Beware-of-Artist; Sketchbook and experimental stuff

[Brion Frantz]

ROUGH, UNFINISHED, or SKETCHBOOK work, you can see my finished works at;

www.Brion-Frantz.daportfolio.com - Fine Art, Figure Works and Portraits
www.Beware-of-Artist.deviantart.com - Fine Art, Illustration and Concept Art

http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=147750 - Concept Art and Illustration

I will occasionally post a new image here for the thread icon, as I get new and different images for good symbols

[Brion Frantz]

Ninja vs Schoolgirl scene. It's very recent, still a W.I.P. I was given the subject matter, and a very odd format size and ratio to work in... almost but not quite square. This piece has so far come together like a jigsaw puzzle as I tried to put in depth cues and scenery working around the figures. It still needs some cherry or plum branches coming from the vase, but I'm kind of burned out on it for now...

[Brion Frantz]

I'm still organizing these categories into some kind of structure as I go, so keep checking back. Also, I have stacks of sketches and sketchbook strewn around this place, so I am posting some old stuff as well as new stuff, just whatever I draw or come across that I'm in the mood to see up here.

The first set of pieces is from a game dev cabal I worked with on a Western/Horror genre adventure game (we're seeking capital, if anyone is down...). It was about a heroic Native American renegade who came across an old mining town where everyone had been psychically overcome by this ancient evil spirit and turned into horrible caricatures of themselves.

The turnaround roughs are for a creature/boss/character is the owner of a dry goods/grocery store in a frontier town. My concept was that after he was corrupted (as part of the overall plot), he was turned into a gluttonous monster that ate up all his stock and was too fat to move afterward, hence the net devil lure and the man-o-war jellyfish tentacles. He lures animals and unsuspecting players into the basement of his store, then sting, sting, grap, munch, munch, gulp.

Title: Mr. Man - Boss Monster- Concept Art Sketches
Medium- Graphite
Time to execute: 30 - 45 min. each (4 hours total for all 5 pieces)


The second group of pieces are super-rapid sketches for the same property done during a brainstorming session with the game designers to work out the player's power ups. All three with the icon, hero and animal spirits were done over the course of the two hour meeting, as we hashed out the idea.

Title: Renegade - Lone Arrow - Power Ups and Buffs- Concept Art Sketches
Medium- Graphite
Time to execute: approx 20 - 30 min. each, over 2 hour period

[Brion Frantz]

I was working on two concepts for an illustration based on the Snow White tale for Christmas, you can see the design I chose to advance on my deviant site. This was the alternate, and I still want to do something with it.

This one is further along than a sketch, I know, but I still consider it work in progress, since I'm probably going to re-render the whole thing again. I like the design, generally, but it's out of balance with the surface detail heavy in the lower right. I just missed the accurate angle of her reflection by a couple degrees. I like it enough though that if I go further, I'll probably find a model to photograph for the final.

[0dd10ut]

I love the amount of detail you put in your work. For the ninja vs. schoolgirl picture, you put a lot of effort into his pants wrinkles and his veins. The mirror one also had lovely detail in the chandelier and mirror frame. Keep up the good work.

[Brion Frantz]

Title: Manticore Skeleton/Anatomic Study
Medium- Black Prismacolor Pencil
Time to execute: 90 min.


Here's another work in progress from since Halloween. I was going to start working on muscles for this over my Christmas break, but I think I have to fix the upper plane (wing) humerus on each side so they are just ball headed instead of having the crowns. Then the wings at the scapulae could open to about 270 degree spread.

[Brion Frantz]

Title: Lamentors - Concept Art Sketches
Medium- Marker
Time to execute: 30-45 min. each

This is one of my many properties which will probably not see daylight for a long time, so I've decided to post them in here, to remind me to keep working on them.

The Dead God's Throne is a property based on characters and events in a world where mythological creatures are as real today as they were in the minds of of our ancestors. The sky god, the progenitor deity, has died, and all the other entities in the world's pantheon of gods have begun a power struggle to take his place and claim the legacy of the dead god's throne.

In the first post are two pieces showing The Lamentors;

The Blood-Red Lament

A nomadic procession of grief-mad mourners under the curse of the dead god's spilled blood. They do not eat, they do not drink, they do not sleep, they only go on. Called by many names; Orphans, Lamentors, The Greif Lepers, they must in turn also spill blood each day, or suffer the agony of an addict's hell. Any who would deny this influence eventually tear themselves apart with their own bare hands in remorse and delirium.

