Draculove Meets Thankenstein
Michelle and I have been working on a gallery piece in the workshop for the last few weeks. I don’t post about a show piece until the show’s up and running, but I didn’t want my social media feed to seem like an abandoned cemetery. So I took a run at a couple of classic monsters to fill in the open graves.
Draculove
Michelle and I had a rare Saturday night free, and checked the cinema listings for a good, old-fashioned monster movie. We landed on Luc Besson’s Dracula. Neither of us realized it was not so much a monster movie as a romantic comedy.
Maybe that’s overstating it, but this version of Dracula was truly one of the lightest, more buoyant takes on the story I’ve ever seen. A suprising amount of laughs and cartoonish elements. And I say that with full knowledge the film’s first act includes a mass decapitation and the murder of the protagonist’s lover.
Caleb Landry Jones plays the title character — in all his incarnations — and does a solid job of it. He truly embodies the part; whether it’s the tragic 14th century warrior, the wizened ghoul who haunts his own castle, or the mysterious prince trawling France’s high society gatherings seeking out the ghost of his lost love.
It’s that most modern incarnation that inspired my digital sketch. A light, mildly comedic caricature of Caleb Landry Jones to match the tone of the film. I used this sketch as an opportunity to put the free Affinity app through its paces, and try out some new, digital brushes I picked up near the holidays, but hadn’t yet loaded into the app. I think they gave the inks a scratchy, retro feel.
In the video we posted that week, Michelle and I talk about the movie while I go through my digital illustration process. If you’d like to see how that turned out, you can view the video (and a fairly spoiler-heavy review) at the link below.
Thankenstein
And while all of that was going on, Michelle and I were also shuttling back and forth to a physical therapist who was helping us both recover from some recent arm injuries. This is what happens when you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.
As is tradition, I like to hand-draw my thank you cards…mostly because I’m cheap. But also, it’s a more personal expression of gratitude than slinking into a CVS to pick up a store-bought card. And the physical therapist who helped Michelle and I get back to work definitely deserved my best efforts.
So, in contrast to Dracula’s digital sketch, I waned to ink and color the Frankenstein Monster and his Bride traditionally; dip pen, ink wash, and watercolors. But I made sure these monsters were handled with the same lighthearted touch that The Count received.
The benefit of working with classic monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein, and his Bride is that they come with a long literary and cinematic history built in. So when you reach for a gag about body horror, there are countless cultural touchstones that do most of the heavy lifting. No one has to explain the joke. Of course Frankenstein’s arm is removable. Of course these two hang out in a musty castle. Of course the Bride is upset.
If you’d like to watch me put this cartoonish monster together, you can view the video at the link below. And in case you’re waiting for the other giant Frankenshoe to drop; yes, we gave the card to our therapist and it was well-received. Spending that extra time in the lab assembling that monster was totally worth it.