Can't we all get along?

Bill Adcock is a many of many talents, some known, somewhat hidden, and those entirely secreted away.I'm convinced he's part Highlander. He's the brains behind Radiation-Scarred Reviews as well as a contributor to the Blood Sprayer, and B Through Z Web-Zine. He had reached out wanting to commission me for a piece of artwork, to which I replied I would do it for a trade. His request was simple enough, left to the discretion of my imagination and delivery. The only stipulations were that it was painted and contain his specifically chosen subject matter: El Santo VS Yeti.

I definitely had my work cut out for me.

 

Now for this piece I had to come up with a couple different ideas to figure out the best way to represent the two iconic characters. Would they be locked in battle? Who would be the victor? I tried a few sketches, but they turned out crap. That's all part of the process.

I decided to remix it like a DJ, especially being inspired by these Star Wars posters I stumbled upon one sleepless night on the Net.

Once I had an idea for the format I decided to work on how I would depict the characters. Here's some Quick Google images of El Santo and a Yeti that I went for, kinda of like a bartender just grabbing bottles.

I worked on a flat canvas board that I actually broke down and bought. It's a matte treated canvas, but it's board thin, making it easier to transport and frame due to less weight. 

It was a step by step process in trying to create these figures.

I started to outline some of the main parts in Black Sharpie.

You can see how this makes it pop more, or at least for me. I'm a sucker for sharp black lines.

Working on the lettering was one part I simply dreaded.

To break up the piece and sell it as a "fight poster" I went with some curly-q razor wire, which is a lot harder to create than you'd realize.

I decided to lighten up the blue background to add more of a pop to the piece and began finishing off the lettering and other elements with black Sharpie.

Here's the final product. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, especially El Santo and the balance of the piece as a whole. The eye follows from top to bottom, left to right and it succeeds in looking less like art and more like something else.

I definitely need to work on my lettering. The Sharpie makes it pop and look like a real advert. I wish it had more of a letter press look to it rather than the hand-written style, but I could probably do that more so with stencils or maybe with a computer. I guess I always take the long way home.

Now it's time to jam out El Santo style...

 

Joe Cool - Dawn of the Picture Show

A little while back I held a contest on my other blog ZforZombies.com where the winner would receive a piece of original artwork. I've held this contest before and it's always a fun challenge to interpret what the winners want into an original piece of artwork. Joe O'Connor, the man behind Oduction Production's Midnight Time Warp, won the last prize I offered and wanted something that combined his two cinematic loves - DAWN OF THE DEAD and THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. I thought long and hard about how to approach the piece, of possibly combining characters in a scene and the appropriate ways to initiate a cross-over. Ultimately I decided to channel the iconic imagery used to market these films into one cohesive product.

I sketched out the head over the horizon piece from DAWN OF THE DEAD and its stencil like font and decided to implement the lips and drippy font from THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. This was all done on Bristol board. The idea was to meld both pieces into an almost movie poster look. You can see little "R"s and "BL"s on the face to help me discern which areas would be painted red & black. I found this to be a big help, almost like my own paint-by-numbers kit.

I decided to use watercolors for a nice blended effect to capture a photo-realism with the lips and to give a warbled hue for the top of the piece as well. I used shade of brown for the inside of the mouth as black would make it look lost in the background later on.

I chose purple for the background to off-set the red that I would use to tie the piece together. I knew that working with a limited color scheme was the only way to truly make the piece "pop".

I went in with India ink and a brush to drop a layer of true black across the piece. This was a little tricky with the lettering, but I managed to pull it off. I doubt the piece would be as eye catching if I had just used black watercolor.

All inked up, you can see my horizon line is a bit wonky. Such is the peril of drawing straight lines without a ruler. To fix this I laid a strip of blue painter's taper across the piece and pressed firmly so that no ink would bleed out. I then took my brush and leveled out all my uneven areas.

After I finished with the ink, I went back over and erased my pencil lines, and the segments where I had marked for color. The thing I didn't account for was that the water color over top of the pencil made it a little more difficult to remove. Once I rubbed out the pencil marks, I had to go back over some areas for color, but this added a nice element of shading to it all. Notice the gradient of purple from top to bottom.

Here it is, all done up. I particularly enjoy how the lips seem to be a part of the zombie head. The horizon line plays a trick on your eyes as it attempts to separate the two images that I have juxtaposed. The flash from my camera picks up the brush strokes from the ink, but they're unnoticable to the naked eye. I think the combination of text and fonts plays a really nice role in the overall aesthetic. I sincerely hope that Joe enjoys the piece as it gave me more exercise with watercolors and inking. Be sure to check out ZforZombies.com for future contests!