The cortege stretches hundreds of miles long, spreading across the world like a wine-dark rivulet flowing from a slashed artery. The followers mutilate themselves and butcher nearly every living thing in their path. The bodies of some victims are used to pave a greasy road for the progress of a great tomb of blackened, spattered stone that reportedly carries artifacts, or perhaps the dead god’s heart itself, still beating, pumping out the dark miasma of the blood curse from within that crawling crypt. The remains of other victims, usually children, are often carried by the savage mourners for days or weeks, in a twisted mockery of tenderness, abandoned only after some newly perpetrated horror presents freshly tragic victims.

They save alive only a maimed and tortured few in a thousand, to grieve and cry in their own agony and to mark for others the passing of the procession. Some of these survivors are also infected by the Geas of Mourning, and drawn along; add their wailing frenzies to the great train of slaughter.

So the influence of the curse grows and spreads each day that passes, and so must it go on forever, as long as the dead heart still beats, until every living creature lowers it's head, in sorrow, or in death.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
More to come, probably

B.


The Dead God's Throne and all associated characters, events and properties are copyright 2009 Brion Frantz. Any posts in this thread are copyright the same. The artist is not encouraging anyone to post their versions or revisions or to submit content or material. This thread is provided to help others learn the process of Character and Creative development.

[Kfeeras]

What, no replies yet? Well, in my opinion its anatomy and figuredrawing what needs most improvement to catch up to the rest. Your pencil rendering is really nice, like on the skeleton. Please post some of your finished works, too! I'll be back ;-)

cheers

[Brion Frantz]

I will be posting some of my finished creative and concept art pieces soon, there will be a separate thread for those.
This thread is really only for very quick sketch style works or rough works that are still in progress. I think it's important to share the development work too, so that artists and employers can see your thinking process behind your finished work.
Also, since most of these sketches are done on demand or out of my head, I have almost nothing in this post taken from direct photo reference (the color rough at the top is the only real photo referenced piece). I don't have anything against photo reference, and many of my fine art pieces and finished illustrations depend exclusively on direct photo reference, but sometimes ideas come at odd hours, or an artist has to draw for the client in front of them at the time, with no access to reference materials, or I'm just trying to capture something of the sense of the overall, without rendering detail.
For these reasons, many of my initial sketches are very rough, some with anatomical mistakes or distortions, but some pieces are still successful in catching the personality or the mood of the subject in spite of inaccuracies, and so I'm posting those kinds of statements as well.
There are links in my signature to my finished fine art pieces and my deviant site, where you can see some of the stuff I won't be posting on CA.
Thanks for your comments!

[Brion Frantz]

Title: John Carter, Warlord of Mars - Character Study
Medium- Graphite
Time to execute: 1 Hour

There was a similar sketch to this originally posted earlier in the thread. Parts of the rendering and anatomy were bugging me. So, for that reason, and in the interests of keeping this thread mainly devoted to new work in progress I reworked the sketch.

Here is the newer version. I wish I had a year just to develop this and other Burroughs' mars based works. hmmmm. Dejah Thoris...

[Brion Frantz]

I'm working on this piece in order to explore some new media techniques. I wanted something really high end from a commercial standpoint, and really challenging visually, so I chose Shakespeare's The Tempest. Act I.
Ariel shipwrecks Prospero's enemies on the island. Fire, Lightning, sails and rigging, a frilly shirt, and a transparent flying figure in the middle... ..this is going to be fun to paint...


The caption for this illustration is;

"Hell is empty..."

I also threw in some of my thumbnail sketches for the piece.

[sandeepbarot]

good work

[Hari Gopinathan]

hey man-- nice sketches--- but there seem to be some proportion errors in the limbs and heads in your sketches--- try using construction lines( dunno whether ur doing this already). it helps with sizing things approppriately.

[Brion Frantz]

This is a character design from a live demo. The topic was a heroine based on a nature archetype.

The entire set of four drawings took a little over two hours, live in front of about a dozen students.

Swansong copyright Brion Frantz 2010, All Rights Reserved.

[Brion Frantz]

Another live demo in front of about 20 students. It took me around two hours to create all three pages of drawings.

This is a creature designed for survival on an ice covered world with an annual worldwide firestorm of methane, nitrogen and other flammable atmospheric gases.

