Here is one of the magazine illustrations I've been promising to post for awhile. It was done for small press publisher, Jim Main's excellent fan mag MAKE MINE MONSTERS. The medium is ink wash, and it's one of the few times I've used this style exclusively in a portrait. Of course their is always room for improvement, but I'm pretty pleased with the results. I gave Steve Bisset a sneak peek via E-mail last week and he said " Looks great, but none of us will ever top the Basil Gorgos painting of Ol' Crater face." Believe me I was extremely conscious of this fact when Jim suggested the idea. I went through great pains to distance myself from the master's classic work for the cover of FAMOUS MONSTERS #53. For starters I did a left facing three-quarter downward view, instead of the right facing one-quarter forward view Gorgos chose. I was fortunate that the assignment called for Black and white, which further distanced me from Gorgos' brilliant use of color. I at first considered doing a view from the abdomen up, (my thought being that would prevent even further comparisons) but ultimately chose a head shot, to better capture all the gory detail. Gorgos is the consummate classic monster artist, so I suppose just being asked to tackle the same subject matter is a reflection of others faith in my ability. I hope I hit the mark...what do you think?
2 comments:
I've never seen the other piece you talked about, but I do know that yours right here is awesome! Nice work man!
A.C. Hall
That's a great piece of work Mike. Sorry I've been MIA lately. Hope all is well with you. You gonna be at the next con in boston?
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