The Curse of Frankenberry

This is a painting I did several years ago. It was originally going to be of the Karloff Monster running through the woods with angry villagers on his tail. Just like the scene in Bride of Frankenstein where they are running through the woods with the trees that look like telephone poles. Somewhere along the line I decided to swap out Karloff for Frankenberry. I like how it turned out.

Here is the original illustration.

And here is the finished painting.

Gremlins

I'm a big fan of these movies. I can't understand why they stopped making them after 2. Maybe they should reboot this franchise with Gremlins III Gremlins in Paradise.

Very Merry Unbirthday Part 3

Well it took a while but I finally got the painting finished, let’s have a look at the final steps.

I finished off the hands of the rabbit and painted in the Mad Hatter character. I also added their clinking tea cups and added the tea splashing out of them. I added some highlights to the characters and the chairs to correspond with the colors of the lanterns. I’m pretty happy with how it looks at this point. The colors are nice and rich.

Now to start tackling the objects on the table. I started out with the stack of cups to the right of the Hatter. I filled them all in with a layer of flat grey and slowly dry brushed them with white until I got the look I wanted. The tea pots were done by starting out with a flat dark color and then building it up with gradually lighter colors. I added the dark outline to the teapots cause I liked how it looked.

And finally it comes to this. Not much to say other than I filled in the rest of the teapots and added the mouse to the one at the bottom. I like how the designs on the teapots look. Overall I’m pretty happy with how it all turned out.

It took about two months to get to the finished product. I’m looking forward to getting started on something new.

Very Merry Unbirthday Part 2

Ok I’ve gotten some more work done on the painting in the last month. I didn’t take as many pictures as I would have liked to show the progress, so I’ll have to make due with what I got.

The first thing I wanted to do was add the sky. I filled in all the sky areas of the painting with a nice flat black. Then I took some very dark blue and started to drag it across the black. I kept adding layers of continually lighter blue until I was able to get a nice effect of a sky blending down to the horizon.

I also added some glowing stars. And filled in the trees.

It’s now time for the shrubs. For these I used a method similar to the one I used for the sky. I filled all the shrub area in with pure black, Then I started adding dabs of gradually brighter green till I got the look I wanted.

Next it was the lanterns. I played with them for a while to get the glowing look that I wanted. Then I went and filled in the chairs with a flat burgundy. I’m going to then build it up with lighter colors till IO get them to look nice and plush.

And here is where I am now. The chairs are done and the Rabbit is nearly there. I need to finish his hands and his cup and then I’d like to add some highlights from the lanterns, darken in some areas and add his shadow to the chair.

I’ll have more updates soon.

Very Merry Unbirthday Part 1

I haven’t done a large scale painting for quite some time and I’ve been itching to do one. I toyed around with the idea of doing one based on a drawing I did based on Plan 9 From Outer Space, but I abandoned that plan. I’ve noticed than any artwork I do based on Disney properties gets a lot more attention than anything else I do, so I decided to do something from Alice in Wonderland.

I watched the movie again and grabbed a bunch of screen caps as I went to decide what scene I wanted to paint. I decided on the Tea Party scene because there was a lot of great color and I liked the look of the characters. I liked the part where the Hatter and the Hare are hitting the high note in their song and the glasses are clanging together and tea is flying everywhere. One of the screen caps I grabbed was a shot looking down the table through all the weird looking tea pots at the main characters, I thought with a few changes this would make a good painting.

 

For my first rough sketch I changed a few things around. I moved up a lot closer to the characters so they would be more prominent in the final piece. I also changed the chairs the two of them were sitting in to ones that Alice was sitting in earlier. I just thought they were more interesting looking chairs. I also added a couple of lanterns and more defined shrubbery to the background.

I then went and did a much more detailed sketch of the scene. I added the stack of tea cups beside the Mad Hatter and moved the teapot with the mouse in it to the foreground.

The next step is pretty simple. I scan the line work and then use photoshop to block out all the flat colors.

Once the flats are laid you can go in and start to shade the piece. I added some glow to the lanterns, I like how it looks here but I’m not sure if I will be able to reproduce the effect with a paintbrush. One of these days I should look into getting an airbrush. I like how the sky turned out.

The next step is to re-sketch out the line art onto a canvas.  The canvas I picked up is 16 x 20. So I resized the artwork to 1600 x 2000 pixels in photoshop and got out my ruler and made a connect the dots version of the image on the canvas. I’m sure there are easier ways to do this, I’ve heard some people project the image onto the canvas and trace it. Maybe someday I’ll figure out how to do the same.

This is the end of part one. Once I get some more work done on the painting I’ll put up another post.