did a watercolor of Peter Crogan (protagonist of Crogan's March) at age 15 with his dad Joseph, in South Africa.  I've got biographies of sorts for all the Crogan characters (which grow as I learn more about specific periods) and I intend these fellas to fight in the 2nd Boer War.


Monday, November 11, 2013

Character-a-Day: Pedro Romero

Today's character is also from Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Pedro Romero.

The original art for this one is available for sale.  8.5x11," ink on 80# stock, shipped the Tuesday after purchase.  First come, first serve.

Pick the cost based on your location

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Character-a-Day: Bill Gorton

Today's character is also from Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Bill Gorton.


The original art for this one is available for sale.  8.5x11," ink on 80# stock, shipped the Tuesday after purchase.  First come, first serve.

Pick the cost based on your location

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Character-a-Day: Robert Cohn

Today's character is also from Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Robert Cohn.


The original art for this one is available for sale.  8.5x11," ink on 80# stock, shipped the Tuesday after purchase.  First come, first serve.

Pick the cost based on your location

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Character-a-Day: Lady Brett Ashley

Today's character is also from Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Lady Brett Ashley.

The original art for this one is available for sale.  8.5x11," ink on 80# stock, shipped the Tuesday after purchase.  First come, first serve.

Pick the cost based on your location

Monday, November 4, 2013

Character-a-Day: Jake Barnes

Today starts a series of characters from Ernest Hemingway's THE SUN ALSO RISES.  First up: narrator Jake Barnes!



The original art for this one is available for sale.  8.5x11," ink on 80# stock, shipped the Tuesday after purchase.  First come, first serve.

Pick the cost based on your location

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Character-a-Day: The Phantom of the Opera

The last of this year's thirteen Halloween guys, the Phantom of the Opera!  The worst voice coach/singing teacher EVER.



The original art for this one is available for sale.
SOLD!

Friday, October 4, 2013

Character-a-Day: Scarecrow

Today's Halloween character is a scarecrow.

October meant a lot of things for me as a kid, but one of my favorites was that we'd get to play cornfield tag.  I grew up in a very rural farming community, and many of the houses in which we lived were close to cornfields, sometimes butting right up against them.  There are few games more terrifying or exhilarating than cornfield tag, in which kids run around near blind, unsure as to whether or not their pursuer was inches from them, separated from view by a wall of crop.  Sometimes the person who was "it" would just sit and wait for someone to run into their row.  And there was the perpetual terror of getting lost forever, the certainty that you should have hit the edge of the field by now, and that maybe you'd gotten turned around.

If any of us had ever seen a scarecrow in there, we'd likely have wet our pants.



The original art for this one is available for sale.
SOLD!

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Character-a-Day: Count Dracula

Today's character is Count Dracula.  I tried penciling him dozens of times with his arm up behind a cape, wearing a top hat, and it just didn't fly.  So here's the old, tired standard of upper crust Transylvanian garb with a Vlad Tepes hat.  I like this version better, but I wish I could've made the top hat work.  Maybe NEXT halloween!



The original art for this one is available for sale.  8.5x11," ink on 80# stock, shipped the Tuesday after purchase.  First come, first serve.
SOLD!