She’s Alive!

This week marks the 89th anniversary of the classic Universal Monster movie, The Bride of Frankenstein. Michelle and I realized this late into the evening on Saturday and quickly ripped through a new ink wash illustration and process video to celebrate the occasion.

The actual bride of Frankenstein (played by Elsa Lanchester in a dual role that also saw her portray Mary Shelley) only appeared in that one eponymous movie. But despite not having as many times up at bat as Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, or The Wolfman, the character has left just as indelible an impression on pop culture as her monstrous counterparts.

And while I always look forward to rendering The Bride in watercolors and debunking the idea that she has green skin (preposterous!), I wanted to stick to the same black-and-sepia ink and wash technique I used on all those other Universal Monsters last October. Now she fits right in with the rest of them.

The sepia ink is a nice counterpoint to the black ink, but I wanted to use it for The Bride for a very specific reason. Elsa Lanchester had red hair. You can see it very clearly years later when she plays Katie Nanna in Mary Poppins opposite Julie Andrews. It follows, then, that The Bride of Frankenstein may also have had red hair. It’s not canon? Well…it’s my drawing, and I say she did. The warmer tones of the sepia ink do a passable job of conveying the idea that she has red hair, while not being as obvious as a watercolor wash.

If you want to see my process for this image, how it turned out, and listen to Michelle and I gab about movies and toys for seven minutes or so, the link to the video is below.

If You’ve Had A Dose of a Freaky Ghost

Who you gonna call? Not Michelle or I, that’s for sure. We don’t want anything to do with ghosts. Unless, of course, the ghosts are part of some cute and creepy art project like this week’s Ghostbusters Mini-Puft Sculpt-Off!

To hype ourselves up for the opening of Ghostbusters:Frozen Empire, we challenged each other to sculpt one of the tiny marshmallow mini-pufts from the movie. Michelle chose to work with felted wool, and I decided to sculpt my spook out of clay.

There are pros and cons to each medium. Michelle benefited from being able to alter, change, and repair her sculpt right up to and through our video/photo shoot. I couldn’t do that with my solid rock of clay.

On the other hand, my clay sculpt didn’t confuse the camera the way the fuzzy wool edges of Michelle’s sculpt did, and I was able to finish my sculpt well before she could. The needle felting process consumes time the way Slimer consumes hot dogs.

The bases we decided on are just simple black plinths with the classic Ghostbusters “NO” logo on top. That way they retain that black/white/red color theme of the original logo, and the mini-puft ghosts look like they’re popping out of the logo to come to life.

One final element we added to match the violent streak these malevolent marshmallows posses is weaponry. In the movie, these creatures are always putting each other through devastating physical distress: burning each other with fire, running each other through with skewers, liquifying each other in blenders. But our creatures aren’t marshmallows, they’re clay and wool. So their weapons reflect their art supply origins.

If you wanna see Michelle and I try to defeat each other in this Ghostbusters Sculpt-Off, the video is linked below.

Taking A Run At Scooby-Doo’s Ghost Clown

The comedy-themed project streak continues unabated this week as Michelle and I each take a turn at rendering the classic Scooby-Doo villain, Ghost Clown. And everyone knows there’s nothing funnier than a clown who could swallow you whole.

The clown first appeared in episode 10 of the first season, Bedlam In The Bigtop. I’m guessing the original clown design was done by Iwao Takamodo, since he handled most of the designs for those early Scooby-Doo episode. His design was tight and perfect for the show, and looked like this:

I love that clown. But I wanted to try to make him a little scarier. So, after a few sketches, I landed on a slug-like monster with two-rows of razor sharp teeth. I lightboxed my digital sketch, and inked it with Microns, Tombow Brush Pens, and some brushed inks.

The wash I use is just water and Dr.Ph Martin’s Black Star ink. I keep a few pre-mixed jars of it so I don’t have to work out the ink-to-water proportions every time I sit down to do a wash. Once all of that ink is dry — all of it waterproof — I put down some nice, bright, circus colors that echo the original Scooby-Doo design.

And in addition to my version of the clown, this week Michelle plays another round of Ink It or Stink It where she tries to ink one of my drawings for a panel of judges. I sketched out the original Takamodo design for her to try her hand at, and members of our Patreon voted whether the final outcome was an “ink” or a “stink.”

If you want to see the process video, and hear us talk about Bedlam In the Bigtop, the video link is below.