The creature grows in a balloon like sac on tall thin branches of a treelike structure formed from the exoskeletal remains of its parents. It draws in and feeds off the volatile atmosphere all year, then during the annual firestorms, it launches like a biological rocket, flares brightly, finds a mate, orients itself, mates and burns out all in a matter of a few moments. The mating pair is fused together, falling white hot to the surface and burning through the ice mantle to float dormant, take root and spawn the "balloon tree" that will foster its own young until the next firestorm.

Plasma Zephyr, Bifrost and all related materials Copyright 2010, Brion Frantz. All Rights Reserved.

[Puffynose]

Love the monster design especially the fat blob Add more shadings i think.. and study perspective. Draw from life to add personality to ur charac

[Brion Frantz]

The assignment was to take a Masters of the Universe character and create a crossover with another character from a similar genre.

I came up with "He-Zarro" (He Man's version of Bizarro)

1.5 hours

"By power of Numbskull!!! Me am No have Power!!!"

[Brion Frantz]

Here are two character studies from one of my favorite fairy tales, called East of the Sun, West of the Moon.
These are taken from the scene at the beginning, when the poor farmer tries to convince his beautiful daughter to marry the nice polar bear, so they can all be rich.

Really these pieces are about costume, more than anything else, but I was trying to capture emotion and personality as well.

About 2.5 hours each.

[Brion Frantz]

The final oil painting version of this one is available online at;

www.Brion-Frantz.daportfolio.com

I changed the composition in the final, using more of a straight on shot with a different pose from the model, but still I liked this as a costume study, and I learned a lot about the different textures I would need to render, so here's the early version.

Original 14 x 17, Black Prismacolor on paper.

About 2 hours.

[Mister Dark]

Nice sketches!
You said you're using prismacolor. Is it better than graphite? What are the pros and cons?
I've seen a lot of profesionals use it, and now I'm curious.

[Brion Frantz]

You said you're using prismacolor. Is it better than graphite? What are the pros and cons?
I've seen a lot of professionals use it, and now I'm curious.

Pencils are usually listed from H (light, hard) to b (soft and dark). Most people are familiar with 2b, since that is a school pencil. 9h is so hard it's like an icepick, and most artists don't need lighter than a 2h. HB is a beautiful mid range graphite, and the one I use most.

Black Prismacolor pencil gives a richer, darker black than graphite, you'd have to use an 8b or ebony to even come close to the rich dark value. But very soft graphite pencils are very smeary, since they are milled chunks of mineral, and as the artist blends the graphite in, it leaves a shiny spot on the paper as the graphite chunks align and lay flat, creating a shiny flat surface in the tooth of the paper.

Black Prismacolor is a very fatty/waxy medium, soft, almost like lipstick.
It takes a little getting used to, to control the point and not flatten it, and you have to keep turning it as you go to not make a flat side to the lead.

If you're careful, you don't have to sharpen it as much, which can be expensive. Also, get a nice quality, AC powered office sharpener from an office supply store, you need one that doesn't wobble.

It's a bit tricky at first, but it's nice once you're using a rich dark black that doesn't smear.

The real downsides are the cost, and the fact that it is very hard to erase, and usually leaves pentimento marks behind. But I feel the advantages far outweigh the downsides.

Also, many times I start with a light HB for composition and construction lines, then switch to the Prismacolor for rendering.

I'll post some more Prismacolor pieces so you can see more samples.

This Piece; The Lost Giant
b/w prismacolor on toned paper (Canson, pottery green)

2 hours

[skMOP]

Nice designs,there's lots of improvement visible.
I'd like to see some more color sketches too though.

[Brion Frantz]

Prismacolor on toned paper. This isn't parchment, it's more like dyed newsprint. It's really cheap and toothy, falls apart easily, but I like using it for sketches.

Dejah Thoris sketch, from the John Carter series by Burroughs. 2 hours.

[Brion Frantz]

Another prismacolor on toned paper.

Original character/creature design.

I shake off a lot of images like this when I wake up in the morning, then I go back for them when I'm in a bad mood. They're all just in my head, lurking around.

I don't know what she is, exactly. Some kind of failed harpy larva.

Whatever she is, she loves you.

1 hour

[Brion Frantz]

I had a request in here for more color roughs.

This was a live 2 hour demo in marker techniques.

Old School Wolverine always seemed to me more like a brawler from Jersey.

Original 14" x 17" Marker and Colored Pencil

[Brion Frantz]

I try to spend as much time as possible studying from the great masters.

