Day 08: The Breakfast Club: Frankenberry - 31 Days of HELL-O-Ween 2025

31 Days of HELL-O-Ween 2025:
The Breakfast Club: Frankenberry

This is an idea that I've had previously--using the Universal Monsters as the Monster Cereal characters--but this time I am doing all the Breakfast Club in a larger, painted format.  First out of the gate is Frankenstein's Monster as Frankenberry.

Like "The Horrors of Sesame Street", I'm just doing the digital pencils and finished painting.  Alas, for these larger ones, I'm just painting as fast as I can to stay on schedule. Sigh...

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STEP ONE:  Here are the quick pencils I did digitally in Clip Studio Paint on an 11" x 14" canvas @ 300dpi.  I printed it out on trimmed down 11" x 14" paper.

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STEP TWO:  I transferred the drawing onto a 12" x 16" gessoed chipboard using Carbon Paper/Transfer Paper, which I then painted.

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Done with Acrylic on 12" x 16" Gessoed Chipboard.

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Frankenberry

Frankenberry

This was a commission of sorts.  It's a long, convoluted story, involving the purchase of the "King Shark" painting, that leading to a commission, which in turn lead to this commission (of sorts).  As the "31 Days of HELL-O-Ween" just concluded, I thought it would be amusing to paint a picture of the Boris Karloff Frankenstein hot pink and label him Franenberry, and then added the usual accoutrements of the various pressure gauges and Steam Punk-ish goggles.  Ta-da!

I've been meaning to do some more work with Frankenberry and update the Monster Cereal drawings I did a while ago.  Heck, I even thought about doing a 5-10 page comic of a "Monster Squad" style mash-up with the Monster Cereal characters... and may still in the near future.  Keep coming back to find out!

As for the actual commission which started this whole thing off, I'm not sure if I'll be posting it next week, or in March, during March M.O.D.O.K. Madness, since it involves M.O.D.O.K.  Maybe both!  Again, keep coming back and watch this space!  (Quiet, Admiral Ackbar, it's NOT a trap!)

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STEP ONE:  Here are the pencils, scribbled out on 6" x 9" Canson (#140) watercolor paper.

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STEP TWO:  This is the first pass with acrylic paint.  I decided to keep it as monochromatic as possible by using only Quinacridone Magenta and Titanium White.  One problem was that Quinacridone Magenta is semi-opaque at best, and I had been a little heavy-handed with my pencils--using a regular, 2B lead.  If I had been thinking ahead, I probably should have used either a red lead or some other reddish colored pencil/watercolor pencil I had laying around.  It took a lot more work to cover some of those pencil lines.  Then again, a few of them sort of add to the drawing, so who knows?

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STEP THREE:  And here's the finished painting.  I avoided adding Carbon Black into the painting, as I sort of liked the effect of it looking like a Magenta plate from a printing press.  It does make it a bit more challenging to have the darkest value in the painting be about a 70% black in value, but it also made it stand out a bit more for adjusting the gamut of values of the painting.

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This was done with acrylic paint on 6" x 9" Canson XL (#140) watercolor paper.

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The Breakfast Club (Frankenberry)

Frankenberry

One of the ways I'm hoping to do more posts on this blog is to do little things between the bigger projects I'm currently working on.  While doodling, I thought it would be amusing to do a re-imagining of the Monster Cereal characters; in this case Frankenberry as a literal (literary?) Frankenstein's Monster.  

I didn't bother with a reference picture in this case (and it may show), but I think it has an almost Fritz Lang sort of feel to it.  

Here's the process for those who are interested....

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STEP ONE:  I used a mixture of gesso and size (glue) on a 5" x 7-1/2" piece of Crescent 102 illustration board.  Then I drew Frankenberry with charcoal and carbon pencil.  The gesso/glue mixture had a good tooth to it so the charcoal worked well.  Also, you could really lift off the charcoal if needed and erase almost back to the white underneath.  In this case, it was small enough to throw on my scanner and import it into PhotoShop.

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STEP TWO:  In PhotoShop, I created a new layer set to "Multiply", which will save the line work and shading while overlaying color over top.  I did a simple linear gradient from a light magenta on the bottom, to a darker magenta on the top to match the lighting from below.

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STEP THREE:  Next, I did some highlights with white and light magenta on the gradient layer, pushed a few shadows with a dark magenta on a separate "Multiply" layer, and a few little touch-ups and final highlights on the top layer set to "Normal".  I figured it was good enough and here it is.

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This was done with charcoal and carbon pencil on a 5" x 7-1/2" Crescent 102 illustration board, then colored digitally in PhotoShop.

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