Category Archives: E. R. Torre Art

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 33

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A few days back I did a Mel Gibson Mad Max -from The Road Warrior aka Mad Max 2– sketch and…

…doing that one illustration didn’t scratch the itch.  Not entirely.

So…I know many people today can’t stomach Mel Gibson and, frankly, I can’t argue the point.  What he did, though it was an awful long time ago, was nonetheless nasty as hell.  Clearly Mr. Gibson was in a dark place fueled by what appears to be heavy drinking and his actions and statements are both hard to comprehend and even harder to forgive.

For me, I knew and loved much of Mr. Gibson’s work prior to his melt-down and the work he did before that moment, especially in The Road Warrior/Mad Max 2, was terrific stuff.

I suppose this is a case where I’ve divorced the work from the artist themselves, because even I have a hard time comprehending the things he did.

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 32

Not so very long ago came the news that actor Martin Landau had passed away.

Though perhaps not one of the best known actors out there, Mr. Landau carved an impressive career for himself.  Today he’s probably best known for playing the foul mouthed, drug addled elderly Bela Lugosi, a role which won him a Best supporting Actor Oscar, in the 1995 Tim Burton directed film Ed Wood.

Terrific as he was in that role, my familiarity with Mr. Landau came with earlier roles, two specific, which happened to be television shows that also featured his then wife, the stunningly beautiful Barbara Bain.

The two shows?  Mission: Impossible and Space: 1999.

Anyway, I was looking around the internet last night seeking some interesting picture from Space: 1999 to use for my next piece and, though I didn’t find it, I did find a fascinating picture with both Mr. Landau and Mrs. Bain which looked as if it was taken after their stint in Mission: Impossible and a little before Space: 1999.

And here it is.  Enjoy!

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 31

When I was much younger (way back in the stone age, natch), I very clearly remember the release of the subject of my latest sketch, Mel Gibson’s Mad Max from the incredible Mad Max 2 or, as it was known in the United States, The Road Warrior.

Back when the film was released, I was too young to see this “R” rated film without *ahem* adult supervision.  I nonetheless managed to see the film twice upon its initial release and was turned away a third time.

Ah well.

I still consider Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior one of the very best action films ever made, regardless of people’s current opinions -sadly, understandable- against Mr. Gibson.  I felt the latest Mad Max film, Mad Max Fury Road, would have been better served with Mr. Gibson, though please don’t take that as a slight against Tom Hardy, who took over the role.

It’s just that to me, Gibson is Mad Max and I personally feel he would have done better in the lead role… but that’s crying over spilled milk at this point.

So here he is, in all his glory, a very young Mel Gibson in the role that made him a star…

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 30

So it enters my mind to do Clint Eastwood picture.

He is, after all, one of the more recognizable stars of the 1960’s on…

Thing is, I don’t want to do your typical Clint Eastwood picture, ie the grimacing, angry, Dirty-Harry-carrying-a-weapon-type image.  I’ve had my fill of late of angry, grim people.

After looking around, I find this image, clearly a Clint Eastwood promo picture taken before his “spaghetti western” period (he’s clean shaven!) and probably was made in/around his Rawhide years. What’s fascinating is that it looks like the type of picture Mr. Eastwood might have forwarded to the folks over at Bonanza!

And there you have it, a young, smiling, clean shaven Clint Eastwood!

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 29

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Don’t know why I haven’t found enough time to do more sketches but its been a while since I’ve posted one.

I take that back.

There have been other sketches I’ve done but haven’t felt were worth posting.  Some I’ve come close to finishing but decided it just wasn’t working.

C’est la vie.

Anyway, this is one I did manage to finish up yesterday.  I like it:

This is from the original 1982 Tron, a film I was so damn excited to see back in the day but which turned out to be a disappointment.

The graphics/effects, for the time, were out of this world but the reality is that the film was… well… far less interesting than the effects.

In fact, I was amused when in 2010 the very belated sequel, Tron: Legacy came out and Disney, the movie’s producers, made it quite difficult for audiences to get their hands on the original film, something you would figure they’d be more than happy to do.  Yet there was no “special edition” of the original movie made available via DVD.  Nothing at all.

I suspect they knew what I did: That the original film wasn’t all that good so just keep the whole thing mysterious and release the DVD later on, which they did.

Alas, the sequel was just as weak, IMHO, story wise as the original while the effects were quite amazing.

I suppose the more things change, the more they stay the same?

Even though the movie(s) may not have been all that much, I do still like the original’s visuals and enjoyed taking on this image.

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 28

If people remember actor Raymond Burr today, it is either for his odd framing appearance in the 1956 Americanized version of the original Godzilla (his scenes were filmed and inserted into this -obviously- Japanese film so that Americans would have both someone to explain what was going on and, I suppose, an American presence to relate to) and/or more likely for his role of defense attorney extraordinaire Perry Mason in the show with the same name which ran from 1957 to 1966 and was followed, years later and until his eventual passing in 1993, with a bunch of TV movies.

