Occasionally, I will get invited to participate in group show dedicated to a specific franchise or movie, as was the case with Gallery1988’s ‘God I Love This Street’ (‘The ‘Burbs’) group show. The tribute was based around the 1989 movie (the ‘Burbs’ starring Tom Hanks, Carrie Fisher, Bruce Dern, Corey Feldman, Rick Ducommun, Wendy Schaal, Henry Gibson, Theodore Gottlieb, Courtney Gains, Gale Gordon and many more. In the film, Ray (Hanks) is home on a ‘staycation’ and begins to suspect his new neighbors the Klopek family, might be up to some nefarious acts. It’s a classic film of Hank’s, and is beloved by many fans, making it a foreboding task to illustrate properly.
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| Rough layout of the crime board on a digitally painted 'cork' backing. |
Typically when I start a piece for a themed show, I have some kind of idea of what I am going to do, or how am I going to approach it. That is not always the case, and occasionally I have to pick a direction and hope it works out for the best. I usually have a ‘vision’ in mind regardless, but execution, as many creatives know, isn’t always the smoothest. In regards to this image, my only conceptual idea was a crime board where I could collect specific pieces of the storyline, and scatter them about like a ‘Where’s Waldo’ book littered with as many Easter eggs as I could possibly include…at least that was the objective.
Like most works I sat down and rewatched the film, which I hadn’t seen in decades.
In fact, I’m not sure I’ve seen the film in it’s entirety.
The first time I saw the movie was when my parents took me to see it at the drive-in, and I think I might have fallen asleep.
I digress.
I set about watching the film, and collecting any imagery I thought might be useful as reference later. I knew however that a second or third viewing was likely with a piece like this one where the details are important. I also know that my work tends to evolve, so sometimes I need to adjust the images for the purpose of the layout, or even collect more reference for a specific pose/character/etc.
I also had some reference images from the internet with some interesting layouts for a crime board, so I knew what kind of images I needed to create for it.
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| Walter (Gale Gordon), with his dog 'Queenie'. |
I started the piece first by creating the corkboard background in Procreate, of which my images were going to be arranged. I’m not entirely sure which brushes I used for the textured look, but it was mostly about experimenting until I found something that replicated the desired effect. Looking at my reference (for the crime boards), I noticed there were usually some articles, notes, cards, pictures, and usually some kind of yarn or string connecting these elements to one another.
The next step I took was creating a sketch over the top of the background layer and begin to ‘arrange’ my elements to create an interesting layout (which evolved). With my elements in place I began working in steps to illustrate my board. Now I should mention that the plot of this particular film isn’t very complex, and nor is the (spectacular) cast very large, so creating enough things to fill the space of this board was actually much more challenging than I thought it was going to be. In fact I think a straightforward illustration would have been easier in some regards, but I didn’t choose that path, so…moving on.
The first image I produced was for the business card on the board which really has nothing to do with the plotline or story of the film, and is one of the most blatant Easter eggs in the image. The plumbers are only mentioned once by the garbage men when Ray and his neighbors are searching the refuse for evidence.
Next up was the note that Art (Ducommun) leaves the Klopeks (the new neighbors), and is promptly returned to an enraged Ray.
I then created some templates for polaroid pictures that I wanted to include on the board of Walter (Gordon), and the femur Ray’s dog Vince finds, as this would be really the only way to represent them here. At this point scale became a concern. I knew this image was going to have to establish some kind of scale system in order for it to be even partially realistic looking. I had a business card available, so that was an easy measure, but the polaroid was a different story, especially considering the time frame, polaroid’s were different in size and window aspect ratios of which any trained will be able to tell. Thankfully I am old enough to own several polaroid’s from this era, so it was a simple matter of using a ruler to measure it all out.
My next task was all the post it style notes I decided to pepper the board with, and the two newspaper articles that I wanted to include as well. I used the scale from post its I had lying around, and compared that to the previous images developed.
