Day 12: Plan 9 From Outer Space - 31 Days of HELL-o-Ween 2019

31 Days of HELL-o-Ween 2019

Day 12: Plan 9 From Outer Space

"Plan 9 From Outer Space", along with "Invasion of the Saucer Men", is probably one of the movies that terrified me most as a dumb, naive kid; it terrifies me as an adult to think the six-year old me was afraid of this movie.  And thus began my inordinate fondness of horrible, B-Movies growing up.  Alas, I've seen probably 75% to 80% of the movies on "Mystery Science Theater 3000" with Joel/Mike and the robots in the corner.  A childhood wasted.  Sigh...

This was done with charcoal and white chalk on 8-1/2" x 11" gray-toned cardstock.  Below are the pics showing the progress of the picture.

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Done with charcoal and white chalk on 8-1/2" x 11" gray cardstock.

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Happy 100th Birthday to Jack Kirby! (Part 2)

Jack Kirby's 100th Birthday (Part 2)

I had two different ideas for Jack Kirby's 100th Birthday, and just barely enough time for both, so here we are...  :-)  In this case, I thought a halo for comic's patron Saint made from a Kirby Krackle would be fitting.  Hail to the King, baby!

It was done mostly the same way as the previous post, so excuse the repetitive steps through the work in progress, below.

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STEP ONE:  Here is the original charcoal drawing, done with charcoal and carbon pencil, done on 8-1/2" x 11" gray toned cardstock.

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STEP TWO:  Here is the finished charcoal drawing, where I used a white charcoal pencil to work in the highlights.

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STEP THREE:  I imported the charcoal drawing into Photoshop and modified it, using a mixture of Multiply Layers and Normal Layers.  I corrected a few things that were slightly off (the right-hand cheek needed to be extended out a little bit more, for example), and blended some of the charcoal digitally.  Hmmm, traditional charcoal crossed with digital chalk brush...  Once again, I darkened the outside edge of the paper to draw in more contrast with the Kirby Krackle halo.

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Done with charcoal, carbon pencil, and white chalk on 8-1/2" x 11" toned paper and enhanced in Photoshop.

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Happy 100th Birthday to Jack Kirby!

Jack Kirby's 100th Birthday

Today would have been the 100th Birthday of Jack Kirby, truly the King of Comics.  I can't add to everything which has been said about Jack Kirby and his importance to the history of comic books and pop culture, but his work has had a grand influence on my life.

Yeah, his writing was a bit... stilted, with his characters talking as if your grandparents were trying to use the "hip lingo" of the day (which is straight up what it was, now that I think of it), but there was an earnestness which shined through--he wore his heart on his sleeve.  His art was distorted, bordering on the grotesque, but it is visually captivating and displayed so much dynamism and power.

And the ideas!  They are truly amazing and astonishing: a One Man Army Corps set in a corporatized future; Space Gods who have experimented with life on Earth, giving rise to humans, monsters, and gods; mythical sci-fi battles between forces of good and evil... I am obsessed with many of his creations just for their sheer brilliance--they occupy a place in my imagination so deep it has bonded to my DNA.  OMAC, The Celestials, M.O.D.O.K., Galactus, Silver Surfer, New Gods, Inhumans, Eternals, Kamandi, Devil Dinosaur, and so many more.

So, I shall pour some out (ink, in this case) in honor of Jack "King" Kirby:

"You truly are the King of Kings!"

(To be said ala Troy McClure in "The Simpsons" episode, "A Star is Burns")

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STEP ONE:  Here is the original charcoal drawing, done with charcoal and carbon pencil, done on 8-1/2" x 11" gray toned cardstock.

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STEP TWO:  Here is the finished charcoal drawing, where I used a white charcoal pencil to work in the highlights.

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STEP THREE:  I imported the charcoal drawing into Photoshop and colorized it, using a mixture of Multiply Layers and Normal Layers.  I also darkened the edges of the paper to give more focus to Kirby's drawing hand in the drawing.

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Done with charcoal, carbon pencil, and white chalk on 8-1/2" x 11" toned paper and colorized in Photoshop.

