A very Happy Birthday to Mr. Dizzy Gillespie!
Let’s celebrate by listening to his theme to Cool World! No, not that one.
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I had mixed feelings about today’s prompt, “Cadaverous Cowboys”. On one hand, I had a really good idea. On the other hand, I can barely draw a decent horse when I cheat and trace.
Other than that concern I think it came out okay. The basic idea for it was a cross between “Ghost Riders in the Sky“ and the “Blind Dead“.
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I’m kind of satisfied with today’s prompt “Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Friday” but otherwise meh.
I confess I wasn’t looking forward to doing this one. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is hard to spell out in one drawing. (personally, the only image I could think of was Hyde walking down the street looking for whores and booze like he does in the novel. Unfortunately, if I did that all the viewer would see would be a Victorian, slightly bestial, thug. No, if you want to do Jekyll and Hyde you either have to do something with either the transformation or the duality.
To make matters worse I got a bit of a late start and most of my blue pencils which made the initial sketch sloppy.
Still… I guess it’s kind of okay.
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Today’s Prompt, Nightmare Nomads, had me puzzled. For the longest time, all I could think of was pastoral steppe nomadic horseback cultures, which would be too similar to what I had planned for day twenty one, Cadaverous Cowboys. In the end, I went with the nomadic culture best connected with Halloween, Gypsies.
Now, at risk of sounding overly politically correct, I get really tired of the racist “Gypsies are evil” stereotypes lazy writers fall back on. So I really tried to keep fantasy gypsies separate from the very real Romani.
Having said that, I think this is one of the weaker sketches of the batch. I rushed the rough sketch a little too much and couldn’t find my dark blue pencil to tighten it up before inking… Let’s just say had to touch it up a LOT in post. I think I salvaged it though.
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THe “Real” Ariane just provided another cool footnote for her side of the story. According to her, she provides the ride so Brian can’t escape. Looks like Brian has his work cut out for him.
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I originally thought of this week’s selection of arthouse vampire movies. However, maybe it’s my personal tastes, but while these films were certainly much more dramas than horror, I didn’t find them that artsy. So because of this, I had to find another thing these two films had in common. (Other than the vampires, of course) So I went for the next best thing, films about pairs of Vampires.
My first film, Only Lovers Left Alive, Tells, directed by Jim Jarmusch, tells the story of Adam and Eve (Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton) a married couple of immortal vampires currently living separately with Adam in Detroit and Eve in Tangiers.
Adam has been suffering from a bad case of suicidal despair and has been planning to kill himself. Eve travels back to Detroit to talk him down.
This is a slow quiet film that is more a study of how two immortals will interact over the centuries, taking in the beauty of art and culture. Vampirism seems to be only an issue since in pop culture it’s the form immortality most people know about.
Hiddleston and Swinton have fairly good chemistry with Swinton’s otherworldly appearance being perfect for the role.
On a side note, I found myself drawn back to thinking of Vampire The Masquerade again. If Near Dark was a film about the Sabbat, this was very much a movie about the Toreador.
My next film Byzantium tells the story of Clara and her daughter Eleanor. (Played by Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan) Two vampires who have been on the run from other vampires for centuries. They finally find sanctuary in a beachfront hotel called the Byzantium. Things go well at first though Eleanor has tired of her existence on the run and, having been sheltered by Clara, is oblivious to the real dangers of her existence. From here she becomes attracted to a sickly and mortal young man (Caleb Landry Jones)…. Things kind of go downhill from there.
This film was fairly well done with good performances from the principals and with a very nontraditional take on vampirism (the can go out in the daylight and have retractable thumb spikes instead of fangs, etc) with an interesting backstory. Though I couldn’t quite get into it in the long run.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TbxI_oRSKI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zu2cW7AhO8
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