I found this image in one of my art history books, and I've been enjoying learning from it.

François Boucher - Reclining Satyr (sometimes called The Wounded Satyr or The Dying Satyr)

Original 14" x 17", Charcoal on paper, 4 hours

[Malakuko]

really cool concepts and sketches in here :)
That last sketch is real nice too

[Brion Frantz]

Lots of crumpled paper today, this is the best I have to show for all of it so far.

Studies of heads for two female elf type characters. 20 min. page

[Brion Frantz]

Tesla Punk Bot Design in Alchemy and Illustrator

0.75 hours

[Brion Frantz]

Bot Design in Alchemy and Illustrator

Arena Combat Tesla Punk style techWalker

2.0 hours

[Brion Frantz]

Last one of these for the day.

Bot Design in Alchemy and Illustrator

Urban Combat style techWalker

1.5 hours

[Brion Frantz]

Another Tesla Punk bot concept from my "Open Chassis" project.

Alchemy and Illustrator.

4.0 hours

[Brion Frantz]

The Open Chassis Project
Pro Sports Tesla Punk Bot concept design

Alchemy and Illustrator
2.5 hours

[Brion Frantz]

Raasa - Open Chassis - b. Frantz:

Tesla-Punk bot character concept design

A friend suggested I take on a woman bot design. This one took a lot longer, around 8 hours. Since I was creating a feminine character I wanted a more rhythmic, natural pose.

Fave so far I think.

[Brion Frantz]

Quick Sketch / Speed Paint

One hour

8 1/2 x 11

pencil, marker, photoshop

[Brion Frantz]

More on these later

1 out of 5

11 x 8.5

pencil, marker, alchemy, illustrator, photoshop and painter

3 hours

[Brion Frantz]

More on these later

2 out of 5

11 x 8.5

pencil, marker, alchemy, illustrator, photoshop and painter

3 hours

[Brion Frantz]

More on these later

3 out of 5

11 x 8.5

pencil, marker, alchemy, illustrator, photoshop and painter

3.5 hours

[Brion Frantz]

More on these later

4 out of 5

11 x 8.5

pencil, marker, photoshop and painter

3 hours

[Brion Frantz]

More on these later

5th out of 5

8.5 x 11

pencil, marker, photoshop and painter

3 hours

[Brion Frantz]

More on these as they develop

This is the first in the series

Color Roughs

Speed paint and color work over sketch

Pencil, marker, Photoshop, Painter

4 hrs



4 hours

[Brion Frantz]

More on these as they develop

This is the second in the series

Color Roughs

Speed paint and color work over sketch

Pencil, marker, Photoshop, Painter

4 hrs

[Brion Frantz]

This is from Star Bright, my concept for an original MMO,

Cover Art, originally 10.6 x 15 @ 400 dpi

Painter and photoshop, color study for a work in progress.

Painter is nice, but buggy. Wish Adobe would just buy it and fix it.


I don't know, maybe 30 hours so far. there was a lot of development to get to this stage.

Star Bright artwork & characters copyright 2010 Brion Frantz, all rights reserved.

[Brion Frantz]

Another study, with some variations

[Erotopia]

i really like your fat dude, as odd as that may sound out of context LOL. i really like how you're challenging yourself with your compositions and daring to try out unusual perspective, like in the pirate ship picture. great diagonals in that. and your master study is really good! i haven't seen someone do a master study in forever, so good going!

nice stuff. :O

[Brion Frantz]

Cover art color rough

The new version has cameo backgrounds to help support the vignette composition



(12/2010 - addtional; the final version of this can be seen on my DeviantArt pg, in the "signature" links, or here;

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=147750

Although I'll be moving all the finished works to a gallery section starting around the end of the year.)

[Brion Frantz]

This one is meant to be a response to the previous picture. There are still vignettes of the ingenue and protagonist, with the supporting character vignette dominant this time. This piece has overall a subtler mood, passive, instead of energetic, the composition is more static, and based on circles and rectangles instead of heavy diagonals.

[Brion Frantz]

Still playing with the composition, not really a lock yet...

(although getting a LOT of practice with portraits).

As always, direct painting, not a photo manipulation (the girl, anyway, the other characters are value over scans, but will be fully painted in the finish)

[Istmin52]

I'm just curious but where do you find your reference? I always have trouble finding the right reference I need at times. Especially for figures. You have some great sketches in here and I really like your elf sketches. I do agree with Kfeeras about your anatomy but overall, I really like your work.