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Batman '66 - Adam West (Updated)

Batman '66 / Adam West

Well, I finally got around to finishing up installing and updating everything, and colorized the Batman '66/Adam West picture from last week.  As with the Princess Leia/Carrie Fisher tribute from last year, I decided to keep the colors fairly muted and low-key.

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Done with charcoal, carbon pencil, and white chalk on 8-1/2" x 11" toned cardstock; colorized in Photoshop.

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Batman '66 - Adam West

Batman '66

In remembrance of the late, great Adam West.  

Rest in Peace, Old Chum...

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(I had intended to do a colorized version of the drawing, but that's when my computer decided to crap out on me and needed to be reformatted.  So, I guess I'll be posting that in a day or three after I get everything reinstalled and adjusted back to normal.  Sigh...)

STEP ONE:  Here are the rough outlines, sketched out with a charcoal pencil.

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STEP TWO:  Here's the approximate halfway point in the drawing.  I used some softer charcoal pencils and carbon pencils to smear around and blend the shadows.  Mostly, I just use my finger to smudge everything around, but do use paper blending stumps on a few spots for fine details.

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STEP THREE:  This is the finished charcoal drawing.

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STEP FOUR:  I used a white charcoal pencil to add highlights.  On the gray background, the white chalk really makes the highlights "pop".  Basically, by using the toned paper, you are able to get three values for the price of two.

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Done with charcoal, carbon pencil, and white chalk on 8-1/2" x 11" toned cardstock.

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Princess Leia

Princess Leia

Just 'cuz 2016 needed to get in one more knee to the groin of my childhood...

The year 2016 on my Blog started with a painting of Luke Skywalker, looking pensively off into the future, and ends with a drawing of Princess Leia (nee the late Carrie Fisher).  

It is a fearful symmetry that I find strangely fitting: My Blog started the year with "A New Hope", and ended with a loss of "Hope" (with an intentional nod to "Rogue One").

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STEP ONE:  I roughed in a line drawing with a charcoal pencil on an 8-1/2" x 11" gray, toned cardstock.

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STEP TWO:  Here is the (mostly) finished charcoal portion of the drawing, showing the shading and modelling the features.  

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STEP THREE:  I used a white chalk pencil to create highlights and the white areas.  Here is a secret: do your black-and-white drawings on a toned paper to give it an extra "pop".  It gives you three values (dark, medium tone, light) for the price of two (black-and-white).  It's almost like cheating!

Also, the right-eye was a little off, so I re-drew it.  It's still not perfect, but vastly improved.

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STEP FOUR:  In Photoshop, I created a MULTIPLY Layer to colorize the drawing; on a NORMAL Layer, I did final highlights over top.  I decided keep the colors muted and let most of the grain from the charcoal to show through, and just keep the background as is.

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This was done in charcoal and colorized in Photoshop.

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Harley Quinn (Colorized)

Harley Quinn

And here's the Colorized version.

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The first box just shows the flat colors done with a MULTIPLY Layer.  The next step shows some of the variation in the lights and darks on the same layer; I also put some texture and lettering on the hammer.  And in the last step pictured, I pushed the final highlights on a NEW Layer; I dropped the opacity of the lettering to 45% and went in with the Eraser Tool to make it seem like the lettering was a bit faded from over-use.  Finally, I thought it needed a little more focus, so I used a large air brush tool to darken the background around Harley Quinn as seen in the final picture above.

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Here is something a little bit different: an animated .gif of each step in the process from beginning to end.  It's sort of a larger file (1.4MB), so it may take a bit longer to load depending on your internet connection.

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This was done with charcoal on 11" x 14" toned Strathmore drawing paper, then imported into PhotoShop.

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Harley Quinn (Black and White)

Harley Quinn

I noticed my Blog was quickly becoming nothing but art for my posts to the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Redux Blog.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course--it's a great Blog and lots of fun to work on.  But, I think I've been getting a bit lazy and decided I need to change things up a bit.  And, with that, I thought it would be fun to do some character studies.  In this case, it's a drawing of Harley Quinn.  I will probably do up a colorized version in the next day or two.

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STEP ONE:  I used soft, vine charcoal to loosely sketch the pose on a sheet of 11" x 14" Strathmore toned paper.  I like working on a toned surface as it gives three values for the price of two (the mid-toned paper, plus black charcoal and white chalk), as opposed to just the two values of black charcoal on white paper.

