You’ve probably noticed that I draw a lot of monsters. When I’m sketching I tend to draw monsters to begin with because –
A) I like monsters
B) They’re fun to draw
C) If I make a few mistakes and the monster’s features end up lopsided who is to say that I didn’t do that on purpose? Monsters are supposed to be ugly.
Once the monsters are out of the way I try to draw something challenging, something, someone … pretty. It’s nerve wracking.
Another marker sketch. I liked this one enough that I’ve been using it as my profile picture on my Facebook account. It’s no goofier that any of the actual photos of myself that have filled that spot.
So I’ve had a box of color markers that I’ve only rarely used (and not at all for the last ten) for something like 20 years now. I’m not exaggerating. I’ve got a set of grey tone markers that I use occasionally but the colored ones have just sat there, untouched, loved only from a distance. Since most of my printed illustrations have been in black and white I haven’t felt compelled to do much color work.
It’s looking like I’ll be getting more color illustrations printed soon. One thing tends to lead to another and I figured I should get some practice now while I’ve got a chance. So I pulled out the box and I’ve set to work. As with most initial sketches I drew a monster. This fellow is not any specific monster. He’s got a bit of Toxic Avenger vibe to him but that’s purely accidental. I’ve yet to see any of Toxie’s movies.
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.
