That time came almost eight years later when I was invited by Hero Complex Gallery to participate in their “Stay Frosty Friends A Holiday Show”. It was a group show in which artists were asked to create works from pop culture that could also be perceived as ‘holiday’ themed. I quickly recalled my ‘Gremlins’ piece, and decided it was finally the right time to showcase it.
I quickly set to work rewatching the film to collect any reference materials and hopefully provoke some inspiration on how I was going to approach the piece. A primary part of the illustration (‘Kate Beringer’ as played by Phoebe Cates) was already developed in Corel Painter, as was the layout so I was already ahead of the game. I knew I wanted to have the character of Kate central and aloof looking while she was holding ‘Gizmo’. Finding reference was very easy for both prominent characters in the film, as each is independently famous for their own reasons. ‘Gizmo’ for his adorable nature and commercial appeal (move over Garfield), while Cates would live in infamy for roles in previous films, before retiring during the early 1990’s. ‘Kate’s’ portrait was started many years ago, so I had a good base to start with, but eventually I would have to start over in Procreate. Upon finishing my central image of ‘Kate’ I moved onto ‘Gizmo’, selecting my color palette from my reference image*, in order to make sure that the lighting was similar. Having completed both portraits, it was time to tackle the challenge of how to portray my ‘holiday’ connection. (*Procreate has this amazing feature where you can select an image to create a color palette from by importing a photo into the palettes.)
Thankfully, I had an easy fix. In true 1980’s fashion I decided to do a play on the double exposures that were so popular during the era and which seem to be returning in favor by many of today’s modern photographers. Using this method, I wanted to tell the story of ‘Kate’s’ ‘trauma’, which would be incredibly tragic if it weren’t handled so comically in the film. Either that or I have a REALLY sick sense of humor. If you have no idea what I am talking about, watch the movie I refuse to ruin the ‘joke’. It’s produced by Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy, and directed by Joe Dante (‘Small Soliders’/’Salem’/’Eerie Indiana’/’The Burbs’/etc). In a nutshell, ‘Kate’ explains her disdain for Christmas, which her boyfriend ‘Billy Peltzer’ (Zach Galligan), is entirely too distracted to properly absorb as it takes places during the film’s suspenseful final act. I had very little reference for the ‘memory’ I was going to be depicting but eventually I was able to find a proper image online thanks in part to rather obscure blog I came across. They are a gold mine of information about film locations and history in general about film locales. Whoever owns this deserves both restitution and recognition, as it’s an awesome resource. For this to work, I needed a shot of ‘Kate’s’ house, along with a police car or fire engine of some kind, as this is where the tragedy occurs. Having secured a shot of the house (from the blog mentioned above), I still couldn’t locate an authentic looking fire truck so instead I opted to utilize the police car from the film driven by ‘Sheriff Frank’ (Scott Brady). Since the film takes place in the early 1980’s I wanted to make sure I captured the aesthetics correctly, and it would prove to be no easy task. While the film does take place during Christmas, and it is snowing often throughout, I needed this image to ‘tell’ that part of the narrative. If Kate’s memory had been about a different holiday, I don’t think this layout would have worked, as I was able to add both snow, and festive lights to the house in order to convey the time of year. While this portion of the illustration is successful in portraying that information, I’m not sure it fits stylistically, and almost looks off. Part of the reason might be how difficult of a time I had proofing this piece due to the limited color I was using. I did want to keep this specific area rather muted as it was a ‘memory’ so having it fade into the background made sense but I think it still needs more contrasting. Not entirely sure to be honest, but it’s not a major issue, more of a technical aspect given time I’d overcome.
Next, I needed something to ‘house’ the image in and the only thing plausible thing I could come up with were snowflakes. I determined I could also use the flakes to overlap and create a bit of a pattern to offset the design. I had situated my layout in a ‘diamond-shaped’ in order to maximize the amount of space for the portrait of ‘Kate’. The illustration was naturally ‘leaning’ heavy to lower left where our loveable hero ‘Gizmo’ is being held, and I needed something to offset the balance. Thankfully, I used the same background color for ‘Kate’s’ hair and blocked it in with highlights using the blue tones from the snowflakes to outline her profile. I had to get creative with the police officers within the ‘memory’ as there wasn’t any reference I could specifically point to from the film. The ‘memory’ was never shown to the audience, so I had very little context on how to visually depict it. I did however use the uniforms from the film as inspiration, and since the figures themselves were going to be so small they needed to be implied more than anything.
Having completed the image, it was time for proofing which would prove to be a challenge due to the color palette I used, and puzzling issue I was having with Adobe Photoshop. If any of layers were blended into another, it left information on the edges that was picked up and filled in Photoshop. Eventually I realized I would have to collapse any layer that I was blending into which gave me major anxiety. I was using the same color as my background for ‘Kate’s’ hair this did create some issues. While a huge setback, it was also a learning experience. I learned quickly that in order to remedy this in the future I would need to transfer the files between the peripherals after starting in Procreate or else the added information would continue. I’m sure there is an actual term for what the problem is/was (see below), but I am unaware at this time and those contacts I reached out to offered no solution. (As I mentioned in the previous post I would eventually learn that this is referred to as dithering*, and while in the previous piece the problem was minor, here it was a major issue, and the solution above DID NOT fix the problem.)
With one problem down, yet another loomed on the horizon…the contrasting. Getting the contrast right in order to be able to even slightly see the police officers was downright impossible. I however was running out of time and eventually I settled on a set that I was happy with (thank you SGX). My perfectionism would end up costing me so much time that I had to physically deliver the prints to the gallery myself. Things might not have been so hectic had I not been also working on multiple projects at the same time (Hedwig). It was wild to say the least.
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From start to finish it took over eight (8) years to complete (I did start it in 2014). However, in reality I didn’t return to the piece until October 18th, 2021 and finished it on November 7th, 2021. According to Procreate, I spent approximately, seventy-three (173) hours on this piece from start to finish which is a lot. The lion’s share of that time was cleaning up the edges after my Photoshop fiasco mentioned above. I developed the image primarily in Procreate on my iPad, except for the snowflakes, which were done in Adobe Illustrator. There was also some editing done in Photoshop in terms of contrasting for the proofing process.
The 12” x 12” piece printed on white pearl linen paper was featured during Hero Complex Gallery’s “Stay Frosty Friends A Holiday Show (2021”, which opened November 22nd, 2021. At this time, the image is exclusively available via the gallery with a limited number of ten available, 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 or painting.
*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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