Frankenstein’s Monster: Part 3 – Prepping the Painting

It’s been a few days since my last Frankie post. I’ve been able to work on it a little since then, but other obligations and activities sometimes come along that delay my pet project. So, let’s get on with it, shall we?

Now it is time to prep the final painting. Often after I do a preliminary sketch as was posted in Part 1, I tend to redraw it for the final painting, adding in other details along the way. This time, the preliminary sketch layout was pretty tight, so I decided to transfer it directly onto the watercolor paper.

For my watercolor paintings, I have been using Strathmore’s Watercolor Block. It’s a pad of sturdy 140 lb watercolor paper sealed on all four sides so that you can work wet, and it automatically dries flat. Arches also makes a similar product. My only complaint is that the texture on the Strathmore is a little too uniform – too “manufactured”. But, I’m going to be covering a lot of it in dark tones, so the texture will do its duty.

To get my 8.5×11 sketch into a transferrable 18×24 final size, it’s a bit of a “Frankensteining” process. I scanned in the sketch, blew it up, and printed it in two halves onto Strathmore Layout Bond paper which were then taped together. Normally when I do a non-watercolor piece, I can just trace the drawing onto the final paper with my light table. Not so with a pad of thick paper. So I’ll have to trace it on top.

In high school, my art teacher (Walt Sturrock for those of you who know him) taught us how to make our own graphite paper which I still use to this day. You take a sturdy piece of tracing paper, get yourself one of those woodless pencils, and just go to town on one side of the paper. You can smooth out the graphite with rubber cement thinner on a paper towel, but I don’t bother with that step. When it’s done, you have a piece of homemade carbon paper made with pencil lead that will last for many illustrations.

So, I took my printouts with the graphite paper underneath, and traced down the drawing onto my final paper. Since it’s graphite, it’s easy to erase the inevitable smudges, and you can continue to finesse the drawing. For demo purposes here, I neglected to scan the drawing unpainted when this stage was done. Since in real life I have already begun to paint the piece and right now we are just talking about the drawing, I cut off the colored background so you can just see the drawing of the figure (with a little overpainting on his edges).

 

frankenstein_pencil1
This is the final pencil drawing of the monster sans background. I had already started painting it forgetting to scan the final drawing for the discussion of this step in the process.

As you can see, this stage doesn’t have all the cross-hatching and shading the preliminary sketch had. More attention is paid to details, though. Subtle changes were made to the face. The ears were extended a little so they weren’t as smooshed (that’s the technical term – smooshed) against his head, and they were given a little more character – cauliflowering, bumpier, etc. The outline of the face is more uneven, etc. Like I said, subtle. When I finish this piece, I’ll be drawing in a lot of detail with colored pencil on top of the paint, so for now this is just a guide as to where to put the paint.

Just a close-up of Frankie's face only a mad scientist could love.
Just a close-up of Frankie’s face only a mad scientist could love.

 

The other area of concentration for me were the hands. Mona’s hands are pretty prominent due to the coloring da Vinci employed – light colors surrounded by dark clothing. Frankie’s hands are definitely a feature. So, using that reference photo I showed you in Part 2, I spent more time making these the hands of an old withered, yet strong monster.

 

No, Frankie didn't just get out of the bathtub - these are the weathered, worn hands of a corpse that probably did a lot of manual labor without the smoothing aid of lotion.
No, Frankie didn’t just get out of the bathtub – these are the weathered, worn hands of a corpse that probably did a lot of manual labor without the smoothing aid of lotion.

 

It was also during this stage that I finally figured out what to do about my castle that needed to be silhouetted in the background. I do have my initial sketch from my sketchbook of the castle that appears  in the final painting. It will read very clearly as a castle amongst the mountains. Does it look at all familiar to you?

 

This castle will read clearly as a castle amongst the mountains of the background.
This castle will read clearly as a castle amongst the mountains of the background.

 

For you Frankenstein film buffs, it is the Frankenstein (“that’s Fronkensteen!”) castle pictured during the opening credits of Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein movie. It was perfect!

 

This is the castle pictured during the opening credits of Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein movie.
This is the castle pictured during the opening credits of Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein movie.

 

Next in Part 4, the painting begins!

Frankenstein’s Monster: Part 2-Research

Now that it was clear what the concept for the Frankenstein painting was going to be, it was time to pay more attention to the details of that drawing. Sometimes a project calls for the use of visual reference materials. While I had a decent semblance of what I wanted to create, a few things needed backup assistance from some photos.

