September Sketch Fest Part 10

This next round of sketches is from book #25 dated 14 May 2005 to 10 May 2006.

One of my earliest memories is being at my aunt's house (across from Greenwood Park in Toronto) while my parents were at work. I don't know how old I was, but I was probably three or four years old. This memory deals with the amazingly bizarre children's show from 1971 (incidentally, my own vintage) called The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (here's the opening featuring the formidable Vincent Price). Now, this likely wasn't the first time I watched this show, but this particular memory is of me realizing I could watch the show (reversed) by watching it reflected in the plastic that wrapped the couch.

The show normally played in the early mornings around 6am and I would catch it (along with a couple other beloved childhood shows, Tales of the Wizard of Oz and The New Adventures of Pinocchio) before going to the babysitter's across the street while my parents got ready for work. Years later I would catch these shows sporadically and accidentally, but always happy to catch even a few minutes of them.

To this day, HHoF still holds up in its own fantastically bizarre way (I still find it absolutely amazing that this show was greenlit as a viable kids' show –not that it's inappropriate in any way, it's just so bizarre) and I treasure my DVDs full of ~~rip-offs of~~ loving homages to Dracula, Frankenstein, Igor, the Wolfman, and an array of weird original characters to round out the ensemble (most of them played by the versatile and legendary Billy Van).

Billy Van as The Count...

...and his assistant, Igor, played by Fishka Rais.

A better Igor coloured with markers.

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Axel Foley's Chevy Nova (1/25 scale model)

Multiple tributes, here. I remember first seeing Beverly Hills Cop on video at my friend Chris K's house, 'cause his family had a VCR and we'd watch tons of movies (and record music videos) together. The summer of 1984 was a special time for us (having created a strong bond in school since Grade 6 a few years before), going on biking adventures around the 'burbs and into the city, etc., and home video played an important role from then until I moved to the opposite end of Scarborough just before we started high school. We liked the movie a lot, both of us fans of Eddie Murphy from his Saturday Night Live days. I don't think I'd seen the movie since then (it would have been 1985, probably summer, since the movie came out in late 1984) and I became curious to see if it still held up. It did. It does. I found Murphy as charming as ever and the comedy (and even the action) holds up very well and its very re-watchable and very entertaining. Beverly Hi

City of Angels

17" x 11", watercolour and digital, 1999 Ah, City of Angels . I thought I was getting cool film noir but got a cheesy musical instead (Google it if you must). Still, it was fun to make the poster and associated images, mostly because the research consisted of watching real films noir and buying a great book on movie posters of the genre. I made tons of sketches and a few digital mock-ups. For the final poster above, I made three separate watercolour paintings (one of the couple and one each of the two black and white heads) and composited them in Photoshop, where I also added the text. In true movie poster fashion, I wanted the actors names to be the top two names, but I lost that battle and had to use the characters' names instead. It looks fine, but it implies that "Kingsley and Stone" are the lead actors in the show. Oh, well...it's only community theatre... By making the "angel" above half black and white and half colour, th

Small Pond Arts Puppet Wagon (1/24 scale model)

I dreamed up the Small Pond Shipyard for my fanciful scratch-built sci-fi airship creations (which still only exist in sketch/Photoshop mock-up form (and boxes in my closet) for now), but more and more ideas kept coming ( this wind turbine , for example, will be part of a rather elaborate diorama I'll be working on this winter). But the Puppet Wagon was a sleeper surprise, to be sure. [Really, though, I don't know why I was so eager to build this right away since I was planning to slowly develop my modelling skills with simpler builds first and the work my way up to more complicated projects.] Not all parts were used/needed. Most of these ideas have come from watching modelling videos online, and when I saw a review of this sweet little Japanese "Ramen Shop" food truck by Aoshima (right-side drive!), my brain started making jokes about customizing it to the weird food truck ideas I'd been posting on Facebook. But the more I thought about what the co

The Naked Silo

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