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STEP TWO:  I smear the charcoal to soften the lines and push it into general shaded areas.

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STEP THREE:  I used charcoal and carbon pencils to build up shading and a kneaded eraser to carve back out some highlights.

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STEP FOUR:  Here is the finished charcoal drawing.  I also didn't care for the angle of the right-foot in the original drawing and changed it.

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STEP FIVE:  I went in an added some highlights with a white charcoal pencil.  I then took this picture and opened it in PhotoShop to clean it up a bit and use it as a framework to continue the drawing/painting digitally.

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STEP SIX:  In PhotoShop, I darkened and smoothed out the shading, bumped up the highlights more, and also changed the expression on her face, as well as corrected a few other odd-and-ends.  I thought I'd leave this one as black-and-white for now, and do a colorized version in a couple days.  :-)

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This was done with charcoal on 11" x 14" toned Strathmore drawing paper, then imported into PhotoShop.

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Merry Krampus! (Part II)

THE KRAMPUS (Part II)

Sure, it's a little past Christmas, but I decided to do another Krampus drawing--This one is a little more on model.  Again, I thought it was more amusing to have him look like he decided to have his portrait done at the local K-Mart's Photo Center (it doesn't take much to amuse me, apparently).

Alas, after I had the drawing halfway finished I began to think it looked like something Ed "Big Daddy" Roth would have drawn.  I just needed to put Krampus in a dragster with a large gear shift and he would fit right in.

Krampus and Rat Fink -- Separated at Birth?

For those of you who are interested, here's the process:

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STEP ONE:  I used vine charcoal to roughly draw out the figure on a 9" x 12" piece of Strathmore Gray Toned drawing paper.  I really like working on toned paper, as it gives three immediate values Light, Mid-Tone, and Dark, rather than just two (Dark marks on Light paper).

Once again, I didn't bother using a photo-reference this time, as I had just done about 8 hours of figure drawing throughout the week and felt I had this relatively simple portrait in the bag.  Of course, pride usually goes before the fall.  :-D

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STEP TWO:  And, as I normally do, I smeared everything into a soft, blurry mess.  Usually, I do this to lay down some of the beginnings of where the shadows will go and to generally just keep the charcoal on the paper.  As vine charcoal is so soft and will smudge if touched, I find it better to smear it around to keep it on the page, ironically.

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STEP THREE:  I then begin to use charcoal and carbon pencils to build up the darks and shadows within the picture and carve out highlights with a kneaded eraser to see where the light source will fall.  You may be surprised how much drawing you can do with an eraser.  :-)

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STEP FOUR:  I finished up the darks on the page.  In and of itself, the drawing is mostly OK as dark lines on mid-toned paper.  However, it is adding the white highlights which really make a drawing on toned paper "pop".

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STEP FIVE:  I used a General's white charcoal pencil to add whites and highlights to the drawing.  The photo sort of fails to catch some of the subtle gradations, however, I was hoping it would show enough to demonstrate the big difference adding just a little highlight can make.  At this point, I just took a picture with my camera and imported it into PhotoShop to finish the drawing and begin adding color.

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STEP SIX:  I decided to just finish the black-and-white portion in PhotoShop, since I would have to do the background and most of the finalized fur effects digitally, anyways.  For the fur, I used a brush which was included on the disc of one of the (many) "ImagineFX" magazines I have laying about the house; the brush consists of about a dozen or so dots of slightly differing sizes and line densities and give a really nice effect.

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STEP SEVEN:  Over top the black-and-white drawing, I added a MULTIPLY LAYER to do most of the colorization, but also did some coloring overtop the drawing directly on a normal layer, as well--mostly for final highlights and areas that need a little more "brightness" to them.  At the end, I flattened all layers, did some minor adjustments to the levels, and called it "good 'nuff!" 

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This was done with charcoal, carbon pencil, and white chalk on 9" x 12" Strathmore gray toned paper and digitally colored in PhotoShop.

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Merry Krampus!

