RePulped!

Some time in December, I was reading the blog 'Strange Kids Club' and there was a post about David Hartman re-drawing a Casper the Friendly Ghost cover. Artists doing their own versions of old comic covers?! What a great fun idea!! So I followed a link to this blog called 'Covered'. A few days after I found this blog, as luck would have it, there was a post entitled 'Like Minded Sites' which included 'Repaneled' where artists recreate interior comic panels, 'Cornered' where artist recreate those little boxes that appear on the top left of comics that usually have the price and date (if I'm wrong feel free to correct me), and 'Rejected by Covered'. Rejected by Covered is just that. If you didn't make the cut at Covered, then Rejected will post it. I have to show the banners for these two blogs because they're so great.

In the comments of Covered's 'Like Minded Sites' there was a post regarding a new blog starting on 1/1/11, called 'RePulped' where artists remake pulp fiction covers. I decided that I had to do this one first! Originally I had a sci-fi cover picked out as my first submission, but it's one of those things that's probably going to take me a while to finish. I wanted to do something quick and fun, so I went with this simple Ghost Stories cover. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. I will get to the sci-fi cover when I have more time. It's all sketched out and everything. I also have a 'Covered' type project that I want to do here on the blog, that is going to be a tutorial of sorts.

You can see my Ghost Stories piece on RePulped here.

And Anthony Vukojevich liked my piece enough to plug me on 'Repaneled' here.

Repaneled is also something I would like to do in the future. I have a few ideas already!

Strange Love

I've been in a big fat creative rut this month. The weather has been terrible, my 'real' job has been stressing me out more than usual, and I've been in a funk because I haven't produced anything new in a while. I have some outstanding & looming projects that I need to get finished, so in an attempt to get some creative spark, I decided that I would take the time to work up a finished piece based on a sketch I did recently of Yutte Stensgaard as 'Mircalla' from the film 'Lust for a Vampire' (1970).

'Lust for a Vampire' has never really been a favorite of mine, but it's been growing on me. This is the second film in Hammer's 'Karnstein' trilogy. The first being 'The Vampire Lovers' (my favorite), and the third being 'Twins of Evil'. I've been on a 70's Hammer Horror kick this month, triggered by the recent DVD release of 'Vampire Circus' (1972) to DVD/BluRay. I enjoyed 'Vampire Circus' so much, I decided to go back and re-visit some of the Hammers from that time period, that I don't really watch as often as some of the earlier films. Re-watching 'Lust' I find that I actually do enjoy it. It might not be as good as 'Lovers' but it does have it's own charm. And Ralph Bates, who I never tire of looking at.

I Eat Birds of Paradise for Breakfast...

I did this piece back in September of 2010, and for whatever reason, I never got around to posting it. Probably busy thinking of other things (like Halloween) at the time. It was right around 'back to school' time, and I was feeling the need to watch 'Blood of Dracula', a fun, 1950's teenage vampire flick. In fact they probably just could have called it, 'I was a Teenage Vampire'. I had been wanting to draw the character Nancy, turned vampire for awhile, so here she is! AND, here is the trailer:

It's a New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! Welcome to 2011!

I'm still busy trying to finish up projects from 2010, but I've got some fun stuff coming up soon after that. Stay tuned....

A Christmas Favorite!

Seriously, 'Merry Christmas Mr. Bean' makes me so happy!

Holiday Book Recommendation: Christmas Curiosities

I am a Halloween person. There is no use in trying to fight or argue with that. I think about Halloween & spooky related content almost year round. But what about Christmas? I loved Christmas when I was a kid. It was great. Fun times!! But in the past 10 years or so, Christmas became an aggravation to me, as I hated going into a store the last week of October, and seeing Christmas merchandise. Past few years it's been mid-October. Can't even let the Halloween corpse die, before ushering in the new holiday.

But surely there are some Christmas things out there that a girl like me can relate to right? Well, yes, in fact there are. So I thought I would post a few things over the next couple of weeks that make this jolly holiday interesting to me.

Last year I picked up this book, 'Christmas Curiosities: Odd, Dark, and Forgotten Christmas' by John Grossman. I LOVE this book. This is a fine collection of strange vintage illustrations. I don't have a scanner, so I photographed a few pages just to give you an idea of the book's content.

The actual book in hand! Small in size, big on seasonal strange.

What the heck is wrong with that kid?

Witches at Christmas? Yes, witches!!

Christmas dinner would be way more entertaining if this happened.

I love the bat jockeys. And I really love this art. Apart from the bat jockeys themselves, I love the bare tree and the mountains with that orange setting sun. It has almost a Halloween feeling about it.

Kids might act better today if there was a threat of being tied to a tree & lashed by 'Ol St. Nick.

Speaking of beatings, It's Krampus! I've been a big Krampus fan for many years now, and he seems to be getting more popular every year. More about him later, but if you want to read up on him you can do so here.

Another favorite. Something about the strangeness of it I adore.

A snowman & Christmas tree make out.

A moth goes on a killing spree.

And nothing says 'Merry Christmas' like dead bird.

These are just a few of the many wonderfully strange images this book has to offer. This book is available at Amazon, but it looks like it's only available through Amazon Marketplace sellers. Maybe it's no longer in print? If that's the case, I highly encourage you to order this now before it is out of print & the price skyrockets.

Snow, Man!

I recently completed this cover for a Christmas mash-up compilation put together by one of my favorite mash-up DJs, DJ BC. This is the 5th in the 'Santastic' series, 'Santastic V: Snow, Man!' The website also has the previous 'Santasics' available for download, as well as a few other holiday related mash-ups. And it's FREE! I've just been able to download it today, so I'm listening to it now. Download 'Santastic V: Snow, Man!' Here.