Inking Godzilla Minus One

I don’t know what you guys did over holiday break, but Michelle and I just kept going back to the theatre to see Godzilla Minus One. We weren’t even necessarily huge Godzilla fans before this movie. I mean, of course he’s a ton of fun. He’s a monster. But this movie? It stomped us flat and left us breathless. Best movie we’ve seen in a long time.

When I was a kid, when I saw a monster movie that got under my skin, I’d spend days lying on the living room rug filling my sketch pad (and any other random piece of paper I could lay my hands on) with drawings of the monster. So it seemed natural for me to do the same thing with this new, powerful, terrifying Godzilla.

Big difference is that now I have better tools at my disposal. So I lightboxed my sketch onto heavy cotton watercolor paper, and went at it with Black Star inks and Micron fineliners.

My plan was to set up three distinct values — lights, mids, darks — and set up the composition so that they frame each other nicely, and lead the viewer’s eye where I want it to go. I wrestled over whether to render this in inkwash or hatching — each have their benefits — but chose to go with a very measured, hatched linework for the midtones to contrast with the chaos of the subject matter.

I had a lot of fun working on this and practicing my brushwork, hatching, and monster doodling. If you want to see me put the whole things together, Michelle and I recorded my process for this week’s video and talked about our Godzilla Minus One experience (no spoilers).

My Friend’s Mailbox is Haunted!

Maybe haunted isn’t the right word. More like it’s crawling with monsters. And it’s not just one friend, it’s a few. And it’s all my fault. Because this year, Michelle and I decided to draw and ink a bunch of Universal Monsters and send them to some of our friends and Patreon supporters as Halloween cards.

Sending and receiving Halloween cards is a tradition that seemed a lot more prevalent when I was a kid. Hardly any of my friends do it anymore. But it’s something I always enjoyed, and something I’m not willing to let slip so easily into the past.

And while picking a few cards up in the drug store to mail out is perfectly fine, whenever I can squeeze in the time to make the cards by hand, it’s always a lot more fun. So I grabbed some watercolor paper, inks, brushes, and pens and got to work.

We even figured out a way to make them a little more than just hand-done illustrations (although, that would’ve been fine). We crafted a delivery system that made the drawings more like actual cards, and even supplied a little mystery by way of a window cutout that obscures parts of the illustration until you open the card.

If you want to see all the monsters we sent out to terrorize our friends this Halloween, you can watch the process video below:

Lady In White Sculpt Was A Trick And A Treat

This week we journey back to Willowpoint Falls and the world of Frank LaLoggia’s Lady In White to sculpt the film’s protagonist, little Frankie Scarlatti.

I used polymer clay for the figure and tried to work small. That made it a little tricky to nail all the details (like tiny little fingers) but I try to do things out of my comfort zone as often as possible as a way of learning, improving, and moving forward. Plus, who’s got the shelf space for giant dioramas anymore?

Michelle worked on the base with me, helping me out with the important grunt work so my delicate hands never have to touch sandpaper, and I never risk getting paint under my pristine fingernails.

She also helped me turn the wooden plinth into a grassy front yard on Halloween with autumn leaves scattered at Frankie’s feet.

Another pleasant outcome of working on this sculpt is that Frank LaLoggia, the writer/director/composer of Lady In White actually likes the sculpt, and has even linked some of our process videos up on his new website, franklaloggia.com. I urge every fan of Lady In White (and film making in general) to visit that site and take a spin through all of the behind-the-scenes videos, interviews, press releases, and photo galleries that comprise Frank LaLoggia’s inspiring film career.

And if you’d like to see Michelle and I put Frankie together, you can watch our video below.

Trying Gouache For The First Time

I recently received a book filled with Mary Blair’s concept art for Disney and spent an hour flipping through all the amazing illustrations. It was a crash course in how to effectively use color and composition to tell a story.

The image above is from her concept artwork for The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, a classic Disney feature and an annual watch around here near Halloween.

The book is filled with images like this, and, since Blair worked mostly in gouache and watercolor to create these images, it inspired me to try gouache for the first time. There’s a bit of a learning curve since this medium sits somewhere between acrylics and watercolors…and I consider myself a novice at both.

But, since experimenting is what we do around here, I pressed on. I started with a basic gradient blend, something Blair relied on heavily in her concept art. And while you can use gouache much like watercolor — diluting it and layering translucent washes — I tried to use it the way Mary Blair did in her illustrations: just enough water to create a loose but creamy texture that glides over the paper and remains satisfyingly opaque.

