I’ve been doing stars from the past for the most part and decided it was time to take on a more modern star and the character she plays. So, here we have Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones…
A confession: I have yet to see ANY of the Marvel Netflix shows, including Jessica Jones. But Ms. Ritter looks great in the role. Love her look and wanted a crack at it.
Hope I did her justice!
Today I took on Constance Frances Marie Ockleman, better known as actor Veronica Lake (1922-1973).
She was another stunning beauty who starred in several unforgettable films, including Sullivan’s Travels, The Glass Key, This Gun For Hire, and The Blue Dahlia. She would be paired with actor Alan Ladd in seven films, including three of the films I’ve listed above.
Unfortunately, her career following The Blue Dahlia was mediocre at best and heavy drinking took its toll. She would die at the too young age of 50 from hepititis.
Here she is, in better times…
So yesterday I had a little free time and pulled out the old Apple Pencil and looked around for a new subject to draw.
I found one and here it is:
Actor and inventor Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000) is my latest subject.
She was an incredible beauty, easily among the most beautiful women to grace the screen. Some may find her name familiar, perhaps due to Harvey Korman’s hilarious character “Hedley Lamarr” in the film Blazing Saddles (she sued for the use of her name and the case was settled out of court). But what made Ms. Lamarr all the more fascinating beyond her many roles and her breathtaking beauty was this fact, which I’ve cut and pasted from IMDB:
(Hedy Lamarr) was co-inventor (with composer George Antheil) of the earliest known form of the telecommunications method known as “frequency hopping”, which used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or to jam. The method received U.S. patent number 2,292,387 on August 11, 1942, under the name “Secret Communications System”. Frequency hopping is now widely used in cellular phones and other modern technology. However, neither she nor Antheil profited from this fact, because their patents were allowed to expire decades before the modern wireless boom.
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, Hedy Lamarr was one of the two people to create what would become our manner of using cellular phones!
Sadly, she joins the list of far too many people who created/invented great things in their lifetimes but didn’t live to see their ideas/creations become well known.
Here’s to you, Ms. Lamarr. Beauty and brains.
Incredible.
A while back I did a Lauren Bacall and knew I would one day have to do a Humphrey Bogart. That day came today. Though a very high pressure day (I’ll write about that another day), I nonetheless am incredibly proud of this piece… Enjoy!
Moving from a genuine hero in Flash Gordon to perhaps my favorite “anti” hero…
Of all the characters presented within the movies John Carpenter made, my favorite is easily Snake Plisskin, as portrayed by Kurt Russell.
While I feel Escape From New York, the movie that gave us that character, is far from perfect, there’s little doubt that Snake Plisskin is the real deal. Love, love, love the character.
The issue I have with the film is that it starts so damn well but seems to run out of steam in its later third. I feel part of the problem is that the movie’s budget caught up with John Carpenter’s vision and he wasn’t able to make the extravaganza he was hoping for.
Still, Escape From New York is nonetheless a favorite film of mine, if only because of Kurt Russell and that crazy bad ass Snake Plisskin.
For a man so many thought was dead, he sure has a hell of a lot of life in him!
Did this one last night:
Since first seeing bits and pieces of the original 1936 serial episodes many a year ago, I’ve always had a fondness for Flash Gordon as played by Buster Crabbe.
Here then is my interpretation of a famous publicity picture of both he and actress Jean Rogers, who played Flash’s love Dale Arden, as they embrace.
A few days back I talked about the proverbial “light at the end of the tunnel”. Over the past four days, that light’s gotten much brighter thanks to taking care of my other daughter, who was moving into a new apartment.
It was a brutal series of days, renting a U-Haul to move all her stuff (and, by the Gods, has she accumulated a lot of it!) to the new apartment but by Saturday we were done and on Sunday we drove back home and today I sit here eager and ready to get back to some serious writing.
In the meantime, I managed to produce two more inked sketches using the iPad and Procreate (the art app).
Here’s the first one, and I’m mighty proud of it:
The picture is of Deborah Harry, the singer of the band Blondie, in all her majesty. Blondie was/is a terrific band and Ms. Harry was, for many years, a great crush of mine. Not to get all shallow, but she is easily one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever had the pleasure to see, if only through the TV or pictures.
Rock on, Ms. Harry!
Next up is another woman, an actress in this case, that I feel is among the most beautiful to ever exist. Alas, my attempt at making her picture fell, IMHO, flat…
So here’s the deal: Since beginning these pictures, I’ve at times hit “home runs” and at other times did a decent enough job but felt I could’ve done better. Of the pieces I’ve done, the one I’m probably most disappointed with remains the Lauren Bacall piece (you can see it here). This one, alas, is also a disappointment.
However, and paradoxically, I think this picture actually isn’t all that bad “as is”. But as a picture of the absolutely stunning and luminous actress Susan George… it just doesn’t work.
Though she’s been in some really dark films -none darker than the original Straw Dogs– I’ve always pictured Ms. George as accented in bright lights, her pale skin, beautiful blonde hair, and bright big eyes front and center and her entire being sexy as hell.
Alas, in this piece I’ve presented someone who looks like they belong in a noir feature and whose features are way too hidden in dark shadow.
Don’t know why it turned out that way but I knew I was in trouble when I erased the face, re-tried it, didn’t like what I was doing, erased again and re-tried it again and, after doing the same four times, gave up. It just wasn’t working the way I wanted it to.
Again, however, I feel the picture itself turned out perfectly fine… if my subject was someone other than Susan George.
Oh well, on to the next piece!
Didn’t take me all that long to go after one of the bigger icons of the sci-fi age, the “holy trinity” as it were.
Without further ado: Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you Larry, Curly, and Moe… The Three Stooges!
I kid, I kid!
Everyone knows this is a picture of The Marx Brothers! 😉
The beauty of doing these images on an iPad (I swear I’m not getting any money for talking about this) is that its giving me far more freedom to experiment with my art than I’ve had before. Back in the 1990’s and when I worked in comics as an inker, while doing so using brush and on paper, I had to get everything done “right” for if I didn’t or screwed up, it was a pain to white out large and small areas to correct any errors.
Thus and as mentioned, I wasn’t prone to experiment too much which, I worried, stifled my art.
Now, by doing this using the iPad, I can easily erase any areas I’m not happy with and can also try out new things… different line thickness and blotchier blacks. Truly the sky is the limit.
In this latest sketch, I used an image of Paul Newman -an odd one as he had a beard and fairly long hair- and, after inking it, colored it using bright, Moebius (Jean Girard) inspired colors. Fun stuff!
I have to say, I’m having incredible fun doing these pictures. Here, for picture #10, I’m going back to the 1986 really intense thriller featuring Rutger Hauer as a seemingly unstoppable killer whose life mission is to make C. Thomas Howell’s life miserable.
Ladies and gentlemen, The Hitcher!
In 2007 the film was remade with the protagonist/hero of the feature being Sophia Bush versus C. Thomas Howell. Getting Sean Bean to play the Hitcher wasn’t the worst idea, IMHO. I thought he was a good choice but the film itself…
…well…
Stick with the original.