For the last year or so now I’ve been doing sketches of monsters every Monday. Sometimes it’s a horror icon, sometimes it’s a horror director or actress and sometimes it’s just a creepy illustration that I felt like doing. Mostly, though, it’s been monsters from horror movies – good, bad and ugly. As we’re all twisted, mutated monsters ourselves here at ScreenAge Wasteland I thought maybe it would be fun to post those sketches here, with a few words about the monster and/or why I decided to draw them that day. (We’re not all mutated wretches – some of us are too beautiful to gaze upon without going mad, though.)
So this is a bit of an experiment – and the powers that be are indulging me a little, to see how it goes. Hopefully you enjoy the Monday distraction.
For our first installment I’m going to post the last three sketches I’ve done and talk about them briefly. In the future we’ll just focus on one monster at a time. They hate sharing the spotlight. (Click on each image to see a larger version.)
Zombie
I have a soft spot for Italian zombie movies, and Lucio Fulci is the king of them. That being said, it was the work of makeup artist Gianneto De Rossi that really first caught my eye. The fleshy, rotting, worms-in-the-eye zombie on the cover of Zombie (or Zombi 2) was the reason I purchased it, and I’ve never been sad I did. De Rossi went on to do makeup effects for top tier directors and movies like Dune, Daylight and The Man in the Iron Mask. He passed away on April 11th of this year, and I just had to celebrate the man’s work with a sketch of the first of his creations to catch my attention.
Pennywise
Tim Curry is just always good value. Every movie I’ve ever seen him in has been worth it for him alone, if nothing else. Rocky Horror Picture Show, Clue, The Hunt for Red October, Legend – these are just a few of the films that spring to mind when I hear his name. He just celebrated his 75th birthday last week, and when I decided to do an illustration to celebrate I considered Frank N Furter and Darkness – but the scariest character he ever played was Pennywise the Clown in the 1990 TV miniseries adaptation of the Stephen King novel, IT. I enjoyed Bill Skarsgard’s performance in the recent films as well, but there was something about the way Curry played the killer clown that unsettled me even more, though the mini-series itself hasn’t aged well.
Alien
I JUST finished this one less than an hour ago. Today is April 26, or Alien Day (‘cause the creature was found on LV 4-26, natch). I’d originally planned on including Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley, but as I went along I decided the xenomorph was the “reason for the season” as it were, and the big bug could stand on its own. (Plus I ran out of time, but don’t tell anyone.) Alien is one of my favorite films and the monster is one of the few that was even better (and scarier) on the big screen than in my head (I’d read the novelization a few times before I was old enough to see the movie). Still one of the greatest modern cinematic monsters. (I owe King Alvarez an illo of the Alien as well – slacker that I am.)
So these are the monsters and these are the sketches. Are any of these your favorites? Tell us about it in the comments below! And check back next week for another monster.
