Rhapsodies

The October Monster sketch challenge was such a useful creative exercise that I decided to do it more often. I’d put it off for a couple of months because of playing catchup on my buffer. So now that I feel that I’m mostly caught I would start my first drawing challenge of the year. Febuary’s topic movies. For my selection for the random bag I pretty much cribbed the American Film Institute’s top 100 list with a few additions and subtractions (after all I did most of the horror films in October)

After this there are the usual rules. As usual I am expected to come up with the idea and execute it in the ball park of thirty minutes, this means if the idea isn’t one of your best you still have to own it and try to make the most of it. This means the odds of having a good sketch are about 50/50 but that’s what makes it a challenge.

Rules that are new for this month. No checking references, your sketch is based entirely on how you remember the film and if what you remember isn’t exactly accurate… that makes the drawing more interesting. Despite this there will be no improvising… so for today’s example If I were to think that Brian Cox or Mads Mikkelsen were better Hannibal Lecters that’s too bad. I have to draw Anthony Hopkins for your Silence of the Lambs picture… or at least the idea of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter. And while we’re on the subject no cartoons that are just puns on a movie’s title. If you don’t know anything about the film no picture. To spell out exactly what I mean, after somehow avoiding reading it in school, I was well into my thirties before I learned that The Catcher in the Rye was not about baseball. Of course that won’t be an issue since I triaged the movies I wasn’t familiar with out of the list.

So anyway as you might have guessed today’s sketch was indeed from Silence of the Lambs. The scene is Clarice Starling first encounter with Lecter. I tried to go for a combination of dread having had Lecter hyped up so much for the last 15 minutes and having gone down a dark hallway with caged monsters the brief relief of seeing this small neat man (I’d almost imagine him wearing a silk scarf if the guards had let him) I tried to focus on the “nice purse and cheap shoes” aspect of Starling, nervous and worried she’s out of her depth and even more worried that Lecter can sense this. I can’t help wondering what the movie had chosen a “plainer” character actress rather than Jodie Foster .