Looks like I’m stuck with Scottish Folklore with another day.
I know I keep saying I’m bound to get to all of the cool monsters for this Inktober challenge any day now, but what the heck possessed me to put a Selkie on the list? They’re not even scary! (or at least I’m not aware of them doing anything any more malevolent than the usual menfolk mischief)
Also it looks like surf is another thing I can’t draw without a reference.
I’m really beginning to wonder if I could have written my Halloween Inktober list if i’d been drunk because I’m really wondering what in the name of the lords of causality possessed me to put the Kelpie in there.
Granted if you know the stories this is one of the most malevolent, dangerous and downright evil water spirit that Scottish Folklore ever created but visually someone is going to look at your picture and say… “it’s a horse”.
This is not helped by the fact that the horse is one of those animals I can’t draw without a minimum of five visual references in front of me.
Any way I think adding more teeth helped… a little bit.
I must confess when the Inktober tupperware container told me to draw a werewolf I was completely uninspired. This is depressing as the werewolf is generally my favorite critter in the Halloween playlist. Normally when coming up with one I either take a cryptozoological approach or deep really deep into the original folklore, but today thanks to other deadlines I was working on I had nothing.
Fortunately I’d just seen Abbot & Costello meet Frankenstein last week so the poor Mr. Talbot was still fresh on my mind.
So here it is a nice Universal/Jack Pierce inspired Wolf Man!
I think I drew another fragment of the same children’s list I touched last time. This time the Inktober tupperware wanted me to draw a Jack-o’-lantern presumably just mounted somewhere on a wall, or a window or the steps to the house, or perhaps even still in the pumpkin patch already carved and lit… What fun.
Fortunatly I remembered the story of Mean old Jack.
So here’s Jack carrying his lantern looking for a place to rest while waiting for judgment day. Remember those traveling at night do not follow… You will be led into bad things.
At first I’d planned to put off watching this film since I’m generally very picky about what I see in the theaters these days but the main reason I wanted to see the Martian in the theater, other than a tradition I have with a good friend where we watch genre films then nit pic the hell out of them when we get home, was to show my support for author, Andrew Weir, who was responsible for such web comics as Casey and Andy, as well as the unfinished Cheshire Crossing, out of web cartoonist solidarity (and hopefully web cartoonist karma.)
Going to see it turned out to be a comedy of errors… I’d planned to see it last Saturday, combining the showing with all of my Northgate centric errands only to find out it was sold out and while frustrating I was really excited that a hard science fiction film like this was doing so well in the box office. After all if it’s continues to be a viable genre perhaps they’ll get around to doing the really epic stuff I want them to do.
So anyway… I finally got around to seeing this yesterday and what can I say.
Wow. Just &^#%ing wow.
This had everything I like in a movie an ensemble cast of people who are on the top of their game and it’s still barely enough. Regrettably most action film I know the writer tries to fluff up the hero by making everyone else stupid and it really gets on my nerves. In fact the only films I can name that fit my don’t make the cast stupid criteria is Apollo 13 and Day of the Jackal.
Anyway being the son of scientists I always like films that remember that Scientists are people and not the patronizing intellectual snobs that they are frequently portrayed as. So this group of professionals being human for better or for worse working miracles just as frequently as they made huge mistakes.
But back to the film Matt Damon leads an amazing cast including Jeff Daniels, Sean Bean , Chiwetel Ejiofor and many more.
Astrophysics isn’t my line so beyond the one about Mars’s atmosphere being dense enough to yield hurricane strengh storms there weren’t any scientific errors that I noticed so I loved all of the puzzles that Matt Damon’s character had to do in order to survive from making water to grow potatoes to recycling the pathfinder probe to communicate with earth. This movie had me gripping my seat all the way throughgh and I definitely plan to seeing it in the theater a second time.
Also the best use of a crucifix if film ever.
For today’s Inktober I drew another one that I don’t possessed me to put in the list…. I think I was running out of ideas and was cribbing a Halloween list that was aimed at grade schoolers. So it was only a matter of time before I had to draw a Black Cat.
So generally when we go their we have the two traditional options… witch’s accessory or having it perched on something usually arching it’s back in a threat display… Neither of them sounded exciting especially since I’d done a picture of sitting on a grave stone if I’d picked the favorite perch for option two.
Then it hit me my instructions didn’t pick which black cat. So I picked my favorite one. Behemoth from The Master and The Margarita there’s so many good things to pick from but I chose his finest hour which consists of him swinging from a chandelier and shoots it out with the Moscow Police!
