Well, I drew another fun one with Godfather Death. I always find it a bit of a catch twenty-two on just how to do a lot of these illustrations, especially when it involves stock characters like Death. At one level there’s no reason to do him as the skeleton with the scythe. After all, in the story, all we’re given as a description are withered legs and cold hands. I could at least give him flesh like in Seventh Seal or do something completely different like Neil Gaiman’s goth cutie… And if I were working on a longer project I’d be more than happy to. But for something quick like this you need to do broad strokes that appeal to the viewer’s cultural vocabulary… so walking skeleton it is (scythe optional) I went with something a little more affluent with a dark coat with a fur lining rather than the usual which I am positive were originally monk’s robes.
As for the rest of picture the lighting was the trickiest bit. At first, I figured I’d do a couple of candles in the dark cave and braced myself for a lot of crosshatching… then I realized just how many candles that would be. I may have botched the shadowing on the figures. I’m mostly happy with this though I still think it’s a little too close to Maurice Sendak’s version. In hindsight, I think having the candles in the foreground might have looked better.
So today when I shook the tupperware before picking a name this one fell out… Literally. So obviously that meant I had to draw this one. The Fisherman and His Wife, one of the classic examples of be careful what you wish for, is another one where it’s hard to choose the image. I ended up with going with a collage of the Fisherman making his wish and the final result when his wife wants too much.
Today’s sketch, The Wolf and The Seven Young Kids, is one of the stories that is somewhere in the middle of the of obscurity list. It’s usually in most of the collections, I know I read it while growing up, but it’s usually supplanted by the similar story of the three little pigs.
Well after nearly a week of drawing obscure, to completely unknown, stories the magic Tupperware finally gave me a live one with Little Red Riding hood.
I have to confess this is one I have mixed feelings about this one. As an unrepentant treehugger I can be pretty knee jerk about it being one of the stories indirectly responsible for the near extinction of the gray wolf. On another note while I’ll be happily part of the chorus saying there are no reported attacks by wolves in history, I’ll also wonder why the wolf would go into all of the trouble of the Grandmother disguise when he was alone in the woods with a little girl where there could be another unreported attack. On top of this there’s so many takes on this that have already been done from all the jokes about the wolf having a crossdressing fetish to all of the hypersexualzation of the story with Red Riding Hood in bed with the wolf.
All in all I’m not sure if I’m happy with this one… sure it looks fine but I don’t think this is an original choice and I could probably point out about four separate illustrations I’m cribbing… Also I think I screwed up Red’s feet.
I just recently enjoyed DC comics’ Wacky Raceland a humorous apocalyptic revision to Hanna-Barbara’s sixties cartoon The Wacky Races. This got me waxing nostalgically about Hanna-Barbara’s best villains, Dick Dastardly! Dick is a wonderful parody of every mustache twirling villain from silent films. The kind you find yourself liking far more than the cardboard heroes he would inevitably fail to defeat. This got me thinking about all of the movies that inspired the Wacky Racers as well as Dastardly’s second starring role: Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines.
I started my viewing with Blake Edwards, The Great Race. Loosely based on an actual 1908 auto race from New York to Paris. The Great Race embraces a silent film sensibility featuring Tony Curtis as the dashing hero all in white, The Great Leslie, and his rival, the villainous Professor Fate, played by Jack Lemmon dressed all in black top hat and everything. From there we follow our two rivals as they go from one one spot to another on the map as they jockey their way to be first to the finish line.
While this film was fun I had mixed feelings about it. Due to sabotage all the other racers are eliminated in the first mile so it never has the ensemble quality that I expected. The other problem I had was it was extremely episodic with a lot of the stops they make in the map are stories unto themselves distracting from the film. So nice as western musical number and giant pie fight were, they all seemed like big lipped alligator moments to me.
Fortunately the good parts of the movie trump these completely and that is Jack Lemmon chewing the scenery as he ineptly cheats his way across the globe
What we get is story of the early days of aviation with an international ensemble cast competing in an airplane race across the Channel in an endeavor to promote (British) Aviation.
This film was fun. For all practical purposes the the plot itself is optional. What we are here for is the wonderful over top stereotypes ham it up, my favorite is Gert Fröbe of Goldfinger fame hamming it up as a straight laced Prussian officer who’s learned to fly from following the Prussian Army’s Big Book of Instructions (step one sit down) Even funnier is when their on going rivalry culminates in a duel with blunderbusses in hot air balloons )apparently something like this actually happened.
Well, I drew another fun one with Godfather Death. I always find it a bit of a catch twenty-two on just how to do a lot of these illustrations, especially when it involves stock characters like Death. At one level there’s no reason to do him as the skeleton with the scythe. After all, in the story, all we’re given as a description are withered legs and cold hands. I could at least give him flesh like in Seventh Seal or do something completely different like Neil Gaiman’s goth cutie… And if I were working on a longer project I’d be more than happy to. But for something quick like this you need to do broad strokes that appeal to the viewer’s cultural vocabulary… so walking skeleton it is (scythe optional) I went with something a little more affluent with a dark coat with a fur lining rather than the usual which I am positive were originally monk’s robes.
