Twisted: Vol. 2

Hey. Guess what.

I went and drew something new for Twisted: Tales to Rot Your Brain Vol. 2, and here it is:

It felt good getting back into it. I've been busy writing a novel for over a year now, and any kind of writing or illustrating for Twisted has taken a bit of a backseat. This illustration is page 7 of a graphic novel I had started for the first volume that didn't quite get finished in time so it got pushed aside until a later date.

You can see other pages from the story on the Hairy Eyeballs illustrations page.

Nightmare clown

O.K. I may have gone a little over this time. (Hee hee.) I needed this one scary and creepy, and I think it turned out pretty close. I'm not going to tell you the story this one goes with because it happens to be the punch line, and it would totally ruin the page turn if you already knew.

All I'm saying.

Doc Chocolate

Here's another illustration that I redrew in graphite for the book. Originally, he was created specifically for greeting cards back in 2006, and these two images are the before and after shots. He looks very different (I've learned a lot) and, I think, very improved.

Humpty drawing before and after

Some of the illustrations I'll be adding to the book I decided to redraw so everything will look consistent. The first do-over I posted back in March was called "Bombs Away."

The illustration I drew for the "Humpty" story in the book actually started a few years ago with the illustration you see at right, on top. I just drew it in pencil one day to be funny. It was way before The Rots ever existed, so maybe this Humpty could be considered the very, very first Rot.

Something about the general idea of the picture I liked, so I updated it last year (the Humpty in the middle) in a style closer to the way The Rots look. In that one I used a pen and ink line art kind of style.

I redrew the whole thing again to go in the book, and that's the one on the bottom. As with all the illustrations in the book, in this one I used powdered graphite washes with details in pencil.

Cleaver rough sketch

Here's the sketch I drew for the illustration to go with Cleaver Overachiever. Again, I'll finish it with graphite, and when I'm finished I'll post it on the illustration extras page of the site.

I've made a bunch of splatters with powdered graphite to play around with, and I'll figure out later which one I like best for the final drawing. The one here is winning so far.

Bombs Away drawing before and after

As promised, here's the first illustration I had to redraw for style consistency. It's called Bombs Away, and the one on the left was originally published as a greeting card a few years ago. The right one is the redraw.

New illustrations posted

I've finished a couple more pages of the graphic novel, The T Rex and the Hare, which is set to be included somewhere in the new book. Both pages are available for viewing on the illustration page of the Hairy Eyeballs site.

I'm planning on finishing all of the images in the book with powdered graphite along with artist's graphite pencils so the illustrations stay unified. By using powdered graphite, I'm able to put down something similar to a watercolor wash before I go in with pencil on the details. I can cover a large space quickly without pencil lines or variations from the paper tooth. Also, by using the powder I'm able to paint a thick coat of super heavy blacks in places where I need them.

This also means I have to go back to a couple of the early, early illustrations I had finished and redraw them with the graphite. I'll post the graphite drawings on the site when I'm finished with them, and I'll post the before and after versions here on the blog.