But before Mr. Burr appeared in these two works, he was very active in radio dramas (often playing both villains and heroes) and, more often than not, playing villains in many movies.  This promo picture of a younger Burr, presented also as his IMDB picture, is a great one which shows plenty of heavy shadows and a very noir look. Wouldn’t be surprised if this picture landed Mr. Burr a few villainous roles here and there!

Books/Literature, E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 27… and a Corrosive Knights update 9/22/2017

Life for me is slowly but surely going back to “normal” after Irma.

The electricity returned a while back and we’ve picked up all the fallen branches and some has been picked up by the (very) busy garbage people and I think I’ve managed to regain all the lost sleep and shake off the muscle aches from all the stuff I’ve been doing to get the house back to what it was.

I’ve also managed to get back to both my writing and artwork.

First, regarding the writing, in the past few days I’ve been on a tear with the latest Corrosive Knights novel, getting the bits I needed written out and working them to something satisfactory.  Incredibly, because of Irma I hadn’t written a single thing for this novel in nearly two weeks.

Ugh.

But its flowing well.  Last time around when I talked about this book, I mentioned that it might be split into two books.  This will be the concluding chapter of the Corrosive Knights series and, as such, I was intent on making it as spectacular as I could… but I worried there might be a little too much diverse material for “just” one book.

Well, based on the writings I’ve done in the past few days, I’m thinking that might not be necessary after all and I may well be able to make this concluding chapter “fit” well within this novel after all, even if this concluding chapter will be extra sized.

This thrills me!

Anyway, I’ll offer more information as it comes…

Meanwhile, my latest sketch.  This piece, taken from perhaps one of the most famous frames from the 1920 silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, shows Dr. Caligari, his sleepwalking/zombie subject Cesare, and Jane Olsen, the intrepid lady in peril.

If you haven’t seen the film, give it a whirl.  For something now nearly 100 years old, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is an incredible work well worth checking out.

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 25 and 26

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!

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 23 & 24

The past few days I’ve had Batman on my mind, or should I say a couple of the people around him…

First up is Heath Ledger’s Joker from the 2008 Christopher Nolan directed film The Dark Knight, the second film of his Batman trilogy and the film many consider the best of the lot…

I thought that came out pretty good, though I impressed myself even more with my follow-up…

Back in 1997 director Joel Schumacher followed up his Batman Forever with the much lambasted Batman and Robin.  I found it so curious people essentially gave Batman Forever (featuring Val Kilmer in the Bruce Wayne/Batman role) a pass and hated, hated, hated Batman and Robin (George Clooney’s sole outing as the Dark Knight) so much.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t believe Batman and Robin is a great film by any stretch of the imagination.  But it was, IMHO, roughly on the same level of Batman Forever… a theatrical big budget version of the 1960’s campy Batman TV show.  As such, it fascinates me how much people can hate one and essentially have little to no strong opinion of the other.

Anyway, Batman and Robin featured the introduction of the character of Batgirl and they picked a mighty fine actress to play the role in Alicia Silverstone.  After wowing audiences with her sexy -and sometimes deadly!- youthful characters both in film and music videos, Batman and Robin would be perhaps her last big hurrah in terms of youthful movie roles.

In a way its too bad… I thought she made a smashing Batgirl, even if the film around her wasn’t very good.

So here’s to you.  Alicia Silverstone as Barbara Wilson (yeah, yeah, in the comics its Barbara Gordon, the daughter of Commissioner Gordon)… aka The Batgirl!

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 21 & 22

These two pieces were being worked on and off the past few days.  Last night I decided to finish ’em off.

First up is my take on a publicity still from the classic 1946 Alfred Hitchcock film Notorious.  The movie stars Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman and many consider it one of Mr. Hitchcock’s all time greatest works.

I’m not entirely satisfied with the piece, largely because I feel I didn’t get Mr. Grant’s eyes as well as I wanted to.  I’m happy about the rest of the piece and I could one day return to this and take on those eyes once again.  In the meantime, love the while pattern lines on his suit.  That part really came out wonderfully, IMHO!

Next up is the actress Sarah Douglas in one of her most memorable roles, that of the villain Ursa from Superman and Superman II…

As I mentioned before, one of the things I most like about using the iPad and Apple Pencil (no, I’m not getting any money for mentioning my tools) is that it allows me to experiment.

In the case of the Ursa picture, I quite literally did a 5 minute piece, hardly bothering with getting everything “right”, then came back to it yesterday.  Once again, I realized I needed to work on the eyes.  Eyes are usually THE thing that either makes or breaks your piece and in their original form as drawn they looked too sloppy.

So last night I erased the eyes I had and redrew them and, suddenly, the picture was something like a thousand times better.  I cleaned up a little stuff here and there and added that weird lit up/dark background and, voila, another piece.

I’m quite happy with it!