Saturday, October 5, 2013

Character-a-Day: The Phantom of the Opera

The last of this year's thirteen Halloween guys, the Phantom of the Opera!  The worst voice coach/singing teacher EVER.



The original art for this one is available for sale.
SOLD!

Friday, October 4, 2013

Character-a-Day: Scarecrow

Today's Halloween character is a scarecrow.

October meant a lot of things for me as a kid, but one of my favorites was that we'd get to play cornfield tag.  I grew up in a very rural farming community, and many of the houses in which we lived were close to cornfields, sometimes butting right up against them.  There are few games more terrifying or exhilarating than cornfield tag, in which kids run around near blind, unsure as to whether or not their pursuer was inches from them, separated from view by a wall of crop.  Sometimes the person who was "it" would just sit and wait for someone to run into their row.  And there was the perpetual terror of getting lost forever, the certainty that you should have hit the edge of the field by now, and that maybe you'd gotten turned around.

If any of us had ever seen a scarecrow in there, we'd likely have wet our pants.



The original art for this one is available for sale.
SOLD!

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Character-a-Day: Count Dracula

Today's character is Count Dracula.  I tried penciling him dozens of times with his arm up behind a cape, wearing a top hat, and it just didn't fly.  So here's the old, tired standard of upper crust Transylvanian garb with a Vlad Tepes hat.  I like this version better, but I wish I could've made the top hat work.  Maybe NEXT halloween!



The original art for this one is available for sale.  8.5x11," ink on 80# stock, shipped the Tuesday after purchase.  First come, first serve.
SOLD!

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Character-a-Day: Mad Scientist

Today's character is a Mad Scientist, in the Vincent Price vein.



The original art for this one is available for sale.
SOLD!

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Character-a-Day: The Golem!

Today's Halloween character is a golem (without the scale of other figures, it's tough to tell that his feet are standard human size but the rest of him is bigger.  There are a lot of golem stories, but the most famous is the tale of the Golem of Prague.  Created by a Rabbi, the Golem was man made of river clay who was brought to life to protect the Jewish ghetto from anti-Semitic attacks in the late 1500s.  The Golem ended up falling in love with a human woman and went on a rampage.  From giant robot protector to godzilla, all for love.

The golem couldn't speak, so I left off a mouth.  Thought that a bit crueler.  Most artificial man stories (like this, Frankenstein, and especially The Island of Doctor Moreau) seem to be a critique of an inherent cruelty of God as a creator, creating beings whose behavior is naturally contrary to that upon which He insists, and punishing those creations for succumbing to the very nature He instilled in them.  The Golem, of course, doesn't make it.  Still a fun monster, and one I'd like to see used more!



The original art for this one is available for sale.  8.5x11," ink on 80# stock, shipped the Tuesday after purchase.  First come, first serve.  SOLD!