Let's All Go to the Movies, Part 2: Return of the Reel

After my adventure making a movie poster for How to Steal A Million, my mind wandered from classic movies to cult classics. Ladies and gentlemen; Firefly.

I have always loved every poster series from Quantum Mechanix and wanted to create on of my own. And to be honest, I have no idea what inspired it, but these doodles popped up in my sketchbook for a movie style poster for the episode "Objects In Space".

As is my style, I jumped into the final piece without much planning and would become frozen constantly when faced with how to exactly create what was in my head. Never the less, I soldiered on! Well, half soldiered on. It is till a work in progress, but I will share what I have thus far. You're welcome. (please excuse the poor quality photo)

With the other posters, I decided to do a little more planning. So instead of jumping from rough thumbnail to finished piece, I started making more detailed concept sketches. We have "Our Mrs. Reynolds", "Trash", and my personal favorite "Ariel".

Anyone that gets the references in all the posters gets a cookie. :)

Let's All Go to the Movies!

I love movies, and I love movie posters, and I love movie posters of movies I love! Unfortunately some of my favorite movies have some... dated posters. Not the good kind of vintage dated, just bad. One such movie is 'How To Steal A Million'.

I don't know if it is the weird outfit Audrey has on, or the obnoxious amounts of text scattered all over the place, I just hate this poster. It doesn't stand the test of time and personally don't feel it carries the mood of the film. I decided to sketch a few designs focusing on the statue of Venus that Audrey and Peter are trying to steal.

First thumb is a silhouette of the statue with close ups of the stars. But I realized the statues shape chopped up the faces in an awkward way, it just didn't work. So I switched it around, detailed image of the statue and silhouettes of the couple. I like this design, the contrast of the detailed statue against the flat background images; and it gives the image of our thieves trying to hide in the crowd.  

I liked the last thumb best, I'm a sucker for asymmetry. Now to decide on the color scheme. This is where I'm stuck. I'm partial to the first design myself but wonder if the red pops better, or if the background should be broken up with a gradient.

Which is your favorite? Or do you not like any of them? Leave your thoughts!

British tv is not conducive to a productive environment

I'm sitting at my computer, working to boost my freelance business, but I made the mistake of watching "An Idiot Abroad". It is amazing to me how unaffected this man can be visiting such spectacular places. But I'm sure I wouldn't be very awestruck either if I had been having diarrhea for three straight days.

Onto the art! I have multiple projects that are stuck as thumbnails in my sketchbook. Movie poster revamps, book cover ideas, art nouveau style fairy tale illustrations. One project that is making some slow head way is a collection of watercolor portraits. I love the look of traditional arts, especially watercolors, and I want to improve my skill with them.
So I decided to do a series of portrait of my favorite female musicians. My portrait skills are rusty and I like to expose people to my odd collection of music. The artists I chose were Fiona Apple, Neko Case, Florence Welch, and Ingrind Michaelson.

I have 5x7 watercolor pads (which are great! If you are always fighting with your watercolor paper crinkling  get yourself some watercolor pads) and spend a few hours sucked into searching the web for the right photos. Here are my final picks.

First up, Neko Case. I worked using a grid system and slowly would layer colors, waiting for each layer to dry completely (usually I only got to work every few days, so it was quite dry). I took a photo at every stage (sorry for the poor photo quality).

And now we have a watercolor portrait of Neko Case! This is genuinely one of my favorite pieces I've done recently, not just because it's one of the few things I've actually finished recently, but the colors and likeness.

Well, the English man just reached Chichen Itza and is on the phone with his girlfriend, trying to help her set up the dvd player. Till next time.