Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Cave Sequence: Color Keys

One of the sequences/acts/whatever in my 2nd Crogan Adventures book, Five Years’ Service (titled Crogan’s March on its initial publication) is  forty-something-page-long section that takes place in a cave, the only lighting source a torch.  
BECAUSE it’s all in a cave, it’s easy to feel like it’s one long scene, rather than the four (possibly five) distinct scenes that compose it.  In reworking the book for color, I picked a panel from early in each scene and colored it in a way that it (hopefully) feels different from the other:   
the first, the introduction of the cave, is very matter of fact, literal, to suit the feel of this new mess they’ve gotten themselves into.
The second introduces a danger, and I thought the fire palette would best highlight the stress that arrives with it.
The third scene becomes scary, a little more otherwordly, so I pushed the purple,
and the final is where lines start to become blurred, both in terms of personal allegiances and what our perceptions of the reality of the dangers that they face are, and so I wanted to align the purple and the orange of the immediately preceding scene, bring them closer together in value and saturation, which creates this nice rich jewel tone that suits the Arabian Nights thing that’ll play out over the next few pages.
So now what I’ll do is sample FROM these color key panels to do the remainder of each scene.

Monday, July 27, 2015

Joachim Murietta

This weekend marked the 162nd anniversary of the death of legendary California bandit/folk hero Joachim Murietta.  So here’s a quick sketch!


Thursday, July 23, 2015

Movie Poster Commissions!

I like drawing up movie posters, but can rarely justify taking the time to do so.  But I dislike accepting movie poster commissions because they take so long, and if it does not meet a variety of criteria (my personal enthusiasm for the film being foremost among them) then it will serve me no purpose as a promotional piece, which means that I’d have to charge far more for it than I’d feel comfortable doing in order to justify taking on a piece that serves no greater goal (to do a poster I don’t intend to use a promotional piece, I’d need to charge six hundred and more, which I feel is too steep for non-commercial work)

So I’ve come up with what may be a solution: taking commissions for specific posters that I’d like to draw.

If you happen to really want original art for a film that I’d like to draw a poster for, then it’s a win for both of us.

So, here are the posters that I would like to do (many of them already roughed) and the prices that I would charge given the amount of time and detail that each would require. 

All of my posters feature drawn titles and handwritten text, and you would receive an 11x17 print of the final colored poster along with the original art.

Here's an in-progress sketch of a poster commission that I did last year, Guardians of the Galaxy:
And here's what the final finished version looked like:

AVAILABLE POSTER COMMISSIONS:
Roughs shown are my current ideas for the posters, but may change during their execution.
All prices are in US dollars!

Mad Max: Fury Road
Featuring three of the main characters and most of the vehicles
$350


The Rocketeer
Featuring most of the film’s prominent characters
$300 SOLD!


Ant-Man
Featuring the film’s main characters and hundreds of hand-drawn ants
$250


The African Queen
Featuring Bogart, Hepburn, and the boat
$200 SOLD!

The Night Flyer
Featuring Miguel Ferrer and the Vampire
$125

King of the Kickboxers
Featuring most of the film’s main characters
$150

Kingdom of Heaven
Featuring Orlando Bloom and a lot of abstracted knights
$150 SOLD!

Quigley Down Under
Featuring Selleck, Rickman, San Giacomo, and a lot of aboriginals
$200 SOLD!

Rob Roy
Featuring most of the film’s main characters
$200 SOLD!

Greedo
Drawn as a 70s car movie
$200

Expect six-eight weeks before completion and shipping.  There is always the chance that I might finish the piece early, but no guarantee of it.

If you're interested, send a paypal payment for the specified amount to chris@curiousoldlibrary.com and BE SURE to include a note saying which poster you're commissioning.  I'll do my best to mark them as sold as soon as they sell, but on the off chance that I receive more than one order for the same poster the first payment will get it and any subsequents will be immediately refunded.

Thanks!


Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Timothy Wilde


Reading one of Lyndsay Faye’s TIMOTHY WILDE novels and felt like drawing its protagonist.