I used to keep a file of imagery for such uses. Most illustrators did. These days, Google Images is the place to go. Type in your key words, and let them find the images for you from all the websites out there! I’d wager some of you found this blog by the same means.

Unfortunately, a scan was not made of the absolutely original preliminary sketch that showed how the monster’s body originally looked. (I kept monkeying around with the one sketch.) While it was a hulking body, it needed to reflect some age and probably some muscle. Even the monster’s face could have been bonier, more sunken, etc. – the literary monster was created out of corpses after all. For some reason, Iggy Pop came to mind. While I’m not familiar with his music, and he is not a corpse exactly, I must have seen a picture of him at one point and it just resurfaced from the crevices of my mind as being the perfect reference material for my monster’s physique. So I found a photo of him and made some adjustments to my monster.

 

Iggy Pop has an older and more weathered look to his physique that seemed like perfect reference for the muscular corpse that Frankenstein's monster was made from.
Iggy Pop has an older and more weathered look to his physique that seemed like perfect reference for the muscular corpse that Frankenstein’s monster was made from.

 

Even Iggy Pop's face had just the right kind of craggily look for the life (and death) experience Frankenstein's monster went through.
Even Iggy Pop’s face had just the right kind of craggily look for the life (and death) experience Frankenstein’s monster went through.

 

As you can see in the preliminary sketch in Part 1, the castle is just a vague outline thrown in there. Online I found an actual “Frankenstein’s Castle” that exists is Germany. So in a subsequent attempt, I doodled that one in, but it just didn’t look right. I needed a castle that would look good in silhouette to go along with the background stylings of the Mona Lisa.

 

frankenstein_castle
“Frankenstein’s Castle” is an actual German castle that supposedly inspired Frankenstein author Mary Shelley to write her story. It was not so inspirational for this painting.

About this time, it was clear that I just needed to sit down and watch the original 1930s Frankenstein movie starring Boris Karloff. I needed to immerse my mind into that story, and maybe pick up some inspiration along the way. Maybe the castle from that film would work? No, it was just a rather non-descript tower which I doodled anyway. It just wouldn’t read as a castle/tower in the painting where the background was full of rock formations that were similar in look to the tower.

 

This is a sketch of the tower that housed Dr. Frankenstein's lab in the 1931 Boris Karloff movie Frankenstein. While it would have been fun to include, it's design would too closely resemble the mountains in the background of my painting.
This is a sketch of the tower that housed Dr. Frankenstein’s lab in the 1931 Boris Karloff movie Frankenstein. While it would have been fun to include, it’s design would too closely resemble the mountains in the background of my painting.

 

Well, the tower will have to wait. Rounding out the reference material is a photo of an old man hand to help the monster have some more age.

 

I needed a good old hand for reference, and this one happened to be in a similar pose to good ol' Mona's hand. This photo was especially used as reference for the final drawing to be seen in Part 3.
I needed a good old hand for reference, and this one happened to be in a similar pose to good ol’ Mona’s hand. This photo was especially used as reference for the final drawing to be seen in Part 3.

 

Next in Part 3 – Prepping the Painting

Frankenstein’s Monster: Part 1-Conceptualization

A few weeks ago I wrote about my recent fascination with Frankenstein’s monster that began with having just seen the play Arsenic and Old Lace. In that article, I shared with you a number of head studies of the monster as I explored the various ways one can draw him and still retain the recognizable fact that he is who he is. The fascination did not end that day. I continued to draw some more heads, all the while wondering where this was going to lead.

 

A few more head studies of Frankenstein's monster that helped guide the direction of the final illustration.
A few more head studies of Frankenstein’s monster that helped guide the direction of the final illustration.

 

It has been awhile since I’ve done an actual bonafide painting, and just the simple drawings of the various heads inspired me to do a portrait of the monster. I rarely can do something straightforward, though. I love the funny, and the funny can’t just be in how the figure looks – it has to be about the situation. Immediately da Vinci’s Mona Lisa came to mind.

 

Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa oil painting. My Frankenstein version will be in watercolor.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa oil painting. My Frankenstein version will be in watercolor.

 

In looking at the da Vinci painting, it is the PERFECT setting for my monster. The background is dark and moody, desolate, and eerily earthy in color. Of course the monster will replace Lisa, but I must amuse myself with the background for the scene to be complete. I began to sketch the idea in my sketchbook. That little path on the left? An angry mob, of course! Off to the right? Well, it has to be Frankenstein’s castle!  And the sky is going to have to be more stormy to justify the requisite bolt of lightning integral to the tale of Frankenstein.

