And done. I’ve added highlights to the figure and cleaned up the fire and lightning so that there’s a strong contrast between the figure and background.

Happy Halloween!

For the next step I create an empty layer set to Multiply. I want to keep this simple so I only laid down one color, a cheery yellow that, once combined with colors already present, becomes a bit sickly looking.

Next I copy the original illustration again to a third layer also set to Multiply. I adjust contrast so I get some good solid blacks.

After this, color and highlights!

Once the initial illustration has been scanned into Photoshop (and any glaring problems cleaned up) I create a duplicate layer, set to multiply and blurred 5 pixels using the gaussian blur filter. That adds a bit more … meat … to the original illustration.

With Halloween coming up in a few days I’m going to increase my posting so that the final version of this drawing posts on the 31st.

Originally I’d intended to just do a black and white illustration but adding color seemed like such fun that I couldn’t resist. This layer of color is colored pencil on the original drawing. It was at this point that I cut up the illustration and mailed it, piece by piece, to Coop.

And then I added shading and tone with a good old fashioned B art pencil.

Partly because I was working on this and partly because I noticed that the third book had come out I started reading Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein. Despite having a bit of an obsession for the Frankenstein Monster I don’t seem to need to pay attention to all the movies and novels that feature him (or versions of him). The movies are often entertaining. And, as I write this, I realize that, with the exception of a story by Brian Hodge in one of his short story collections I haven’t read any other prose continuations or sequels to Shelly’s novel. That’s not really surprising I suppose. My Frankensteinian interest is newer than most of my other monster obsessions.

I finished Prodigal Son the first book in Koontz’s trilogy. It’s an easy read – clean prose, short chapters and a variety of characters. I’ve got the other two volumes on request at the library. It will be interesting to see where the story goes.

The blacks are basically all in here. I’ll add a little more with a pen before I start shading but that will be minor stuff. I turned up the contrast on this scan so I could get a sense of what the illustration would look like in just black and white.

Background blacks finished. On to the figure.

One of the more challenging parts of designing a new creature is finding new places to put the stitches. It’s obvious that the Frankensteins are chemists not surgeons. And it’s also pretty obvious that they have a thing for weird ugly scars. It takes effort to be this sloppy.

Sometimes the initial sketch takes the longest amount of time. In the case of this piece the inking was the most time consuming – lots of black. I suppose someday, when I’m in a hurry, I’ll resort to putting down outlines for where I want black and then filling in the darkness in Photoshop. I’ll be sad when that happens. I like having physical drawings that are finished in their own right.