Needless to say, during the run up to and following the passing of Hurricane Irma I didn’t get much time to do anything other than try to secure my home and buy the essentials (water, batteries, etc).

I nonetheless somehow managed to find the time to do two new sketches.

Here’s the first one, of Peter Lorre in the mostly forgotten 1935 horror/mystery/suspense film Mad Love (which, in turn, was a remake of The Hands of Orlac, 1924.  A third version of the same story would be made in 1960 and also under the title of The Hands of Orlac)…

I’ve always loved this image, an almost art deco-ish horror image from the film, which involved a concert pianist losing his hands -and thus his livelihood- and how new hands are grafted onto him… but the hands are those of a murderer.

You can guess where things go from there!

I distinctly recall when I started making this image my hands were trembling, and this makes the image so ironic in so many ways. The anxiety my wife and I were going through at that time was nearly unbearable and we weren’t sure if the storm would hit us directly or pass us by (in the end, it sorta did both, though we were lucky to never get the full effect).

Regardless, I knew I really, really needed to get my mind off the anxiety I was feeling and do something productive.  So I worked through my nerves and there you have the image above.

Love it!

The second image, done post Irma, isn’t quite as successful IMHO.  I like it enough, and it certainly captures Robert Mitchum, one of my favorite actors, but it just seems too… simple.  As I said before, not all of ’em are going to be home runs!