Happy Birthday Me!

My birthday was this week. Yay me! Anyway, no big deal, I had to work. I had many well wishers, and one of my favorite artists ever, Pete Emslie, did this sketch of me. I've been a huge fan of his and I've been following his blog The Cartoon Cave for several years now. I love his work so much and was so thrilled by this drawing, I just had to share it. Ok, I'll shut up now, but look how cute I am!

For my birthday, I bought myself a bicycle. So I'll be out trying not to run down pedestrians this weekend.

ALSO... Do you love 'The Lost Skeleton'? Well, I sure do. So much in fact that I would like to host a tribute to 'The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra' and 'The Lost Skeleton Returns Again'. For two weeks in September, it's 'Lost Skeleton Week! And another week!" I'll be doing a few drawings for it, but I'll mostly be playing host. If you're interested in doing something for the tribute, leave a comment below. I'm mostly looking for art, but if you've made costumes or built a transmutitron that you want to share, that would be cool too. It will most likely be the second and third week of September. Then it will be almost time for 'The Halloween Countdown'!

Fun at the Black Lagoon

Well, I don't know what to say about this one. It pretty much speaks for itself. Everybody knows 'The Creature from the Black Lagoon' right?

I was thinking about doing a series of the Universal Monsters with Monster's Mate of choice. So hopefully, there will be more to follow. I've got some ideas about what I'm going to do for the other ones. I decided to start with the 'Creature', since I've never done a finished piece of him before. And it's a good summer time subject.

Enjoy this trailer:

Right now I'm working on illustrations for the upcoming Little Shoppe of Horrors magazine. This issue will focus on Roman Polanski's 'The Fearless Vampire Killers' aka 'Dance of the Vampires'.

Adventures in Polyester...

Not horror related, unless of course the idea of polyester bell bottoms frighten you. They don't frighten me.

I actually love 70's fashion. I have this great book that I picked up at a book warehouse a few years ago called '70's Fashion Fiascos'. Most of the photos are taken from catalogs from the 1970's.

It's a great book. Last fall, I picked up this book and started doing some sketching from it. Mostly for drawing exercise/practice, and I thought it would be fun. I did a few drawings, but at the time, didn't really have the time to put them into 'final processing'. This past week, I picked up the book again and did some more sketches from it. And tonight, I thought that I would just finish up one, just to see. I'm pretty happy with it, and it didn't take me that long to do. So I will probably end up doing a series of these. Watch out.

If you want to experience some real 70's internet fun, I highly suggest you check out 'Plaid Stallions'. It's awesome!!

Queen of Blood!

I've never really been a big sci-fi watcher, I'm more of the gothic horror type. But over at the Classic Horror Film Board, this month's challenge was 'Aliens'. So I decided to spend some time watching some 50s-60s sci-fi films in the possible hopes of being inspired to draw something from them. I watched 'Angry Red Planet', 'Planet of the Vampires', 'Invaders from Mars', and this one, 'Queen of Blood'. I really enjoyed watching all these movies, and I've got some more lined up to watch later. Check out the trailer:

ALSO:

I now have prints for sale!! Check the bar underneath my blog header for a link to my available prints. Some of these will be 'retired' and not reprinted once they are gone. These include: 'Mummy Trouble' (Hammer's Mummy), 'Alone' (Frankenstein's Creature), 'Trip to the Moon', 'Reptile!', 'Gorgon!', and 'Love on Skull Island' (King Kong).

Nosferina & Lugosi

As some of you probably already know, last October saw the release of Monsterverse's new anthology comic 'Bela Lugosi's Tales from the Grave'. I really enjoyed the first issue, it was a lot of fun. And I'm really looking forward to the second issue that will be released this summer, with a cover by Rick Baker! You can check for updates on this great new comic series here.

This is a piece of fan art that I did last year, around the time that the first issue was released.

