Sharpie Portraits.

Sharpie Portrait:

“Drokk!”

Judge Dredd.

As a comic-book obsessed teen I was seriously burned by Danny Cannon’s disastrous 1995 adaptation of Judge Dredd. Featuring a lifeless Sylvester Stallone, a repulsive Rob Schneider as pained comic relief, and poor Diane Lane trying desperately to hold it all together the best she could, the movie was my equivalent of nipples on the Batsuit; I had treasured my imported copies of 2000 A.D. that used to come into by local comic book shop, and they were read, reread, copied and traced from mercilessly. Half of them were French imports, so it would take me double the time to translate the word balloons, but I was more than happy to put in the effort. The highlight, of course, were the Judge Dredd stories, slabs of grotesque, satirical violence and metaphor presented in fully-painted glory by one of my favorite artists, the immeasurably talented Simon Bisley. Other Dredd stories were drown with razor-sharp precision by Brian Bolland, whose ink work influenced much of my own pen styles.

There were few films in my life that I had looked more forward to than Judge Dredd, and it even had The Cure doing the theme song on the soundtrack. Imagine then, minute after crushing minute, of having to sit through the pure Hollywood desecration of one of the truly great characters in all of science fiction, all set to Rob Schneider’s insufferable cackle. It almost made me cry, it almost made me renounce cinema altogether, it was so bad.

So seventeen years later, you could understand my trepidation walking into DREDD, but I was reassured by a few things before walking in. Andrew MacDonald of Transpotting, Shallow Grave and 28 Days Later was producing, and virtuoso cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle was handling the images, so I at least was guaranteed that the film would be dark and exquisitely made. Also reassuring was the casting of Olivia Thirbly as psychic rookie Anderson. Thirlby has been on my radar as one of the most talented young actresses of her generation, a fantastic combination of nuance and unconventional beauty. I also was a fan of Karl Urban, but I’d yet to see him perform in a role that required some level of range. Judge Dredd was that opportunity, as there is a difficult balance in the character to be maintained, that of deciding what is legal and what is just.

I came out of the theater on Friday night, my jaw on the floor. This was the comic book movie I’d been waiting so long for. Unapologetic, raw, gorgeous and rip-roaring fun. DREDD bristles and cracks with the same energy of 2000 AD comics, and does not hold back on the ultraviolence that permeated those pages. The script is threadbare but efficient, allowing for some the most impressionistic and gorgeous sequences of bloody asskicking that I’ve ever seen. Thirlby is a revelation as a conflicted mutant, pacing her transformation into a Judge pitch perfectly, never losing her instinctual womanhood in the process. Urban plays Dredd with dead-on accuracy, allowing only brief glimpses of humanity as he defies his own rules in accordance to the greater law. There are one-liners and giant leaps of faith, but they are done with perfect integration into the physics of the universe set within the film.

DREDD is, hands down, one of the very best films of the year. Dod Mantle strongly deserves his second Oscar nomination for the impressionistic camera he wields in this film, and I’d even give Thirlby a best supporting nod for this film, which considering it is a hyperviolent action film, is a near impossibility. DREDD is a $30M budget film that outpaced, outsmarted, and eclipsed Christopher Nolan’s $250M The Dark Knight Rises by a mile, it’s the comic book film that we all deserve and should support. Unfortunately DREDD is faring extremely poorly, which is a tremendous shock to me given its strong critical support. I guess it has to live in the long, depressing shadow of the Stallone original as a half-baked remake of something that was so very atrocious that it needs to be erased from the canon of cinema. It’s a tough hill to climb, I suppose.

So in support of DREDD and an attempt to spread the word-of-mouth, I did a Sharpie Portrait of Judge Dredd, riding his intimidating Lawmaker into the scene of the crime. Drawing the portrait brought back so many fond memories of reading 2000 AD and reveling in the magic of comics, science fiction and sardonic ultraviolence. I will see DREDD again, and so should you. Support great cinema and great cinema will in turn support you via the empowerment of talented storytellers. Spread the word and don’t let DREDD die!

