Of Course There’s a Frankenstein Monster (Color)

Posted on by

And here’s the color version of yesterday’s Frankenstein monster. He’s got a little more green in him than I generally give my Frankensteins. I grew up with Herman Munster and the ubiquitous Universal Frankenstein and, however cool those characters are (or are not), I tend to react against them when I draw a Frankenstein.

As I understand it, the Universal Frankenstein wasn’t meant to be green. All of the original Universal Frankenstein movies were filmed in black and white. The makeup that Boris Karloff wore in the first films was green because it photographed as a sickly shade of grey. Color publicity photos and green shaded versions of the monster in later promotional material fixed his color as green in the public’s imagination.

The world is full of square headed green Frankies. I don’t need to add to the number. Mary Shelley’s version was a very different monster. There have been many different interpretations of the creature on stage and screen and comic book page in the last 180+ years. And I like different.

Of Course There’s a Frankenstein Monster (Black and White)

Posted on by

Here’s the black and white original version of my requisite Frankenstein Monster. It would be difficult for me to design a portfolio site without including a Frankenstein or two. He got a place on the first Skookworks.com banner.

I’m still in the process of figuring out how I want to arrange the galleries at Skookworks. I’m not sure if I want to have a specific Frankenstein gallery or if I should include him in a general Monsters gallery. Heck, I’m not sure yet if I want a general Monsters gallery.

Thinking, thinking.

They’re Not All Winners (Color)

Posted on by

I’d hoped that, somehow, in the process of coloring this piece, I’d find a way to make it look good. Or if not good then at least good enough that it would be useful to include in one of the headers at Skookworks.com for variety’s sake. Unfortunately I didn’t like it any better once it was in color.

Now I could be wrong. This could be one of my masterpieces. Sometimes I see more of the errors in a drawing than the good stuff. Feel free to let me know.

They’re Not All Winners (Black and White)

Posted on by

I liked the pencil version of this illustration but somehow, in the process of inking and toning it, I screwed it up. This guys is supposed to look ugly, lord knows, but the ugly that I ended up with isn’t satisfying. So he’ll get an airing today and again tomorrow when I post the color version but he won’t graduate to a spot in the Skookworks.com headers.

Man-Ant (Black and White)

Posted on by

I’d been intending to wait to post this next series of illustrations until after I’d used them to create header logos for Skookworks.com but that could leave this blog quiet for weeks. And we all know what a tragedy that would be.

Skookworks.com (also DavidLeeIngersoll.com and DavidIngersoll.com) will eventually be my main portfolio site/online home. If I were smart I’d just repurpose existing art for the banners and, thus, get the site up more quickly. But no. The first thing I set up doing was drawing new illustrations.

A big reason for the new art is that most of my currently available art is black and white. I’ve done a lot of interior illustration for gaming magazines and manuals since 2003 and, while I’m quite proud of most of it, if I didn’t do new color pieces the site would be pretty monochromatic.

So why is this piece black and white? Because most of my illustrations start out black and white and I color them in photoshop. This gives me greater flexibility over what colors to use. If I end up choose a set of colors that look lousy together or that don’t give the illustration enough contrast I can easily make changes. This illustration was done using ink and cool grey felt markers. I’ll post the colorized version tomorrow.

School. Sleep. Work.

Posted on by

Out in the real world I have been accomplishing less than I would like. That’s not terribly unusual. I have always accomplished less that I would have liked. I suspect that that is true for any halfway ambitious person. And I’m only halfway ambitious.

I’m doing fairly well in Math. My Unix class seems to be pretty easy. My C# class is the one I’m having the hardest time wrapping my mind around but my understanding gets a little better every session. For creative pursuits I’m slowly updating the Oz-Squad.com site and I’m doing illustrations for a project that should start serializing January.

Anyway. Nizzibet recently made a watercolor painting of one of my sketches. Isn’t it cute?

Still Broadcasting

Posted on by

I did this illustration for my brother’s birthday. The actual date for the occasion was last week but I wasn’t able to give it to him until yesterday. The two main gentlemen are Jack Lightning (on the left) and Davey Thunder (on the right). Glenn has been featuring them recently (along with the Elf and the Dragon and the Ugly Dog of Heaven[not in this picture]) on his  Lovesettlement blog in his Thousand project. Every day Glenn posts a hundred words of prose/poetry with the goal of hitting 100,000 words total. As of today he’s got 55, 100 words down. Go Glenn!

Sometimes It’s Better to Start Over

Posted on by

The above sketch was my first stab at the first illustration of a new project. I’m doing a series of illustrations that need to look as if they were done in the early 19th century for one of the British penny publications. That’s kind of tricky. Early magazine artwork was usually pretty crude. It had to be produced quickly and it had to be simple enough to be mass produced. The art was etched onto steel or copper plates and then printed on the cheapest paper available. Many of the those early illustrations had their figures posed as if on the stage so there tends to be a static quality to the characters.

I got about a third of the way through inking this piece before I decided that I didn’t like how it was turning out. I’m not sure if I can say exactly what doesn’t work for me. Mainly the figures just look too stiff and posed. While that may have been the predominant fashion for illustrations of the time and media I don’t care for my version of it. If I’d managed to completely hide my normal style I might have liked it better. Maybe.

In any case, I’m redoing the illustration. I’m keeping the basic composition but I’m putting a little more life into characters. You’ll be able to see the results on January 1st. Stay tuned!

Short Break.

Posted on by

It’s going to be quiet here for a few days. There’s more art in the hopper. I just haven’t had a chance to write any posts.

Most of my online energy has been going to Oz-Squad.com. My goal is to have that site be nice and robust by the end of the year. I want to be sure that folks have a good reason to visit.

And school is begining to take more of my attention again. Math especially is requiring more and more time to complete the homework. And I’m finding C# baffling. I know that it will seem easy eventually but right now I’m still not grasping the language’s syntax enough to write a program with any sort of ease.

So, yeah. Whine. Complain. Back to work!