I draw Lugosi a lot. Mainly because I never feel like I 'get' him just right. It's become a goal of mine to draw what I would consider to be the 'perfect' Lugosi. So every couple of weeks, I'll do a bunch of Lugosi sketches. I have a bunch of old horror film books, and I'll use them for reference sometimes. This piece was drawn from a famous promotional photo from 'Dracula' featuring Lugosi and actress Helen Chandler who played 'Mina'. It originally was Lugosi & Chandler that I drew. Then I had the idea that I should draw BLTftG's new female character 'Nosferina', in place of Chandler. I've never been a huge fan of Helen Chandler in the Dracula film, and drawing this new icon seemed like more fun to me. I had a good time creating this piece and I'm pretty happy with my Lugosi here (although I will continue my aim for perfection).

By the way, while Lugosi gives me trouble in drawing, Karloff is fun & easy to do. Peter Cushing too.

I leave you with a trailer for 'Bela Lugosi's Tales from the Grave' #1. Pick one up if you haven't already. And be on the look out for issue #2 coming soon!!

Happy 100th Birthday Vincent Price!

If the great Mr. Price were still with us, today would have been his 100th birthday. A few months ago, I was asked by 'Ghoulish' Gary Pullin if I would like to submit a piece of art for a Vincent Price tribute gallery that would be in Rue Morgue's May 2011 issue. Of course I said yes (!!!) There are so many Vincent Price performances that I love, I was having a difficult time trying to decide what I wanted to do. In the end, I decided to go with my favorite of the Poe/Corman films, 'Tomb of Ligeia'. This is a subject that I have done before in fact, back in 2009.

It's amazing to me to look at these two pieces, just to see how much my skills have improved in just two years. Even if I haven't been posting as much art as I did in my first year, I'm always sketching and drawing. And for the record, the 2011 Vincent, probably took me 3 times longer to create than the 2009 Vincent. You can see my original posting of the 2009 Vincent piece here. I also think it's funny that in that post, I mention that I wanted to do a piece based on his ghost story records, and that's what I ended up doing for the Vincentennial art show.

Here's a photo of me, peeking from behind the new Rue Morgue that has my Vincent piece in it!

I still haven't even had time to give my Wonderfest/Rondo recount here, I will try to get that together. Since I've been back I've been busy working on other stuff. One of those things is a step-by-step sort of tutorial kind of thing. I hope to have that ready to post soon.

Vincent Price Presents...

Hey everybody! I'm very, very busy getting ready to make the journey to Kentucky for this year's Wonderfest. I'm excited and nervous and feeling totally unprepared. I can hardly believe that it's next weekend!! The new issue of Rue Morgue is apparently out, although I haven't received my copy yet (I'm told it's on the way), and the bookstores around here usually don't get them until two weeks into the month. I'm going to hold off posting that piece here, until I actually get the printed magazine in hand.

BUT, I've got more than one Vincent to share this month. In addition to being asked to be part of the Rue Morgue Vincent Price art tribute, I was also asked to be part of 'Vincent Price Presents' art gallery show at Star Clipper Comics in St. Louis, MO. This show is part of the Vincentennial celebration. There will be the most awesome Vincent Price film festival there, May 19-28, with special guests Roger Corman and Victoria Price. I would love to go, but I'll only be there in spirit.

And speaking of spirits, I decided that I wanted my Vincent piece for this gallery show to represent my love for Vincent's ghost story records. I first found a copy of 'A Hornbook for Witches' on vinyl at a local public library when I was about 19. I instantly fell in love with it. I made a tape recording of the record and listened to it over & over. It wasn't until about 5-6 years later that I discovered that there were more (!!!) records of Vincent reading stories of ghosts, witches and the like. I found someone online who was selling burned CDs, and ordered all of them. This was before I discovered the wonderful world of 'sharity blogs', like the amazing 'Scar Stuff' (sadly, no longer with working links). But ordering those discs was money well spent! I listen to them a lot.

The 'Vincent Price Presents' gallery show opened last weekend, and will run through June 29. I have 25 signed & numbered prints that are available at Star Clipper. Before I sent off my art to St. Louis, I took a snapshot of my framed #1.

And here is a 'virtual spin around' of the gallery space (wheee):