Film sketching- Leon

On the previously mentioned Greg Ruth boards I put foward a challenge to render images based around a favorite action/suspense film. I chose Leon(aka The Professional) because I love this film. I tried to approach them in a figure drawing style manner. Watching the entire film and doing quick gestures first. Then going back and watching the scenes I wanted to depict repeatedly until I finished. I also tried to do them as quickly as possible.

The first image is the depiction of Leon's final words to corrupt DEA agent Stansfield (Gary Oldman). One of the classic last word scenes from film.

What I really love about the film is Leon himself and Reno's portrayal of him. He is a very sympathetic and likable character despite his profession and doesn't exude the cool all the time that other similar amoral characters with a heart of gold often have.The painted image took a little longer than I wanted so I approached the second with ink and brush.

Finally, I tried to pick up the speed a bit more and used a ballpoint and the leftover ink to do a version of one of my favorite scenes- Leon staring like an engrossed child as Singing in the Rain plays on the matinee. Reno really pulls out all stops with his acting in this brief scene and I'm afraid I didn't quite nail the proper expression but ther you have it anyway.

You don't bring me flowers...

All right, so I basically left this blog like a lemon vehicle abandoned on the side of the road. To be perfectly frank I had hoped it would result in more back and forth between like minds and, with any luck, some helpful criticism towards my work. As it turned out, I found many other avenues where I was getting the feedback I wanted more readily (not least of which were Greg Ruth's always helpful boards and emailing friends directly). The blog began to feel like I was merely posting for myself. Which is kind of pointless because I see the work I put on here all the time and I can keep a private journal off the world wide web if I'm going to be the only one reading it.

That said, I don't want to totally neglect this thing since there was a reason I did start it. It's been almost a year since I began it and it's been sitting on idle for six months and change. I'll dust it off and post for the hell of it. I guess I can look on the bright side of things and say that if I put a few eyesores up no one will take notice.

I'll start off with some sillier stuff just because it's a nice balance to some of the other work I put out. Below is a three panel comic I did for Greg Ruth's art challenge. It was based on the notion of one of my fellow poster's, Neil, son's idea of the tooth fairy. His lad's notion was that she took the good teeth and kept them in her mouth and ground the bad ones up into piano keys. Here's my take:



Also on the goofy side, some valentines tags for my son's class last year. He's big into monsters so I tried to do some silly ones that he would like as well.


After making these I realized it just might be a good idea to make one for my son as well so he didn't feel left out. Here it is:

Also, as an added aside I'd like to thank gent and all around talent Joel Trusell for being the only dutiful poster here and to point anyone reading this to Matt Strackbein's own interpretation of the tooth fairy story under the "Homework 1 : Tooth Fairy". Plus look at any of the other art threads on there. Great stuff happening form all the posters in addition to Ruth himself.