Step By Step Frankenstein #6


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.

Step by Step Frankenstein #5


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.

Step by Step Frankenstein #3


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.

Step by Step Frankenstein #2


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.

Step by Step Frankenstein #1


This is my latest contribution to the A Patchwork of Flesh illustration blog. Or it will be once it’s finished. I did this sketch during a particularly dead day at the Day Job a month or so ago. Dead days are rare things there these days.

Coop at Patchwork asks people to send in 2.5″ x 3.5″ illustrations. That’s a great size to work at when you want to get a piece done quickly but it doesn’t leave a lot of room to play around. So I decided to do a larger illustration, cut it up and then send him the pieces. That seemed like a good Frankensteinian idea. I’ve been waiting to start posting this series until Coop got all the pieces in the mail. That happened today so …