BLOOD SUCKER

This piece was another gem I salvaged from the old idea scrap yard. Specifically, this image is part of a collection of puns I do, or at least that’s where I would categorize it in my portfolio.You can read more about them, their development and inspiration here on my blog. This piece was originally developed as part of a ‘Halloween’ themed sub-series I wanted to do with my ‘Just for Pun’ ™️ cartoons. ‘Sand Witch’ was also developed as part of that gang, she however moved quickly into development primarily because of the simplicity of the image. ‘Blood Sucker’, as it would come to be called was first developed back in 2018 with a sketch in Procreate (October 7^th, 2018 to be exact), where it would remain as a loose and somewhat rough concept for the next three-ish years.

initial sketch with drippy Rollo style candy.

Until…

In late September (2021), I received a rather urgent notification in my email from Hero Complex Gallery, asking about my participation in their ‘Shadows in the Dark II’, horror themed group show. I hastily accepted their invitation, knowing full well it was going to be something I’d have to do quickly as the due date was October 7^th, 2021 (cue dramatic music for the creepy fact that it’s the piece’s conception anniversary). The gallery had reached out to me previously and this was going to be my first show with them, so I wanted to make sure to participate as a sign of good faith.  They were taking a chance on me and while I had some horror themed works already done which had never been in a show, I wanted it to be original.  I always thought the concept behind ‘Blood Sucker’ was a good one, but I never returned to the project because I just never had the opportunity to do so. This was that opportunity, so I set about fleshing the image out as I had very limited time.  In an effort to overwhelm myself, I was also finalizing another piece for a completely different gallery that you can read about here.  I think I can pinpoint this project as the beginning of a very busy season with no breaks until sometime in the Summer (of 2022). 

Typically, the puns are stand-alone in floating space in order to simplify their appearance, as they are essentially the focus, not the background which in most cases just serves as distraction or base for the main event. Occasionally I might add the implications of a ground space, but it is rarely an area I will illustrate as I did with this piece. It was a challenge that’s for sure, as I feared, adding more imagery really made the piece harder to read, so I tried to simplify my color palette. I began by channeling some of my influences, namely Jhonen Vasquez, and the designers of ‘Invader Zim’, over at Nickelodeon Animation Studios. Much love. The odd background with its overly purple saturation can be attributed to the aforementioned inspiration, and made contrasting the foreground characters a real challenge. Since I envisioned this illustration taking place at night, I knew I would have to include some sense of lighting, blue, purples, what not, and maybe a moon or stars to emphasize that. At this point I really just threw caution to the wind and went with whatever I was producing which seemed to ‘fit’.

For the central images, I wanted our pun on display to be a ‘sucker’ or lollipop, and determined I could use the wrapper as a makeshift cape.  The joke here (if you need an explanation), is that this type of candy sometimes is referred to as a ‘sucker’.  A vampire can sometimes be identified as a ‘blood-sucker’, hence the joke and all part of the original sketch.  The shift in design however occurred when I was creating his trick-or-treat victims.  I’m not sure how well it reads, but the concept is the ‘sucker’, is terrifying a candy ring (upper right), and a wax bottle (talk about retro, do they even make these anymore?). I needed to utilize a confection that had a liquid center as to mimic someone being scared to this extent (not sure how to say it politely so I just won’t). The wax bottle candy was the only candy I could recall in recent memory that would work. I did have a ‘Rollo’ at one point, in which the caramel was ‘leaking’ out, but it did not read the same.

From start to finish it took me three years to fully complete the illustration, but actual time put into the project was broken down as follows: I spent two (2) hours & fifty-two (52) minutes in Procreate on my iPad sketching the illustration (6B pencil), followed by an additional amount of undocumented time vectoring the image in Adobe Illustrator (on iPad).  Afterward the image was taken back into Procreate where I began to digitally paint the illustration for an additional eighteen (18) hours and fifty-five  (55) minutes. Upon importing into Adobe Photoshop I discovered some unintended transitional dithering*, along the edges of my layers most likely due to using the eraser tool.  Identifying the culprits and cleaning them up in Procreate would prove to be simple enough, yet perplexingly drawn-out. Why it took so long to fix is beyond me but it was rather frustrating (shakes fist in anger).

With the image clean I was finally able to proof it, along with the other project I was working on in tandem. Thankfully I only had minor contrasting issues and I was able to resolve them within the second pass.  I was however out of time to get the image to the gallery physically, so I was going to rely on the gallery’s do print on demand service. Following their guidelines would prove to be a new one for me, but I’m always happy to learn a new process for image submission.

The 8” x 10” piece was debuted at Hero Complex Gallery’s ‘Shadows in the Dark II’, a spooky season themed group show, which opened October 30^th, 2021. At this time, the image is exclusively available via the gallery, so please check their website for all remaining works related to the show including mine. 

For more information, or to see a catalog of my other work, please visit my online store here. You can also find me on various social media platforms below doing a multitude of other artistic things that include hand lettering, and the occasional sculpting/crafting.

*I would not actually discovery what this was called, nor how to resolve it until MUCH, MUCH later. In fact I should have written an article on it, and posted it, because I couldn’t find a solution myself which added a lot of unnecessary time onto my piece. For more on the solution check out this post!

 

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