Self Portrait (with friends) in pencil

Here's another piece from my art sale sorting (already sold!) -- a pencil self portrait from a few years back. The glasses, facial hair and haircut have all changed since then! I know I did an inked version of this, too -- but haven't stumbled across it yet. I think I did this for the cover of a sample book of my art. An inked version of the Creature head was used as an entry hand stamp at a convention (Wonderfest maybe?) one year. I still have the rubber stamp someplace....

Anyhow -- that's me -- or a previous version of me -- with some of my favorite characters.

How MONSTER MEMORIES are made.

For quite a long while now, I've been creating the cover art for SCARY MONSTERS magazine and its annual MONSTER MEMORIES edition.   Over the past two days, I produced the wraparound cover art for the upcoming MONSTER MEMORIES 2010 issue.  I thought it might be fun to follow the process.  

It begins with an email from editor/publisher Dennis Druktenis outlining all the images and copy he'd like on the cover.  As this issue contains a previously unpublished interview with the late Forrest J Ackerman, Dennis sent along multiple photos of Forry in his cluttered office.  For the movie monsters/actors depicted, I searched my collection and the web for appropriate reference photos.  On this cover we have Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster, Bela Lugosi as Dracula (from Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein), Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Lon Chaneys, Senior and Junior -- and Aurora model kit "Big Frankie."

The next step is a rough pencil layout -- which I neglected to take a pic of -- but it's just a bunch of squiggles anyhow -- you're not missing much.  I then drew all of the cover-featured creatures in pencil -- roughing in the logo and placement for some of the cover copy.

I scanned this image, dropping out the rough logo and copy, and using Photoshop, altered the pencil tones to a light blue.  I then printed this onto bristol board.

Using colored inks, I started working on "Uncle Forry."

Here we are a little further along.

The  Forry portion of the piece was fully colored/painted -- with the messy elements on his desk just suggested, and fading away into white in the corner of the piece.  Using blue inks I added more depth and detail to the "background" monsters/actors. I also printed out a light blue scan of FJA's "Frankenscience Monster" book and with x-acto knife and glue, placed it in Karloff's hand

The next step was to scan this and start playing with contrast, hue and saturation in Photoshop.  I bumped the blue up to a darker purple and tried a greenish background color.

I liked that -- but maybe orange would look better?  Yup.

Next step was to hand draw the logo, scan it and combine it with the already existing illustration. 
More fussing with color -- a deeper reddish orange for the background, and a little more contrast saturation on that purple.   A little "Sam Scare" head was added by the logo, as well as all the cover copy requested by Dennis.  A few minor tweaks, and it's done.  Look for the cover below on your newsstand in the not too distant future!

Uncle Forry SCARY MONSTERS cover

Just finished late last night, this is the wraparound cover for the upcoming 70th issue of SCARY MONSTERS. Click on it to see a larger version.  I've been doing cover illos for this mag for years, usually acrylic on illustration board -- and pasting up logos and copy  on an overlay the old fashioned way -- leaving a lot of the assembly work to the printers.  But this is the second one I've done since buying an 11 x 17 scanner, which is allowing me to scan the whole image, and then, in Photoshop, add background color and cover copy myself, tweaking the colors and such as I like.  The original images were done with colored inks on bristol board.

This is a tribute to the late great Forrest J. Ackerman, whose FAMOUS MONSTERS magazine was a huge influence on me and looms large in my childhood memories.  I was one of "Uncle Forry's" many "nephews" to visit his digs in "Karloffornia," and tour his incredible collection of movie memorabilia.  Every day I wear a reproduction of the Lugosi Dracula ring (pictured here) that was famously part of Forry's collection -- as much in tribute to FJA as to Bela.  I'm pleased to have the opportunity to use my artwork to say thank you to FJA on behalf of "monster kids" everywhere.  

A special thanks to Alan Light for the reference photos of Forry -- taken on his pilgrimage to the "Ackermansion" many moons ago.

Scary Monsters 2009 yearbook cover

Here is an advance look at my wraparound cover illustration for the upcoming 2009 Scary Monsters yearbook.  Unlike previous covers, which were mostly acrylic on illustration board, this one is a combo of pencil, Dr. Martin's dyes and Photoshop.  The first pic shows the initial pencil stage.

I have a stack of commissions on my drawing board -- I should have some finished to post quite soon.