 

This is my preliminary rough sketch for the FrankenLisa portrait.
This is my preliminary rough sketch for the FrankenLisa portrait.

 

The final painting is a current work-in-progress. Over the next week or so, I thought I’d take you step-by-step barefoot across the coals of my process that I’ve already overcome. Next, Part 2 of the Frankenstein’s Monster series will focus on my visual research for the painting.

Fred Willard: Best in Show!

From time to time a project comes along that is just plain fun to work on. Back in 2007, this was such a project. I was approached to create an illustration of actor Fred Willard (Best In Show, Everybody Loves Raymond, Anchorman, WALL-E) for the charity group Actors and Others for Animals. Fred was going to be their guest of honor at their annual banquet held in November that year. The piece I created was used on their “save the date” cards, their invitations, and on the cover of the banquet program.

This "Save the Date!" card for the Fred Willard event features text designed by the art director I worked with.
This “Save the Date!” card for the Fred Willard event features text designed by the art director I worked with who also had moved the frog up a bit revealing his floating foot.

The request for this job came right from Mary Willard, Fred’s wife, who is very involved in this animal charity. I had gotten to know the Willards a bit, and the previous year drew their personal ad that they took out in the program book that was honoring Dick Van Dyke (we’ll save that piece for another post some day). This time, when the committee was tossing around ideas for the cover, they asked Mary if she thought the fella who did her ad could do the program cover for Fred’s banquet.

Most jobs I get asked to do, the client really knows what they want, so I draw one pencil rough, make any adjustments, then go to the final. This time the client left it kind of open-ended. They wanted Fred with some animals, though weren’t sure how that should be.

Thumbnails: Often I’ll do them for myself, but this time they had to be a little more detailed because the client was going to have to pick and choose from among them. As you can see, none of the thumbnails as drawn were taken to the final stage, though #5 became the template (#4 was my favorite). The client picked elements from several. One thing that became clear – they only wanted animals that are relatively common house pets (though the committee chairwoman really liked the squirrel, so that stayed). They didn’t like the outstreched arms pointing towards Fred, but rather wanted the animals applauding him.

Thumbnail sketches drawn to figure out the layout of the image.
Thumbnail sketches drawn to figure out the layout of the image.

Tight Pencil: Once they figured out what they wanted from the thumbnail stage, I worked on a tight pencil drawing and then showed it to them again. Usually a client wants to make changes at this stage, too, but apparently this one hit all the right buttons and they said “go for it!”

This is the tight pencil drawing of Fred Willard drawn on tracing paper. I lightbox this onto Bristol when I ink, so the thin paper assists with that process.
This is the tight pencil drawing of Fred Willard drawn on tracing paper. I lightbox this onto Bristol when I ink, so the thin paper assists with that process.

Final Piece: There were two stages to the final piece. The first was inking the drawing, which I do with a nice Winsor-Newton brush and a bottle of black FW acrylic ink. Rapidograph pens are used for some of the small stuff, but the brush is primary. The client needed the piece to be flexible for multi-purpose use, so Fred (with the squirrel) was one layer, and all the other animals were other layers.

...and here's the final piece composited and colored in Photoshop.
…and here’s the final piece composited and colored in Photoshop.

The second stage was with the computer. All the drawings were scanned, then composited in Photoshop. Speed was of the essence for this piece, so I took all my traditional airbrushing knowledge into the computer and came out with this final illustration.

They loved the piece, and even used it the next year for the event honoring Broadway legend Carol Channing. The animals appeared on the cover and interior of the program.

The 2007 program book cover featuring Fred Willard, and the 2008 cover with Carol Channing.

The 2007 program book cover featuring Fred Willard, and the 2008 cover with Carol Channing.

To add icing to the cake, I was invited to attend both banquets, too. It was fun to sit there seeing these actors roasted by their famous friends and sitting shoulder to shoulder with them myself. Folks like Dick Van Patten, Ed Asner, Loretta Swit, Jo Anne Worley, Henry Gibson, Norm MacDonald, Martin Mull, Tippi Hedren, Ted Lange, Lily Tomlin, Florence Henderson, Catherine O’Hara, Jack Riley, Gary Owens, Peter Marshall, Gary Collins, Doris Roberts, David Lander and so on. It was as if I had fallen into the television set of my youth.

So, there you have it. Perhaps a lengthy explanation of everything, but hopefully a fun insight into what took place to make Fred Willard look like the Best in Show!

