drawing

Winnie’s Wonders: Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the Style of Patrick Nagel

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Time for another Lady of Horror, this time a Patrick Nagel-inspired portrait of Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Drusilla is one of the most iconic characters in Buffy—a gothic, ethereal, and completely unhinged character who remains one of my all time favorite vampires. Introduced in Season 2 as the lover and partner-in-crime of Spike, her tragic backstory makes her one of the most interesting figures in the Buffyverse.

Even better, you gotta love that she was driven to insanity before being turned into a vampire by Angel. Her childlike demeanor, eerie visions, and violent tendencies make her one of the most unpredictable and chilling villains in the show. She’s part femme fatale, part tragic monster, always existing between beauty and madness.

I chose an image of her in vampire form to show off her haunting beauty in Nagel’s stark white skin and black hair style. Bringing Drusilla into this art style was a challenge. When I finish one of these pieces I’m ultra critical of how they turn out because the style sometimes takes away some of the terror that the characters bring to the screen, but maybe that’s also what I love about them too.

Yes, I’m continuing this series with a new lady of horror a month this year. If you would like to see one of your favorites in this style, let me know and I’ll add her to the list.

A Few Weeks Later

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I’ve had an incredibly busy few weeks, reason #1 why I skipped out on blog posts the last few weeks.

I did have time to put together this collage. A zombie walk of sorts. I’ve been doing a lot of work in Photoshop lately. Also finished up some illustrations for a book by another author and am trying to format the book with the best illustration sizes and such. Trying to figure out images in eBooks has been my latest challenge. Sure it sounds easy, but getting them a small and readable size is not the easiest, especially considering how illustrations or photos are so different depending on how they are created.

Now that I’ve bored you, let me bore you some more. I added a new blog post to the ArmLin House blog. Note that my editor and artist (non-horror related.) name is Wendy Spurlin. How to Standardize the Punctuation in a Manuscript Before Submitting or Formatting Your Book is all about what it says. It’s a pet peeve of mine to read a book and find all different types of punctuation like straight quotation marks vs slanted, the later being the correct format for a published book.

I watched Five Nights at Freddy’s, and it’s a fun horror movie for kids as well as adults. I added kids because I found it very light horror, and one of the main characters is a child. I’ve decided to continue watching horror movies I haven’t seen because the holiday season has begun and there will be plenty of themed horror movies to watch. Finding new ones will be challenging though!

Sorry, nothing new on Angels Dark and Dumb other than chapter 2 was handed over for critique. It needs a lot of work. I thought about doing NaNoWriMo this year, but I’m in the middle of too much with ArmLin House, so it didn’t happen.

All I got for ya this time. Have a great week!

Bride of Chucky

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Look who joins the Ladies of Horror. Tiffany, Bride of Chucky, is done. Probably the most fun to do, especially around the eyes. Great horror comedy movie, and Jennifer Tilly is so good as Tiffany.

I actually finished this one over a month ago, but forgot to post her here. And I just finished Frank-N-Furter, but you’ll have to wait a few weeks to see Tim Curry here. The drawing is on my @meanwinniejean Deviant Art account if you want to see it now.

Sadly, Frank-N-Furter is the last Ladies of Horror I’m doing for awhile. I’m moving on to Grim Reapers or Zombies. I’m also refining the illustrations for a children’s book I wrote for a school project. It’s time that I publish the book. It will be a similar format to the Frog and Toad books.

That’s all this week. Have a great next week.

Note that this series is a mix of well known Ladies of Horror done in a Patrick Nagel style from the 80s. I started these to better learn the Pen tool in Adobe Illustrator, and they’ve become an obsession. If there’s a lady of horror you’d like to see, leave her in a comment. I will start them back up at around Halloween.

Life Like Drawing

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Showing off my ability to copy anything and make it look real this week. I love to copy with pencil in black and white in general. This was a fun assignment because it’s the opposite, the drawing done with white pencil instead. This one is framed on my wall, and most people approach thinking it’s a photograph.

I usually do life-like drawings in portrait form. I especially love doing old people because there is so much character in their faces, not to mention it’s a challenge to do the wrinkles.

If you are a writer and find keeping your manuscript clean of extra lines and spaces a huge challenge, I wrote a blog post you’ll find helpful. Manuscripts Are A Dirty Business: Remove The Extra Sections, Breaks, and Spaces Before submitting or Formatting Your Book is a great checklist to follow before you format your book. It strips out a lot of the formatting you don’t need and that can cause quite a few headaches, especially with eBook formatting. In general, it’ll help you keep your manuscript clean, and that’s the best option in MS Word because it can cause so many hidden issues with a document.

Minor news on Angels Dark and Dumb. Major progress on the covers and Margery. I know I keep promising this, but the reveal should happen next week. I’ll probably do it in a separate post from my weekly status and artwork post.

Until next week…

Death of Medusa

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For the last week, I’ve mostly been working on other people’s or writer’s artwork and books, so I dug through the archives again. This is another school project I’m thinking I’d like to revisit with a different subject matter. Hmm… What might I do, because ideas are half the battle?

The subject of this piece is obviously Medusa. What makes it so fun is that it is a deconstruction as you can see in the second image. This was originally done as a construction paper cut out. Each side was in balance to start, and then I cut the pieces to complete the deconstruction.

Fitting for a horror comedy writer and artist to have a love of scissors. I do a lot of pieces by first cutting out shapes to create templates, especially if they are geometric pieces. Then I like to bring these into Adobe Illustrator and trace them.

Minor news on Angels Dark and Dumb. I received an updated look at the Margery character drawing and it’s a hoot. I can’t wait to unveil her. Otherwise, covers are almost done too.

Until next week…