[Brion Frantz]

That's a good question, reference is critical to successful illustration.

There are two kinds of reference, direct and indirect.


Indirect reference is used to generate probable and believable objects in a composition, by showing the artist patterns, or surface textures, or colors, or "tendencies" of a subject. Indirect reference is used to study the general visual attributes of a subject, instead of a specific likeness.

For example, many pictures of pine trees, together with actual pine cones, and sketches of branches, could be used to create a picture of a "believable" tree, not an exact likeness of a specific pine tree.

Direct reference is used to create an exact or near exact likeness in the final image. For example, in a portrait, or in an image of a famous character or creature for a film poster.

Sources for indirect reference
- the real object, itself or "in-person"
- sketches or studies
- original photos
- text and images in books
- images from external sources (online, magazines, movie frame captures, etc.)

Sources for direct reference
- the real object, itself or "in-person"
- original photos
- sketches or studies

I prefer to shoot all my own photos, and I always do so for major elements and major characters. I use both my friends and professional models for subjects. Shooting your own reference is the only realistic way to use direct reference, unless you are doing a "study", and not a piece for money.

I don't use photos at all in my early stages. I like to be free to imagine and create before I go to the model shoot. Then I know what I want to models to attempt, or at least I can give them some direction. Models can be expensive, and you don't want to waste time that you are paying for. The photos often change the nature of the composition, and the models bring different things to the image than I would generate by myself, and this adds richness if it's controlled a little. After the model shoots, I rework the composition to integrate the reference as needed.

I don't use photos in every piece, but I use either direct or indirect reference or both constantly. The nice thing about indirect reference is that this kind of study and usage makes the artist more comfortable in any making pictures using related subjects. i.e. The more horses you study and draw, the faster you become at analyzing and expressing many similar animals.

The most important thing in reference is to respect copyright, Don't use an image if you can't get permission or acknowledge the original artist. Shooting your own photos is easy, any phone can do it.

The young lady painted in the previous image post is a model, the battle scene in the other cover below is composed of four different photos of friends in street clothes with cheap props.

All of the rocks and glaciers and volcanic spume and fire of the previous works are a product of indirect reference, a study of such things that went on for about two straight weeks.

The elf sketches are freehand, anything in this thread that looks at all pencil-ly is probably freehand.

It's important to use the reference as a Springboard to your own expression. You don't want to be a slave to the photo, but that being said, if you want to start to bring a sense of realism to your work, reference can be useful.

[Brion Frantz]

These are created after the thumbnail stage. The first layer would have been the grid that lays out the vanishing point, the horizon, and regular intervals.

Once upon a time, I could have told you the exact dimensions of everything.

Stage 2 - The simple forms are blocked in over the grid.

Stage 3 - The details and cast shadows are plotted on an overlay.

Stage 4 - The piece is executed in a tight line art style, to fix errors and ensure cohesiveness.

The final would be rendered on top in marker and prismacolor. So that different lighting and surface effects can be explored, without messing up the work so far.

This way, a mistake at any stage isn't a critical failure, and no one stage takes so long or is so daunting that they can't be scheduled easily and completed quickly.

The final execution takes almost no time in comparison to the construction.

each stage is 2-3 hours apiece, unless I screw them up

[Brion Frantz]

I hope the next few posts will help to clear up some questions about my methods and techniques.

I tend to keep many different stages of the files around, so that I can go back if I screw up. In many of the older versions of the files, I may still have one or more layers that aren't flattened yet. Also, some of these layers, or these steps, were painted in Painter, not photoshop, but they were saved as .psd's. So I don't have everything here exactly step by step, and I go back and forth if I need to correct, but this should give a pretty accurate idea of what I'm trying to do.

To start with, I am only focusing on the cameo portrait from this piece, and not the whole thing.


In order to get the pose and the expression that I wanted, and in order for them to work with the rest of the composition, I had to use two different photos, one in two different position, to create the illusion that the head, arm and hand all aligned properly and were positioned correctly.

In this post, I will begin with a version near the final, and the three different images for reference.

The next pic is the ref for the hand, then the arm, then the head.

[Brion Frantz]

In the next few posts, I'll show the development of the base shape for the portrait, and the overall development arm and hand. There will be a cast shadow falling on the existential torso, from the point of illumination of the fingertip in the final.

[Brion Frantz]

In the next few pics, I'll concentrate on the face and head.

