Tag Archives: Art

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 16

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!

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 13 and 14

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!

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 11

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!

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 7, 8, and 9

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Sorry for the dearth of posts of late but I’ve been away for the past few days (University is starting which means I have to help my daughters move into their new digs).

While I haven’t been able to post quite as much as I want to, I have kept up with my illustrations and here you get three for the price of one, a real bargain!

First up, Lauren Bacall…

I think the piece came out only OK.  As I mentioned before, that’s the way it goes with artwork.  You can think something is working and then it mostly works -or not- but when you’re done, you move along.  Which I did…

Here’s Charles Bronson from The Dirty Dozen, a film that was clearly the inspiration to the comic book The Suicide Squad and, therefore, obviously the movie’s inspiration as well.  Only The Dirty Dozen presented a coherent plot! 😉

When I started this piece, I thought I would abandon it.  It just didn’t look like it was “working” for me.

And then, like magic, it did.

I won’t say this piece is one of my favorites -it feels like it would benefit from color especially given how “simple” it is- but I definately captured the Bronson “look”.

Finally:

Ah, extreme success!

As I also stated before, sometimes you may just miss and sometimes you hit a home run.  Here, with this Christopher Lee Dracula picture, I feel I’ve hit a home run.

The image captures the frenzied, animalistic look of Mr. Lee’s Dracula, easily one of my favorite portrayals of the dark Count.  Love the feathering on this piece.

By the way, if I wasn’t clear about it before, let me do so here: All this was done using an iPad and an Apple Pencil on the Procreate program.  Though it may look like pen and ink, this is all computer images.

Enjoy!

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 6

Shortly after finishing up the Robert Conrad picture, I took on another iconic movie image.  In this case, Steve McQueen from the movie Bullitt…

Art is a funny thing.  The Robert Conrad picture (you can see it here) I thought was a total knockout.  A complete success.

This one?

Not so much.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think its a terrible picture, but I’m not feeling Steve McQueen’s face here.  On the other hand, I really like certain parts of the picture, like the hand, body, and hair.  but something isn’t quite working on the face itself.  Perhaps its the eyes or maybe the lips.

The good thing about doing art is that once you finish a piece, you can go on to the next one and hope for better.

Come to think about it, that’s life, isn’t it?

You always try for the best but sometimes things don’t work out as well as you want.

Brush yourself off and go on to the next job/work.

With practice things will get better.

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 5

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Though I haven’t had a chance this past week to do any iPad sketching, this past half hour I found and did this image:

Love the image…

And I think I have the whole “image size” thing figured out.

The gentleman in the picture is Robert Conrad who is best known for playing James West on The Wild Wild West TV show.  This particular image was taken from, believe it or not, a photograph of him when he was in The Battle of the Network Stars in the late 1970’s.

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 4

Here you go, from yesterday…

Looks like I once again made the picture’s dimensions too damn small…must have been a slip of the finger when configuring the image size.  Once the image is “set”, the iPad you doesn’t offer information on the image size unless you double check it.  I consider that a lesson learned.

Still, I’m not too upset.  I like the above image but, of the four I’ve done so far, I’ve been lucky those that were too small are among the ones I’m less satisfied with.

Not that I think the above image is a complete bust but compared to the Raquel Welch and Nosferatu ones, it come next.

Anyway, the Phantom of the Opera!

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 3

Last night’s work, a classic pose/photograph of the absolutely stunning Raquel Welch for the film One Million Years B.C.

Never saw the film and can’t say I’m all that interested in doing so (cave men type films, even tongue in cheek ones, interest me very little), but the image of Ms. Welch is one that’s incredibly iconic to people in and around my age.

Let’s see if I have the time for another tonight!