Star Trek Scoring Sessions Courtroom Sketches

I have two great loves in life. The first – I love to draw. The second – I love to listen to music from film scores. The best is when I get to combine the two. Often, this only means that as I sit down to my drafting table, I load up the CD player and listen to the sounds of galaxies far, far away, or those of dusty sepia streets where two squinting gunmen are about to “discuss” the finer points of a disagreement, or the sounds of missions too impossible to complete. One day this past fall, these two loves collided in a big way.

I first moved to the Los Angeles area of California in 1997 to come work in the movie business. Granted, my area of expertise has always been in the world of cartooning, so who would have thought that my love of film score music would yield in anything more than a better selection in the used bins of LA’s music stores? I first began to work for Disney Feature Animation on the film Mulan. The legendary Jerry Goldsmith was writing the music for this movie, and I had the great and unexpected pleasure of meeting him a few times. And so the fever began.

In those early years with Disney, I was fortunate enough to attend scoring sessions with Mark Mancina  during the making of Tarzan, and I was in the studio with Randy Newman when he recorded the opening sequence to Toy Story 2. All wonderful privileges I truly cherish. I attended music seminars, chats and concerts with Elmer Bernstein, Christopher Young, Thomas Newman and many others. Somewhere in there, I realized that while I enjoyed drawing at home listening to the work of these wonderful artists, I should sketch while actually in their presence.

Michael Giacchino is quickly becoming one of the go to guys for some really terrific film music. He got his start composing for video games like Medal of Honor and The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and moved on to television shows like Alias and LOST. His film work is as diversified as The Incredibles to Ratatouille (for which he received an Oscar nomination), to Mission Impossible III. He is really amazing. (Check out his website http://www.MichaelGiacchino.com)

I first met Michael at a concert at UCLA where he conducted a piece from his then new score to The Incredibles. It wasn’t long afterwards that I was able to attend a recording session for LOST at the famous Capitol Records building in Hollywood. It was in these very rooms that artists like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole and many others had recorded their hits (a fact they don’t let you forget with all the photos on the walls). The air there was electrifying! I brought along my sketchbook, and really immersed myself in recording with a pencil those that sat before me who were recording audio digitally.

Over the years, I have been to a few sessions with Michael, and each time I take my sketchbook. This past October, an interesting opportunity arose when I attended a scoring session for the new Star Trek movie that Michael was working on for his friend and director J.J. Abrams. My friend Dan Goldwasser, from the terrific film score news website http://www.ScoringSessions.com, wanted to post some photos of the day’s events on his site. Since this new movie is not due out until May of 2009, Paramount didn’t want any photographic promos of anything related to the movie to get out too early. Michael Giacchino looked over at me and suggested that since it’s all hush-hush, maybe I could do some courtroom style drawings of the session that they could post instead.

So, that day I sketched like a madman. I sketched Tim Simonec (the orchestrator/conductor), J.J. Abrams (director), Dan Wallin (scoring mixer), Andrea Datzman and Chad Seiter (orchestrators), and Giacchino, of course. Together with the aid of Goldwasser’s terrific photos (that will probably be on his site closer to the release of the movie), I completed my “courtroom” sketches later in my studio.

Drawn with brown Prismacolor pencils, the illustrations were colored in Photoshop and made their appearance on ScoringSessions.com right before Christmas. You can see them here, but you should also see them where they were first intended at  http://scoringsessions.com/news/169/

Hope you enjoy these pieces. I look forward to the next opportunity to sketch live like this!

Star Trek Director J.J. Abrams and composer Michael Giacchino
Star Trek Director J.J. Abrams and composer Michael Giacchino
Tim Simonec conducts the Hollywood Studio Symphony
Tim Simonec conducts the Hollywood Studio Symphony
Director J.J. Abrams, score coordinator Andrea Datzman and composer Michael Giacchino
Director J.J. Abrams, score coordinator Andrea Datzman and composer Michael Giacchino
Composer Michael Giacchino, scoring mixer Dan Wallin, additional orchestrator Chad Seiter and orchestra contractor Reggie Wilson
Composer Michael Giacchino, scoring mixer Dan Wallin, additional orchestrator Chad Seiter and orchestra contractor Reggie Wilson
...and a little bonus - Michael Giacchino as Spock - originally drawn as a card for Michael.
…and a little bonus – Michael Giacchino as Spock – originally drawn as a card for Michael.

UPDATE: APRIL 21, 2009 – As of today, photos of the actual Star Trek scoring sessions have been made public. Click HERE to see my post about the photos that includes a link to see all of them.