[Brion Frantz]

Continuing the head, the hair and the features.

It's a good thing I do save these versions, I messed up the facial modeling working on the hair layers, and had to come back to this version. I'll include the messed up "progress" as well, next.

[Brion Frantz]

The hair, and the rest of the face, including the messed up features from one of the hair lights layers

[Brion Frantz]

Return to the previous version shadow shapes and edges for the facial features, but most of the lights and makeup are scrapped. All the features are corrected and almost finished.

She gets a little lipstick and powder in the last one of this series. The eye-shadow, eye-liner and mascara are next. I don't always work this way, but this image is full front lighting, and no beautiful Rembrandt shadows to hide in. Difficult modeling with subtle color over for the makeup effects.

[Brion Frantz]

Heading down the home stretch.

[Jamie Romoser]

cool designs man
I wana see more life studies :)
keep it up
-Jamie

[Brion Frantz]

So busy lately, yet promised to post more so...

New sketch of an older character of mine.

A young man learns that he's the heir to the faded legacy of a forgotten pulp era adventurer.

The Red Wraith

Original on 8.5" x 11"

Digital color over pencil

4 hours start to finish

[Brion Frantz]

Conte' on Newsprint

Various sizes

[Brion Frantz]

Digital Color over pen and ink.

8 1/2 x 11 inches

[Brion Frantz]

Study for an illustration;

"Carnivorous Orchid"

Naturalist's Guide to the Land of Faerie - Nicholas Roerich



8 1/2 x 11 inches

[Brion Frantz]

Chironex fleckeri, the Sea Wasp. A box jellyfish that is one of the most dangerous oceanic predators.

Nixie, a water spirit, capricious, with dangerous passions and appetites.

Chironixie. The hybrid of a Chironex and a Nixie.

China white aquarelle pencil on vellum, scanned over black paper.

Still working on the face.

Hope to finish this and the Carnivorchidaea (previous sketch) over the next two months.

[Brion Frantz]

Orson Welles talked about producing this, but it never made it past that stage. Pity.

The Shadow The Motion Picture

With ORSON WELLES as Kent Allard, a.k.a. Lamont Cranston

and MYRNA LOY as Margo Lane

Graphite on Vellum

[Brion Frantz]

The Shadow Movie Poster
- underpainting

13.5" x 19" - Gouache on Cold Press board

Played with the composition to try to unify the shadow cores into a single form. Really had to watch the juncture between Lamont's collar and shirtfront, and Margo's shoulder.

[Brion Frantz]

Poster Art for The Shadow - The Motion Picture (1940)

The Pulp Hero revealed at last in Film Noir glory. Orson Welles brings his smashing radio role as The Shadow to the silver screen. Also starring Myrna Loy as the lovely and intelligent Margo Lane.


In reality, Orson Welles talked about producing the film, but sadly it never got beyond that stage.




Original 13" x 19.5"

Gouache on cold press illustration board

Logo digitally added to original artwork


I may do a version with credits and titles, beyond the logo, but I'm happy with it for now, which hardly ever happens.










The Shadow created by Street and Smith publishing

Artwork Copyright Brion Frantz 2011, All Rights Reserved.

[Brion Frantz]

"Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar" was an amazingly successful radio show that ran for more than 12 years and over 800 episodes.

Like The Shadow poster (below), the movie was never made, but talked about at a number of studios.

My version has William Holden as the intrepid investigator, and Kim Novak as the (no doubt deadly) blonde bombshell.

It's a pretty rough rendering, but I'm focused on composition and value pattern in this study.


Marker and conte' on vellum.

[Brion Frantz]

Another in my series of posters for the greatest movie never made.

The House on the Borderland - (1930)

from the eerie, Lovecraftian novel by William Hope Hodgson

Starring Boris Karloff

I cast Karloff, because even with no makeup of effects, he still looks like a man haunted.

Again, although this wasn't the best rendering of the likeness, I am more focused on composition and value pattern in this study.

p.s. Hodgson was first, and was a huge influence on Lovecraft, so it's almost more fair to say Lovecraft's Cthulhu and related stories were "Hodgsonian".


Marker and conte' on vellum.

[Brion Frantz]

I came across the creator of this by chance, and more and more it's a really fun and interesting idea to me, for a bunch of artistic and real world uses.


D-Script - linked Chinese and English character symbols

http://dscript.ca

Here's my version of "Outrider"