Sharpie Portrait:

“I AM…in a world…of SHIT.”

Private Leonard Lawrence / PRIVATE PYLE from Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket

I watched Full Metal Jacket last night and it gave me nightmares. Just when you think you saw a truly fucked-up movie, a Stanley Kubrick movie pops up and you’ve no idea of the depths of the human soul.

I wanted to capture two things in this portrait - the first is the classic Kubrick stare, that looking up over a low brow which has haunted me ever since I first ever saw The Shining. The second was to try to capture that sound that actor Vincent D’Onofrio made when he brandished his weapon in the military barracks bathroom. Somewhere between the hiss of a cat and a cobra. It’s absolutely terrifying and inhuman.

I don’t know how Stanley Kubrick did it. Nobody shot a film like Kubrick and nobody was as willing to plumb the darkness to find the truth of the human condition. Even just drawing this portrait was difficult to gauge in terms of hitting the right emotional note, I can’t even imagine what it would have been like to conceive it, let alone direct it. I’m in awe, as I have been for decades.

Sharpie Portrait:

Miranda from Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock

As I come to a close on the distribution for Lilith, I’ve been thinking a lot about Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, one of the truly macabre and eerie horror films ever made.

I had just seen a horrible horror film called The Apparition with Ashely Greene (of Twilight fame) and it dawned on me that the world is simply going too fast. Apparently it’s been decided for us that we don’t have enough time for any kind of detail, nuance or interpretation. Because of the pace of information, we’ve had to pare things down to its absolute bare minimum, to the point where it has become derivative. While we’re surrounded by an unprecedented amount of content, 90% of it is pure crap, and we’re forced to give a little bit our of time to everything because that’s the only way we’ll find something of value in the sea of excess. It’s diminishing returns and not a good use of our precious time.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a film that moves at a slow but calculated pace. It lets us drink in the information at a pace where we can register everything and make our own conclusions. It is spare but hardly simplified. It’s lead heroine, Miranda - played by actress Anne Louise Lambert - is darkly complex in her sexual awakening, and yet is almost purely angelic in her visual portrayal. I wanted to capture this juxtaposition in my sharpie portrait, giving precision detail to the lace work on her dress, and yet going very simple and spare on her face. I think it came out really beautifully.

I see a lot of this “complex simplicity” in Australian cinema, from Nicholas Roeg’s iconic Walkabout to George Miller’s knockout Mad Max, and it’s something I’m really, really starting to appreciate and want to study much deeper. Bring on the movies!

Sharpie Portrait:

Tommie Smith.

I’m an Olympics junkie, and in honor of the London Olympiad I wanted to do a portrait of one of the greatest Olympians of all time. Tommie Smith competed in the 1968 Olympics held in Mexico City, and won gold in the 200-meter dash. He was, at the time, the first man to break the 20 second barrier, but he will be forever remembered for what he did on the podium. Smith, along with fellow US Olympian John Carlos - who won the bronze medal in the same event - upon recieving their medals and the playing of the American national anthem, raised their gloved fists and performed the salute to Black Power. It was a moment that burned itself into the American landscape, engaging a country that was deeply entreched in a battle for Civil Rights.

This all happened long before I was born, but as a student of the Olympics, I believe Smith and Carlos’ actions resonate today, alongside the achievements of Jesse Owens. Today’s Olympics seem more about self achievements - Michael Phelps swims for America no doubt, but his legacy is his work. These are career Olympians, working with sponsors and seeking medals and records. Smith and Carlos used thier athletic achievements to step away from themselves and speak to their nation - they had an agenda that was greater than themselves, a sentiment which has all but disappeared in today’s modern games.

