Unwanted Valentines:
Blaine the Mono
This Unwanted Valentine is a mash-up of Stephen King and "The Simpsons". Blaine the Mono is the (dare I say it?) crazy train from King's "Dark Tower" series--a twisted, self-aware monorail that loves riddles and is on a suicide run hoping to take Roland and his Ka-Tet with him.
From "The Simpsons", it's the awesome card Ralph Wiggum gets from Lisa Simpson for Valentine's Day after she takes pity on him. Ralph takes the card as an invitation to be Lisa's boyfriend. A very sweet episode, all around. And it contains one of my Top 20 favorite lines from "The Simpsons":
RALPH: "The doctors said I wouldn't have so many nose bleeds if I kept my finger outta there."
Here is a screen capture of the famous card that Lisa Simpson gave to Ralph Wiggum.
Now, of course one cannot have a mash-up of Blaine the Mono and "The Simpsons" without invoking the much beloved song from "Marge vs. The Monorail". (The song begins about one minute into the video.)
Also, Blaine is a Pain. :-)
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STEP ONE: Here are the pencils for Blaine and Mono, done with blue lead on a sheet of card stock. I also included one of the skull/hearts I was going to insert into the card, as well. I even accidentally had the foresight to draw only a single rail on the train tracks, just to head off any comments about Blaine being a MONORAIL. ;-)
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STEP TWO: I did the inks with a Sharpie bleed-proof pen and scanned it into PhotoShop.
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STEP THREE: I figured it would be more creepy to do a more realistic skull on the cartoonish train, so I added a layer and did a more painted-looking skull overtop the train's face.
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STEP FOUR: Here's everything all together. I colored everything with a MULTIPLY Layer, with some extra highlights on the skull done over top a New Layer. I also duplicated the skull/hearts and scattered them about to match the "I Choo-Choo-Choose You" card.
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Done with pen-and-ink on 8-1/2" x 11" cardstock and colored digitally.
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