A couple of new things, more to come

Alright, so I'm continuing on with the stipple stuff, but rather than just doing portraits of celebrities, I decided to bring it more in line with my other main interest (horror), so I'm doing a series of horror stipple pieces. Here's the first two. This first one is a headshot, like the older ones, this time of the classic Leatherface from the 1974 original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It was a lot of fun to do. This one was finished a while ago, and it's been on my website (http://zgillustration.com) since it was done, but I realized that I never put it on the blog.

Next up is one that goes back quite a ways. I wanted to have some pieces that I could sell at Comic Cons, but since I rely so heavily on photo reference, copyright quickly becomes an issue. So I did a bit of research towards finding movies that are in the public domain that are still fairly recognizable. I found quite some (Night of the Living Dead, Plan 9 From Outer Space, and Nosferatu, to name a few), and you'll definitely be seeing the others in the near future. This first one is of the original 1925 film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera, featuring Lon Chaney Sr as the phantom (you may know his son, Lon Chaney Jr, as The Wolfman). It's an old black and white silent film, and it's fantastic. Highly Recommended. I LOVE the look of the Phantom in this one, so I couldn't resist doing a piece on this when I found out it was public domain.

Another thing to note with this one is that it's the first piece that incorporates anything besides a basic head shot. There's a minimal amount of background, and some of the character's torso in this piece. I want, in the future, to expand what I do in stipple, so I figured that this would be a pretty good starting place, since this is very much still a portrait. It took me way longer than the other ones did, but I think that had more to do with not being able to find the time to work on it, and less to do with the piece actually taking the amount of time that I spent on it. We'll see how things progress from here.

Lastly, I've got a quick piece that I did as a Halloween card. I originally wanted to do something more clever and involved, but I didn't have the time, so I stripped it right down to basics. This is a basic still life, but all of the objects are references to horror movies. I might do a post about my process for this one (I'm toying with the idea, since I never do those types of posts). I tried to cram a lot of references into this picture, and ended up with Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Friday the 13th, The Stuff, Hellraiser, Scream, Sleepaway Camp, Child's Play, and A Nightmare On Elm Street. I think I could have done more, but it was a quick project, just for fun, so I decided not to stress it too much.
And here's a reference photo I took, to get the chainsaw right. I changed up the jack-o-lantern quite a lot, simplifying it from the plastic one in the picture.
I've got a couple of other things coming up. I'm doing a self-portrait show down in Baltimore, and I'm doing a sketchbook tour thing (my theme is "Help!"). Expect lots of corpse paint.