We’re at a tumultuous time in the world, and since the Beijing games I’ve been waiting for that athlete or athletes to step up to the plate and make a statement greater than themselves. A bold athlete who can, in a simple gesture, express their concerns for their countrymen and neighbors, to speak against political and economic tyranny. The last Olympian I feel to get anywhere near this selflessness is American speed skater Joey Cheek, who is the co-founder of Team Darfur and who has donated all of his Olympic winnings to the Right-to-Play Foundation.

Regardless, my love for the Olympics will never fade. Danny Boyle’s opening ceremonies planted a dream in my head, to one day get the honor to plan a ceremony. It would be a crowning moment of my life to be able to do that, since my days of being an athlete are long passed (and I was an outstanding athlete, having run a 4.4 second 40-yard dash in college). It’s been said that the Olympics is no place for politics, and I agree with that. But it is also about peace, and acheiving peace is not turning the other cheek for sixteen days. It’s seeing your fellow man on an equal playing field, about seeing them as we are, and understanding where they are coming from. Smith and Carlos’ silent statement was a shout to the world of a nation beset with the plague of racism, a call to the family of man to embrace peace, egalitarianism, and brotherhood. I can’t think of any ideology that better embraces the Olympic mission than that.

Go USA!

Sharpie Portrait:

BATMAN.

It’s odd that after 25 years of reading comics, I’ve never once drawn the Batman. At least none that I can remember. I can’t say I was an avid follower of Batman, but some of the greatest comics I’ve ever read were Batman stories, from Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One - both of which rightfully belong amongst the greatest comics ever made - to Paul Pope’s Eisner-winning short story Teenage Sidekick, to Grant Morrison and Dave McKean’s brutally beautiful Arkham Asylum. So in that sense I’ve been fond of the character for most of my life. I just never drew him.

With the media blitz for Christopher Nolan’s finale for his masterful Batman trilogy coming into full swing, I decided it was time for me to take the plunge and draw my first Batman. I don’t know why but I always wanted to know what a Steampunk version of the Batman would look like. With the history of gadgetry and detective work, it seemed like a natural fit for the character, so that’s the angle I took. I added elements of hand-built gear and retro-style fastenings, and the cowl was redesigned more as a helmet. I wanted some gothic flourish for the cape and logo.

For my first Batman I don’t think it’s too bad. I really worked the Sharpie on this one, playing heavy lines against fine, and using heavy saturation for the blacks. The pen held up well.

Doing this drawing reminded me how much I love comics. In the past few years I’ve only taken the pleasure of reading them, and I forgot how much of a joy it was to create them. The gears are turning, although that’s probably the last thing I need to add to my work schedule…

Sharpie Portrait:

GOGO YUBARI from Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Kill Bill Vol.1.’

I fell in love with Gogo Yubari the minute she popped up onscreen. Such an amazing character, and played with psychotic glee by Chiyaki Kuriyama. I wanted to try some kanji in the corner, and did a line from the film. Initially I wanted to do Gogo’s line at the bar when she’s being hit on by a lecherous businessman - “do you want to screw me?” - but then I thought that might be a bit creepy and weird. So I settled on “Bingo. You’re the Black Mamba” which is more reflective of the film. I just hope I didn’t screw the kanji up, which I probably did.

But I had some real fun with this. Went heavy on the ink to make it look more like a Japanese block print/ serigraph, as I love old Hiroshige screen prints. I never mentioned this before but I draw all these portraits on old comic book backing boards, as they seem to hold the ink pretty well. This board, however, was pretty old, and it had some weird coating on it. The ink didn’t stick, and I ended up pushing wet ink around a lot. After wrestling with it I found a way to use it to my advantage and pushed it towards this heavy, block-print style. Also has a slight manga feel to it, which I like.

This was also a companion to my Harmonica portrait, in that I wanted to show two outlaws with their respective weapons, hence the position of the hand is similar.

Sharpie Portrait:

HARMONICA from Sergio Leone’s ‘Once Upon a Time In the West.’