THE KRAMPUS

'Tis the Season for drawings of Santa's Little Helper, the Krampus.  Originally, I was going to a tripped out version, with his tongue out and all crazy.  But, I thought it would be more amusing to do a version of the Krampus as if he was just walked into the K-Mart Photo Center to have a portrait done.  I know, I'm a little off model for the Krampus--not nearly hairy enough and I kept his tongue in his mouth for the picture.  I figured it was funnier to have him seem like a middle-aged demon, balding, slight paunch, but just plugging away at his job.  :-)  I may have to do a corrected version of him in the near future.

Here is the process, for those of you interested...

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STEP ONE:  I blocked everything in using vine charcoal on gray bogus paper (it's a step up from newsprint, but has more of a "tooth", which is really good for charcoal and such).  I didn't bother with a reference picture this time, as I had done quite a bit of figure/portrait drawing this week, so I thought I could handle it without this time.  :-)

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STEP TWO:  I then smear it into a soft, blurry mess... Just to give an idea of where the shadows would fall and the light source, etc.

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STEP THREE:  I begin to work on building up highlights by erasing out charcoal with a kneaded eraser and darken the shadows with a charcoal pencil and carbon pencil.

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STEP FOUR:  More of the same.  I also add in some white chalk as an extra highlight.  The gray background is a good middle-tone--it's like getting three values for the price of two (dark, middle, light), rather than just the white and black of charcoal on white paper. 

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STEP FIVE:  Here is the finished charcoal drawing.

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STEP SIX:  I then scanned the drawing into PhotoShop and used a mix of the MULTIPLY Layer and standard layers to colorize it and do some minor painting.  

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Done with charcoal, carbon pencil, and white chalk on 9" x 12" gray bogus paper, and then colorized in PhotoShop.

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B-Movie Re-Make: Invasion of the Saucer Men

B-Movie: Invasion of the Saucer Men

I have an inordinate fondness for old, cheesy B-Movies.  Growing up, I watched almost anything with monsters, robots, space ships, and aliens.  "Invasion of the Saucer Men", "It Conquered the World", "Plan 9 From Outer Space", "Godzilla Vs. Mothra", "Gamera", "I Was a Teen-Age Werewolf", "The Brain that Wouldn't Die" (also known as "The Head That Wouldn't Die"), and so forth.  I watched them all with the wide-eyed wonder and terror that can only be generated from being 6 years old and having a rather over-active imagination.

In fact, as a bit of sad commentary on my life, I have probably seen 80% of the movies from "Mystery Science Theater 3000" with Joel/Mike, Tom Servo, and Crow down in the corner heckling the movie.  (Que the "Sad Trombone" music for a youth mostly wasted...)  That said, I still have a broad, internal smile for giant paper-mache heads, bad special effects, and terrible dialog and stories of these movies of my childhood.

For those who are interested in seeing some of these (cough) "Classics", most of them are Public Domain and can be seen in their entirety on YouTube, or even downloaded at the Internet Archive.

Just for fun, here's the step-by-step...

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STEP ONE:  First, I did a quick charcoal sketch on 11" x 14" Strathmore (#80) toned paper.  The gray paper acts as a mid-tone, with the charcoal for darks and shadows and white chalk for highlights, it is like getting 3 tones for the price of 2 (black and white, plus the gray of the paper).

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STEP TWO AND THREE:  Next, I lay in some rough shading and blend everything into a soft, blurry mess.  Then I began to model the form a bit more and lift out some charcoal with a kneaded eraser. 

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STEP FOUR AND FIVE:  I continue to push shadows and lift out highlights with a kneaded eraser, then use white chalk to better establish a light source.

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STEP SIX:  I imported the picture into Photoshop and did some digital touch up in black-and-white.  I used a Chalk brush in PhotoShop for the background, and to add a little more texture to the drawing. 

Hmmm, maybe I should have just left the drawing in black-and-white, since the movies themselves were in black-and-white.  :-)

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STEP SEVEN:  Once in PhotoShop, I added a MULTIPLY Layer and colorized the drawing.  I realized a little too late that I should have included  their creepy hands into the drawing/portrait.  The back of their hands had an eyeball on it and they had retractable, hypodermic needles for fingernails.  To a 6-year-old John Douglas, these aliens were terrifying!  :-)

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Done with charcoal, carbon pencil, and white chalk on 11" x 14" Strathmore (#80) toned paper and colored in PhotoShop.

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