Exhumed: Werewolf By Night

For my Werewolf by Night piece, I did several sketches in preparation.  One of my favorites caught my eye again recently, so I brought it into Photoshop to explore.  I like the werewolf face here opposed to the one in the finished piece.  This one has a more expressive quality that the other lacks.  The color and lighting focus in this one is simply nighttime.
 
{11.111x9.861,  created in Adobe Photoshop}

Exhumed: Pumpkin Headed Scarecrow Jack

This piece was originally created to be used as the background of an invitation for an annual halloween party.  This is one of the first images I ever drew of the flaming jack o lantern headed the spirit of Halloween, Jack.

{7.98 x 5.03, Sharpie with color added in Adobe Photoshop}

Exhumed: Tornado of Self

An older piece depicting a disturbed emotive state.  With the color reinvestigation, I wanted to add a stronger sense of motion within the piece to indicate that the individual distortion had begun to effect the surrounding environment.  I also chose to confine my palette to "body" colors: light flesh, blood, excretions.  With the use of these body specific colors, my intent was to give the image a subtle disturbing quality that intimated the visceral aspects of the black and white sketch with further graphic representation.

{8.5x11, Sharpie with color added in Adobe Photoshop}

Galleries Updated

Here's a quick note to let everyone know that I just updated all the galleries with fresh thumbnails and links for easy viewing.  This go round, every gallery has something new.  Enjoy!

Exhumed: Lich

Here we've exhumed a sketch of a Lich from a fantasy story I was working on.  In the color reinvestigation I digitally inked the image then added a background doorway for this creepy guy to have just walked through.  I kept the lighting dim to add to the ambiance and surrounded him in a cloud of noxious fog to keep him ghostly despite his black cloak.

{8x6.2,  Graphite with color added in Adobe Photoshop}

Exhumed: Ghoul

Here we have an exhumed Ghoul.  With this piece I wanted to get into the creepy night time atmosphere of the image while keeping the savage anger of the original sketch.  I feel like this piece and another ghoul I drew some time ago are cut from the same cloth.  Although I'm enjoying the dramatic side lighting, I'm not super excited about the overall color here.  I feel like it turned out just okay.  I may have to exhume this piece again at some point.

{7.31x5.13,  Graphite with colors added in Adobe Photoshop}

Exhumed: Rotting Appleteeth

Rotting Appleteeth is a goblin of indulgence and decay.  Rotting is quick, selfish, and most certainly dangerous.  Legend has it that he used to have a mouth full of bright white teeth, but they decayed and fell out because of his lust for eating sweets and drinking Nog all night.  His empty heart is jealous and craves all things, especially the teeth of others.  When he sees a beautiful set of polished ivories, out comes his dagger!

Surprisingly, his breath is rather sweet, but that is only a lure to get a victim close enough to cut out a few molars.  Although he will not pass up any tooth, he is known to prefer the teeth of children.  His nighttime attacks are responsible for the innate fear of dentists that many children possess.  He is a mortal enemy of the tooth fairy and the two have warred repeatedly over a single stolen tooth.

{8x5.33,  created in Adobe Photoshop}

Exhumed: D'spayre

Here we have a reinvestigation of a previous sketch of one of my favorite dark Marvel comics characters, D'spayre.  With the color, I wanted to clean the drawing up a bit and give him a dreary backdrop to look menacing against.  I also made the line work in the image part of the color.  As I began I had redrawn all of the line work in black, but I found the contrast too harsh.  With the color line work he takes on a phantom quality which suits D'spayre very well.

{8x6.18,  Graphite with color added in Adobe Photoshop}

 

Exhumed: The Door

This piece was originally part of the Interior Life set.  With the Interior Life set I tried to find a middle ground between my more emotive works and my sequential art.  That set held some of the ideas and thought processes that would grow into much of my intent here at Zombie Bites.  I had imagined this hungry door as fiery from the moment I drew it.  With the color reinvestigation I wanted to bring that feeling of furnace / fireplace to the fore.

{8x6.503,  Sharpie with color added in Adobe Photoshop}

Exhumed: Floating

I've done several sketches and pieces on this theme of isolated floating within space.  The Original sketch for this piece had a softer tone to so I approached it with that in mind.  I tried to give it a more painterly style and the figure a moon like quality.  This piece has been waiting to be posted for awhile.  This piece is one of several that inspired me to begin doing the Exhumed posts to begin with.

{8x7.66,  Graphite with color added in Adobe Photoshop}

Exhumed: Open Skull

Here we have a quick sketch of a strange skull.  With the color reinvestiagtion I wanted to give it an environment to inhabit.  I figured the skull has been sitting about for quite a long time collecting dust in some dark dungeon corner. 

{Sharpie with colors added in Adobe Photoshop}

Exhumed: The Storm

Here we have an image of an incoming storm.  With the color reinvestigation I wanted to try to capture the weight and ominousness of an approaching storm.  I also tried to simulate the odd twilight that accompanies such storms.  With such heavy cloud cover it becomes neither night nor day, but instead some dim other light.

Exhumed and Staurday Sketch are growing up!

Exhumed and Saturday Sketch are growing up!  The Other Features gallery has dissolved into individual Exhumed and Saturday Sketch galleries.  The two galleries have finally gotten large enough to become their own pages and stand on their own.  Thanks for viewing and reading!  I hope you enjoy!

Exhumed: Strange Eye

Here is a simple sketch of a nonhuman eye.  As I was working on it, I wanted to do more than just add color to it.  That's where the shading and bubbles came in.  I tried to give a subtle sense of structure to the "head" that houses this eye.  Obviously a larger creature but it's exact nature we cannot tell.  You can bet though that there are tentacles involved!

{8x6.533,  Graphite with color added in Adobe Photoshop}

Exhumed: Dead Wolf

This piece was orginally posted within the Featured Creature weekly posts.  I updated the black and white with a greyscale version shortly after.  The Exhumed color piece here isn't too far away from the tonal version due to the muted nighttime lighting, but I feel the texture and depth here are much stronger.  Actually, getting the colors muted was a bit of a challenge for me with this piece.  No matter what combinations I used, everything seemed too intense for moonlight.  It wasn't until I began bringing in the fog textures that the colors finally calmed into what you see here.

{8x5.57,  Sharpie with color added in Adobe Photoshop}

Exhumed: Nightboy

Here I've exhumed a portrait of the Nightboy.  With this reinvestigation, I chose to remove the black sketchy blot in the background and replace it with some scenery to give the image greater depth.  I also chose a very dark muted palette to reflect nighttime lighting.  I tried to soften the image a bit with the muted colors. However, my original drawing is so stiff I never quite got beyond it.

{8x6.02,  Sharpie with color added in Adobe Photoshop}

Exhumed: Grahtennas

Here is the color version of a previous sketch of the demonic arch duke Grahtennas.  In the first portrait of Grahtennas I posted the intensity of color was much greater, but that piece was more of a depiction of the essence of Grahtennas.  Here, I toned down the intensity of the color to lend it a more atmospheric sense of space. 

{8x5.33,  Sharpie with color added in Adobe Photoshop}