I’ve been on the road for the past three weeks and it’s been a rough go in keeping up with the goal to produce a sketch a week. I busted this out in an hour on an airplane from memory, and I think it turned out pretty neat. I wanted to keep it rough and open in style,much like the character in the film, played with absolute pitch-perfection by Charles Bronson.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t include the musical accompaniment to the character, the chilling ‘Harmonica Theme’ by Ennio Morricone. Leone and Morricone built one of cinema’s truly great operas with ‘Once Upon a Time in the West,’ giving each character a theme that codified entrances, exits, and presence. It’s a cinematic convention that has now firmly rooted itself in regular practice.

Sharpie Portrait:

Norma Jeane Mortensen Baker.

My first real attempt at a photorealistic portrait, but I wanted to add just that little bit of surreal stylization. My obsession with Marylin notwithstanding (it all started at the age of eight when I found out we shared birthdays), I wanted to do a portrait of her - my first ever - with her hair down, literally and figuratively. After combing through the countless Warhols and film stills, I noticed that her hair is almost always cropped or done up, and I think she’s almost like an entirely different woman with her hair down.

I also wanted to capture some of the trademark mischief in her eyes, and maybe just a little bit of fear. It reminds me of a particularly haunting allegory about Marylin Monroe from one of her closest confidants and friends, screenwriter George Axelrod:

“I always understood in some dumb, instinctive way that Marylin was very, very special and had to be handled in a special way. Nobody really knew how to handle her, but Billy [Wilder] did a little bit. She was an extraordinarily fragile creature, but the camera adored her. At one point I had a house just across the back entrance of the Beverly Hills Hotel. One day I was having lunch with Marylin on business and I said come back and we’ll talk some more. In order to get to my house you had to pass the back of the tennis courts, and she grabbed me and said ‘I always have to hold on to someone when I’m in spooky places’. Spooky places to her was the back of the Beverly Hills Hotel. She lived in continuous heartbreaking fear. It was very sad. In a proper world she should have been in a nuthouse.”

Sharpie Portrait:

Mala’kak (Mundus gubernavi)) aka ‘Space Jockey’

In honor of Ridley Scott’s upcoming PROMETHEUS, here’s the infamous ‘Space Jockey’ from the 1979 ALIEN original. Designed by H.R. Giger, the character has a brief appearance (it’s also dead) but word is that the Mala’kak have a much more prominent role in PROMETHEUS. Since the Space Jockey has such limited exposure on film, I kind of had to extrapolate some of the details and use my own imagination.

I really went to town on the alien pod in the foreground, developing a texture that was equal parts scaly and slimy. Took forever to do, but I really like how it turned out.

Two Ridley Scott pics out of four Sharpie sketches? You might say I’ve got a thing for classic science fiction. This was a fun one to draw!

Sharpie Portrait:

Anton Chigurh.

I’m ambivalent about this one. I think it’s good, but there are a few things that I didn’t get right. I tried something new with the face from both a character and technique standpoint. I wanted to use the dot-stipple for Chigurh’s face to indicate that he is a ghost, someone who lives in a netherworld that we can’t really understand, which is very much in tune with Cormac McCarthy’s vision in No Country for Old Men. I also wanted to show just the slightest bit of empathy in his expression, a notion which came from the film, where Chigurh is faced with the inevitable destiny of killing Carla Jean.

Not sure if either ambition was entirely successful. Given the gauge of my Sharpie I felt limited in terms of the level of detail I could go into with the stippling. I think I’d need either a Micron or a much larger canvas. (The stippling is something I really want to pursue, as it hearkens back to the work of one of my favorite cartoonists, Drew Friedman. More on him in the future).

After the relative success of my Daniel Plainview portrait, I feel like I took a few steps back with this one. But that’s okay, because that’s the purpose of this blog - to relearn, retrain, and keep trying new things.