Bedpost Spotlight

Here's a follow-up illustration to "Grave Bedpost." We see this bizarre villain has escaped his grave and is staggering through the darkness, right into a spotlight, possibly being shown from a helicopter overhead.

Yes, I am fully aware of how silly this character is. Yes, that is a frilly collar. Yes, he's wearing sunglasses. Yes, he has a John Leno chin. And of course, that's his bedpost for an arm. My friend Franky and I came up with this maniacal villain back in high school, and he has remained one of my favorite most ridiculous characters ever.

I've always thought that a beam of light shining through fog or smoke looks really cool, so that's what I focused on for this illustration. I just used a broad digital airbrush tool and used sweeping gestures to get the light to draft in from the source, lighting up the fog around the character. For a little extra detail, I added a brick wall off to the right in the background.

I really wanted Bedpost Esta (yes, that is his name; I didn't name him) to look like he had dug his way out of his grave, so I made a point to add lots of brown and green to his coat, darkening it and using another airbrush tool to grunge it up a bit. I'm so used to drawing sleek, clean objects and textures that it was actually refreshing to draw something covered in mud and grass stains.

Grave Bedpost

Even homemade comic book villains with bedposts for arms deserve their day of infamy. 

"Grave Bedpost" is what I call this one. Back story? It's every bit as ridiculous as one could imagine given the caption, but I prefer to leave it as somewhat of a mystery for now. It's funnier to me that way.

I used some basic watercolor tools and digital airbrushing to do most of this. I was aiming for an eerie fog to mask most of the background and am pleased with the result. It took me a while to get the right color and lighting to give it that reflective glow in the darkness. I was also debating on whether or not I should add in blades of grass, but now that I've done it, I'm happy that I did, as it really makes the ground look less flat and murky.

I usually don't focus on backgrounds so much (as you've probably noticed in my previous blogs) but for this one, I started out with just the background first and added the grave afterwards. The final touch was the fog. It was all done in one layer, with the exception of the text on the grave, which I converted to an image and dropped onto the main canvas layer so I could "age" it a bit on the stone.

"Why do we fall, sir? So we might learn to pick ourselves up..."

Alright, as I mentioned in class, I decided to spend an hour or so sketching during a particularly stressful time this weekend. To make a long story short, I was sick, kept losing things, was frustrated, and to top things off, the family dog died, adding to the general aura of depression. This particular art piece is different than my usual work in the sense that it is NOT cheerful, sci-fi, quirky, or anything along those lines. I just wanted to draw an emotion, anything to connect with how I was feeling. What came of this was a fallen man looking up for some help, or maybe just looking to see what pushed him down. It was meant to be simple and to the point. I chose not to give the guy any kind of hair on his head or face because I feel like that conveys some form of vulnerability; a lack of identity in a way. Just a generic human, which oddly enough came out looking more like a cross between Michael Stipe, Billy Corgan, and Chris Daughtry.

I honestly really didn't even want to upload it at first, merely because it was depressing, representing a somewhat low point in my life. But then I decided, hey, that's what art is... It's an expression, not this picture-perfect happy illustration that the artist or creator particularly likes; it is what it is, and that is ultimately what led to my decision to just go with it.

With that said, I really hope my next sketch/drawing/etc. is a little less of a downer. lol