I ended up doing four separate paintings. Practice makes progress. Because Blair and her work for Disney was my inspiration, I stuck mostly to Disney ghosts. Doing a couple from the Haunted Mansion, and even my own take on the Headless Horseman.

For my first attempt with gouache, I was pretty happy with my results. But a lot of that was due to the gouache and how, even when the paint dried to a dead flat finish, the colors stayed vibrant and alive. I can’t wait to try it again and see what else I come up with.

The Haunted Mansion movie opens this weekend, so I may get out of the heat and into an air conditioned recliner to see if inspiration strikes again. And if you’d like to see my first-time gouache experiment, there’s a link to this week’s video below.

Hinkley Hills Gazette: Our Tribute To The ‘Burbs

It’s actually our second tribute to the 1989 Tom Hanks cult classic, The ‘Burbs, if you count that diorama we did a few weeks ago. But this one is of a 2D nature. And it’s part of Gallery1988’s latest show.

The concept is a ’80s-era newspaper comics page (something that was prevalent when the movie came out, but not so much now) that tells the story of The ‘Burbs through re-imagined classic comic strips.

The illustration was done digitally, using Clip Studio Paint (for the inks) and Affinity Photo (for colors). The reason I switched from Clip Studio to Affinity Photo is because Affinity Photo is one of the few digital illustration apps out there (Photoshop, being another) that has a true CMYK color space. And since this image would eventually go to the printers, we wanted a true CMYK profile. Plus, I just like working in those nice, desaturated CMYK colors.

It worked out well, too, because the print sold out at the show immediately. We’re talking to the printer about getting more, but don’t let our lack of foresight take any fun away from visiting the show online and viewing all the amazing ‘Burbs-themed artwork.

And If you want to see how we put the piece together, the link to this week’s video is right here.

This Is Walter! A ‘Burbs Diorama

This week we threw the 1989 cult classic, The ‘Burbs, into the disc player and watched it four dozen times. Pretty similar to any other week around here. But this time we were also using it as reference for our latest diorama project.

We recreated the “THIS IS WALTER” scene, and if you’ve seen the movie you know why we chose it. If you haven’t seen the movie….wha?!

A lot of this project was an exercise in learning how to sculpt loose-fitting vacation togs over a figure. I used CosClay, of course, because some of those shirt tails and shorts would absolutely shatter into dust if I’d used regular polymer clay. But the CosClay allowed those wafer-thin parts of the sculpt to remain flexible and break-resistant.

This project was also an exercise in trying not to injure myself. I decided to try out a router attachment/cutting guide on my Dremel to dig out a channel for the Klopek’s fence. It was a relatively minor routing job but the rotary tool had to be cranked up to near top speed while I was pushing the router bit through the wood. My whole arm was rumbling from fingertips to shoulder and I thought the tool was going to fly from my hand the whole time. Luckily, I held on.

But that was nothing compared this buzzsaw-style cut-off wheel I used to slice off a plastic owl’s head (part of the Klopek’s pest control system). I think the key is to always wear safety gear (I had on my goggles and respirator) and pay attention to what you’re doing. I know, even with all those precautions, you could still lose a finger. So I’m glad I made it through unscathed.

The rest of the project was pretty low-pressure, thankfully. I didn’t even have to nail any precise likenesses since I was doing cartoony versions of Art and Ray, not portrait sculptures of Rick Ducommun and Tom Hanks. Maybe I could’ve attempted that. But when you’re busy with your eighty-ninth rewatch of The ‘Burbs, who’s got the time?

If you want to see how Michelle and I put this admittedly very niche diorama together, here’s a link to this week’s process video.

Death Wore Scarlet

This past week, Michelle and I went old school and made a video the way we used to when we first started our channel. We picked up a MEGO monster figure, ripped open the package, and I worked on an illustration while we talked about the monster. This time, the monster was The Red Death.

Created by Edgar Allan Poe in his 1842 story, The Masque of the Red Death, the character was famously recreated in Lon Chaney’s 1925 silent classic, The Phantom of the Opera. Then, just a few years ago, he was not-as-famously recreated by MEGO as part of their horror line of action figures. It took me a while to get my hands on one, but I did.

So, this past week, we decided to rip that toy open and use it as inspiration for an illustration. You might notice the figure in the package isn’t nearly as flamboyant as Chaney’s version. So, while we were at it, we took the time to customize him a bit so he’d look a little more like the movie version.

If you want to see me work on the watercolor (and the figure) while Michelle and I gab about The Red Death in film and literature, you can watch the video below.