For the notes, I decided that standard yellow was best (for quickly identifying as a note). The articles I knew were going to need to be different enough that they looked like they were from different time periods (or aged). The top article was going to tell the story Art relays to Ricky (Feldman), about ‘Skip’ the local soda jerk who murdered his whole family. The other article was a nod to how Art tells Ray about the Klopek’s former residence burning down before they moved to Hinkley Hills.
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| Various notes, neighborhood map, and newspaper article. |
Upon completely the bases for most of these items, I went back to the polaroids, and began to develop the interior images. First I created the femur, which still looks a bit off to me, but I tried my best, followed by Walter (Gordon), holding Queenie. I also decided to add an image (of a house fire)to one of the articles in order to make it more interesting.
My next challenge was Walter’s toupee.
Why I didn’t do another polaroid is beyond me, but it might have been easier. The reference I was able to pull for this wasn’t really that great, so I did my best to at least make it look like it was hair, even if it’s a bit hard to discern. Thankfully the implementation of the post it notes helps identify anything questionable. My real concern was the scale. I used my reference shots, many of which had several character hands handling said toupee, which gave me some idea of scale. I cross referenced this with my other images, and figured out the best way to mitigate the size issue. If anything it might be a bit smaller than it should be, however, one could argue it’s wadded up as well because its inside a bag, right?
The final image I needed to create was a map of the neighborhood that I could use to place as my largest piece of evidence to fill in some of the empty space. I initially had several locales I wanted to include on the map that are mentioned in the film, like the mall/soda fountain, the pizza place (which is never named or clearly identified in the film which would have served as a better business card IMO), deli, golf course, ‘Garden Center’, or even the hospital, but I surprisingly lacked the space.
Once I began to fill the interior of the map (based off the best reference I could get from the film including home placement), I realized that in order to focus on the neighborhood, it would need to be central, and very easy to identify. I was going to include the home address numbers on the map (or buildings), but thought it might be too distracting. Instead I opted to include the only two notable street names in the film, Mayfield Place (where our story takes place), and Elm Street, the site of another series of unfortunate events.
In terms of scale for the map, I thankfully could make it look rather folded in order to create the illusion it was much larger than it appeared.
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| Final 17" x 11" image. |
With the illustration process primarily done, I took the images into Adobe Illustrator to add typography to several of them. I started first with the business card for ‘Roselli Plumbing’, and used Charlemagne STD Bold for the title of the card, and I used Supermarket Sale for the slogan. For the articles I used Mom’s Typewriter for the older one detailing the murders, and Times Roman Bold for the house fire story. For the map I used Cambria Math Regular, and all the remaining font work was done by hand. I also wrote the entire articles myself (at least the visible parts), with a little help from the autofill for the other areas (which are complete nonsense).
The final task I had before proofing the image was to add some more dimension or shadows it. It was looking rather flat, so I took the image back into Procreate and added some depth behind the overlapping images which really helped overall. With that I done, I sent the image to proof, which unfortunately took two passes, primarily because the corkboard background was too light, and some of the shadows needed adjusting. I even ended up tweaking a few things like the note Art writes because they just weren’t looking right. In fact, there are two elements in this piece that I feel if I was more skilled with, could have really made this a solid piece. It’s not bad, but it’s a bit off from my original vision. I also ditched the idea of using any kind of connecting string or yarn, as I felt it would have been too distracting. Overall, I think the most successful aspects of this piece are the map and articles, with the post it notes being the most fun.
I started the piece on May 21st, 2023, and finished it June 20th, 2023 totaling thirty five (35) hours, and seven (7) minutes. In that time, I spent twenty seven (27) hours, and seven (7) minutes in Procreate, with an additional five (5) hours in Adobe Illustrator, and three (3), in Adobe Photoshop editing.
The 17” x 11” image (printed on 100lb Cover, thank you SGX), was made for Gallery1988’s ‘God I Love This Street’, a group show dedicated to the beloved film ‘The ‘Burbs’, which opened July 14th, 2023. At this time the prints are 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 or painting.
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