Blue Steele

Even though I've posted several things over the last couple of days, I'm beginning to feel like I'm in a rut. My sketches don't seem to be working out the way I would like them to, and my main source material (my monster movie books), have just about exhausted themselves. So what's the perfect thing to tackle when you're having trouble making things work? Draw one of the people whose likeness gives you the most trouble. That's what I did. I drew a Barbara Steele a few months back, and while graphically it was pretty nice, the likeness wasn't all that great. I like this one much better. It actually kind of looks like her now.
I'm still working on some commission pieces and trying to work on some other personal pieces. I'm also trying to join Art Jumble, as I am already thinking about my 2010 New Year's Resolution, and how I would like to take on that challenge. I am still waiting to hear back from the administrators there. (fingers crossed ladies & gents).

Rower!

I'm a huge fan of Larry Blamire's film 'The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra', and I'm surprised at myself for not getting around to drawing some of this films great characters before now. This is a very 'toon-style' version of Animala, the woman made from 4 forest animals. I did a sketch of the Betty character some time ago, but haven't gotten around to making a final. I have so many ideas of 'Lost Skeleton' pieces that I would like to do, I guess I will just get around to them as I can. So this is Animala 1.0.

And if you've never heard of 'Lost Skeleton', check out the trailer below:

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!!

Well, Thanksgiving has arrived! The end of the fall/harvest season. Today I will be enjoying MST3K and having a faux turkey roast and a terrific broccoli casserole. My little festive drawing is inspired by two sources.

1) A rare cartoon from 1949 I read about on the Cartoon Brew blog called 'The 3 Minnies: Sota, Tonka, and Ha-Ha'. You can read more about it here. This post was from June of 2007, and sadly the video link no longer works. But I swear that I have seen this when I was a kid. Anyway I fell in love with this still.

and 2) This terrific vintage Thanksgiving greeting card. Last month I posted a link to the Flickr account of a vintage collector riptheskull. He has a terrific collection of vintage Halloween Items, and he also has a great collection of vintage Thanksgiving cards. I really enjoyed looking thru these, some of them seem very Halloween-ish. Here are a few examples:

I also wanted to share this old Ub Iwerks cartoon 'Jack Frost' from 1934. This is one of my favorites to watch around this time of year. I really love the singing Jack o Lanterns & the scarecrow.

Now, that Thanksgiving has arrived tomorrow Christmas will completely take over. Ug! Now, I'm not a Christmas hater. The biggest problem that I have with Christmas is that stores try to push their merchandise earlier & earlier each year. I hate going into a store to look at Halloween stuff, only to find that there is Christmas stuff out as well. And of course between now and the end of the year, I will do everything in my power to stay away from Holiday Shopping areas. But there are things about Christmas that I do like. And I'm thinking about doing a Christmas Countdown of sorts. Or maybe a '25 Things About Christmas that I Like'. So that should be a fun little experiment. Stay Tuned, and hope you all have a great Thanksgiving Day!

It's almost here...

I have been super busy this past week. My current new job is particularly demanding, so this past week I've done nothing but sleep, work, sleep. Some times eat. Maybe. So now I have a few days off to recover & enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday. I'll be getting up in the morning to watch the Macy's Parade and have some cinnamon rolls. Then I plan on spending a good portion of the day watching Mystery Science Theater 3000. Some of you might remember many years ago, Comedy Central would have the MST3K Turkey Day Marathon. Ah, those were the days. They would start Wed. night and run them for about 24 hrs. I would stay up as late as I could on Wed., then take a nap so I could get up and watch more. Well, this year, I'm going to watch some of my DVDs, back to back. I have two of the box sets, and last year I discovered a place online that carries all the rest of the episodes that are not available in official release. For $6 each, you get a plain white disc with only a show number written on it. The quality is about as good as a VHS tape, but I don't really care about that. I just wanted to watch some of my favorites again. If you're interested in picking up some MST3K episodes, here's where I got mine Cheepins.com

I'm excited because I just ordered a few that I don't really remember seeing before, and I've been saving them for tomorrow. I was going to order the movie 'Santa Claus', a Mexican Children's film from the late 50's where Santa battles Satan (or Pitch, rather). However, it has been taken off the Cheepins list, as it is going to be released in a box set, due out at the beginning of December. I highly recommend it!

Vertigo

This month's CHFB challenge was Alfred Hitchcock. I knew right away that 'Vertigo' was the film I would work from. If I ever made a top 10 list of my all time favorite movies, this would be on it for sure. I wanted to try to do a kind of pulp paperback novel kind of thing for this one.

Dracula's Daughter

Happy Friday the 13th everybody. I'm getting back to the drawing board now that the Halloween blog mania has started to die down. Or at least I'm not frantically trying to find something to post daily.

I just finished this piece of Countess Zaleska aka 'Dracula's Daughter' from the 1936 film. This was Universal's first sequel to 'Dracula' which starred Bela Lugosi. This time around there was no Dracula or Lugosi to be found. Stepping into the main vampire role was Gloria Holden, who played, well, Dracula's Daughter. Of the Universal Dracula sequels, I actually prefer 'Son of Dracula', but I do like 'Dracula's Daughter'. And the countess presented a unique personality on screen.

I made this sketch several months ago and only last night did I think of how I wanted to execute the final piece. This was an experiment with Illustrator's Gradient tools. I thought it turned out pretty well. She looks very art deco goth!

Guy Fawkes Day

I hope that everyone had a very Happy Halloween. Now that I don't have to post everyday, I'm trying to get back to the drawing board. Since today is November 5th I wanted to share a page from a book that I picked up at the thrift store. The book is from a Childcraft book from 1964. I don't know much about these, they are kind of like a set of encyclopedias for children. The cover says 'The How & Why Library'. This is Vol. 5, Holidays & Customs, and it has lots of great illustrations. This spread talks about Guy Fawkes Day, which is today!
I would like to share some more of these pages in the future & hopefully by then I will have a scanner. Right now I'm having to photograph everything, which is kind of a pain.
Well, Happy Guy Fawkes or Bonfire Night my friends!