Dracula And Brides.

Having not really done much fan-art before, I’m not sure if this image is a winner or not. I just really wanted to do a follow up on my take on Dracula, and add a bit of a theme to it. I think we can all safely say I have a very dark take on this character. I have a little side-mission in life, to put the bastard back in Dracula. Make you want to throw holy-water at your computer-screen, and bury your hard-drive upside down at a crossroad.

You could accuse this image of being a glorified character shot (because it kind of is), as I liked the original sketchbook drawing so much, I ended up just light-boxing it on to a sheet of A3, and working off that. I just liked the look I got in that first go, and didn’t think I’d get that lucky twice. It was a bit of a weird process, but hopefully worth it. I’ve never done an image off a pre-drawn headshot before. It’s tricky. Also the Brides either side seemed like a nice design idea at the time, but if I had known how time consuming drawing them was going to end up being, in hindsight, I may have gone with something a bit easier. There was a couple of false starts, when it came to drawing these two. I just really got into the idea of having creepy, sexy vampire Brides in this shot, even if it did pretty much double (or even triple) the time it took to draw this piece. But it just ain’t Dracula without the Brides. Everybody loves vampire wenches. It’s a well known fact that Dracula invented groupies.

Panicked and didn’t leave enough time to design a new outfit, so went with the default Nosferatu style, which seems to be the fashion, when depicting Dracula these days (and why not? It’s a classic look that’s aged a lot better than the Victorian Magician look from early stage plays, and movies.) If I had more time on my hands, and could get those aforementioned hands on some decent reference on the Victorian era, I’d love to add to this design by changing his getup. Anybody who knows the name of, or could point me in the direction of a good photo reference book on Victorian England, would be my new best friend.

But there you have it. My take on the old count.

Got the limited edition, Tin-box, Blu-ray of Return Of The Living Dead this week. I really hate buying movies I’ve already got on DVD, but with five hours of extras (two hours of those being the documentary, More Brains), I thought I could justify the upgrade… also, I just wanted to see the Linnea Quigley Graveyard dance in HD, if I’m brutally honest. With this and Demons coming out on Blu-ray within a couple of weeks of each other, it’s been a great summer for Blu-ray releases.