Vincent Price

Vincent Price as Fortunato Lucresi from "The Black Cat" segment of Roger Corman's delightful 1962 compilation film "Tales of Terror."

Here is another portrait of Vincent Price, I'm sure I'll end up do many more, what can I say, he has one of my favorite faces to draw. I remember seeing "Tales of Terror" when I was a kid and getting totally creeped out by certain images in the film. These images stuck with me, and it wasn't until a recent viewing that I realized where they came from.

What a fun little film, three short Corman films based on Poe and all staring Vincent Price, hot could you possibly go wrong?

One interesting piece of trivia: Vincent Price based his portrayal of Fortunato on Ernie Kovacs's television character Percy Dovetonsils.

For more on "Tales of Terror" be sure to check out Hollywood Gothique's Review.

The Wolf Man

"Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright..."

The Wolf Man as portrayed by Lon Chaney Jr. in George Waggner's 1941 classic "The Wolf Man."

Yet another beautiful make up by Jack Pierce.

Pierce talked about the make up in the book "The Wolf Man (The Original 1941 Shooting Script);" edited and compiled by Philip Riley; Magic Image Filmbooks; New York; page 49: "The Wolf Man makeup, though it takes 4 hours to apply, is not as complicated as the Frankenstein Monster's. It consists principally of an artificial nose piece and bristles on the head, face, and neck, which are literally applied yak hair by yak hair. After the application, I singe the hair to give it that 'animal-like' appearance. I also make-up Chaney's feet and I give him claws. It takes about forty-five minutes to remove his makeup at the end of the shooting day."

And Lon Chaney Jr.'s personal thoughts on the makeup removal process by Jack Pierce.

"What gets me," said Lon, "is after work and I'm all hot and itchy and tired, and I've got to sit in that chair for forty-five minutes more while Pierce just about kills me ripping off the stuff he put on in the morning! Sometimes we take an hour and he leaves some of the skin on my face!"

One interesting bit of trivia: The Wolf Man has the distinction of being the only classic Universal monster to be played by the same actor in all his classic 1940s film appearances.

You can check out the official Jack Pierce website here.
And be sure to stop by the official Chaney family website here.

A special thanks to The Old Movie Maven for compiling the quotes.

Illustration Friday: Opposites

A quick note to those of you visiting from Illustration Friday, please take a moment to visit my main site here.

It has been a while since I have participated in Illustration Friday, but when I saw this week's word this image just popped into my head and I had to do it. I have been itching to toss the occasional comic book character into the mix here so I seized the opportunity.

I was making great progress on this piece when it was pointed out to me that I had inadvertently made Two Face's left side his bad side... Dooohhhh!

So faced with the inevitable fan boy rants I made the decision to flip the image and continue working on it.

I was dreading it.

Anyone who has ever taken a high school art class knows that if you want to see all the faults in your drawing you hold it up to a mirror and all will be exposed. Well, after much cringing I got back to work on it and here it is... The composition is a little off from my original plan, but otherwise I can live with it, especially considering the entire portrait took 5 hours from start to finish (as opposed to the usual 3 to 4 days I seem to spend on the average monster art portrait these days.)

Two Face has always been my favorite Batman villain, sure I love The Joker, but there was always something I could identify with in Harvey. Maybe it was the fact that I suffered horrible acne as a youth, or perhaps its as simple as being born a Gemini, but something about Harvey fits.

I used Guy Pearce as the inspiration for Harvey's good side. I'm hoping that when Christopher Nolan gets to the Two Face story (If he sticks around that long) that he will cast Guy as Harvey, the two worked well together when they made "Memento" and in my book there are few truths, among them are... Han Shoots First, Crispin Clover is the Joker, and Guy Pearce is Two Face. I can't think of a better actor to bring Harvey Dent to life.

Grandpa Sam Dracula

Grandpa Sam Dracula as portrayed by Al Lewis on tv's "The Munsters."

I have always loved Al Lewis' performance as Grandpa, but after scanning my DVDs frame by frame searching for reference pics for this portrait I came away with an all new respect for the subtleties he put into it.

We all think of Grandpa as the sweet old jewish grandfather, but if you watch closely at Al's face you'll see that he delivers his lines with a venom and fury, just as though he was a fearsome creature of the night. In fact it was very very hard to find an image where he didn't look "evil."

Sadly Al Lewis passed away earlier this year on February 3rd, at the age of 95.

This is the first of my Munster portraits, with the others coming soon.

The Creature

The Creature as portrayed by Ben Chapman (on land) and Ricou Browning (underwater) from Jack Arnold's 1954 classic "Creature from the Black Lagoon."

When I told the Warden that I was going to do a portrait of The Creature she jokingly said "You better not screw it up."

(I'll leave it to you to decide if I did...)

You see, The Creature from the Black Lagoon is her favorite monster, and in fact comes in a very, very close second as mine... (If only a radioactively enlarged Creature and Kong could actually battle it out for the top spot!)

I'm not sure exactly what that says about me that my two favorite monsters are ones that were better off on their own, before mankind came along and ruined everything, but maybe we'll explore that some more some other day...

I'd like to dedicate this one to her. She has been an invaluable asset, not only suggesting monsters to do, but she is my other set of eyes. She has saved so many of the pieces on this site by giving her honest opinion and priceless advice. Without her you all would have suffered through a lot of portraits that where almost (but not quite) finished. So we all owe her a great big thanks!

Here's an interesting piece of trivia about "Creature From The Black Lagoon"

The film has been immortalized in paleontology circles. When Jenny Clack of the University of Cambridge discovered a fossil amphibian in what was once a fetid swamp, she named it Eucritta melanolimnetes, which is Greek for "the creature from the black lagoon."

Be sure to check out Ben Chapman's site:
http://www.the-reelgillman.com

And Julie Adams site:
http://www.julieadams.biz

Count Dracula

Count Dracula as portrayed by Bela Lugosi in Tod Browning's 1931 classic "Dracula."

When I was but a wee monster kid I was Count Dracula for Halloween so many times that my mother eventually stopped buying me those plastic vinyl capes, and actually sewed a custom made fabric cape for me. To this day I keep a pair of glow in the dark plastic fangs nearby just in case, you never know when they might come in handy. You know the kind, the ones that involve constantly slurping the collected spit out of them so that you come off more like a geeky kid with a speech impediment then the prince of darkness.

In my book when it comes to vampires there has never been anyone who even came even close to Lugosi, he is the true Master.