Arsenic Lullaby - Krampus is coming/ illustrations and step by step walk through

I have a Steemit exclusive Krampus story on the way (found the files). First here's a little play by play of the first time I drew the furry bastard. I had gotten bored/tired of making new merch but Xmas was coming up and people always like getting Arsenic Lullaby gifts for each other (which is strange irony) so I compromised and decided to make a Krampus print... it turned into two prints. I came up with these thumbnail sketches and decided they were both worth doing.

While I work I usually have some full run of a t.v. series on in the background. I helps me mark time. For those of you keeping track at home, from start to finish these prints took me the entire run of Band of Brothers two and a half times. That’s World War 2 twice and then from d-day to the battle of the bulge. Any day now I expect to have dreams of Hitler crawling down a chimney and attacking a G.I. Paratrooper, and then getting a bayonet in the gut from Santa…who has an awful case of VD from some French nurse.

anyway…though you might be interested in seeing the progression of an illustration.

This is the part of an illustration that’s either the most fun or the most frustrating, trying to capture the original charm of the sketch while polishing it…i.e. making sure the perspective is right, and the bodies are in proportion and all that nonsense. I wanted a lot of movement with these so I added extra vanishing points that way all the boxes wouldn’t be lined up like cereal boxes on a shelf. TECHNICALLY the vanishing points on the top ( the top two thumb tacks) are wrong and impossible, but for the sake of interesting composition they are just what the doctor ordered. Some of the elements having a different horizon line than others makes the eye bounce around bit, adds to the sense of movement and unease.

of course it’s easier to do on a 4×5 sketch. When you start on the actual 11×17 illustration you have to break out the 4 foot straight edges. This is why I refuse to give up my 12 year old wooden folding table that I …liberated…from a fireworks stand. It’s 3ft by 8 ft and you can just stick thumbtacks right into it. Every three months or after it has so many tact holes I can’t work on it, I go to Home Depot and buy a cheap thin sheet of wood to screw on the top and BAM instant new table.

At this point I realize I may have to actually break a plate in order to figure out how the shards of broken plate would look. Which would be no problem if I owned a plate. Off to the thrift store!

Right about this time I am realized that Band of Brothers really isn’t that good. These “characters” are basically cartoon versions of actual people…the gun ho N.Y. guy, the big tough guy with a cigar in his mouth all the time…they couldn’t get food or medical supplies to the front lines at the battle of the Bulge but this guy hasn’t run out of Cigars?! Having the guy from -Office Space- on the show though makes it all worth it. He does a great job of just being the guy from office space in WW2, instead of trying to be some overly dramatic serious ham.

All I’m going to say here is that plate turned out f*cking great. It was worth the 1.50. Then I started wondering what I should put up in the picture frame.

I picked a couple of Norman Rockwell Christmas paintings. Is there a worlds record for the smallest fine art recreations?

And here is the finished inks.

The other print was even more challenging …I should have taken more pics of that one as I went along

All in all these two took me WW2 two and a half times. Around the third time I watched Easy Company get shot up in operation Market Garden…I think to myself "why the f*ck would you out a British General in charge of anything at that point?! they were getting their asses kicked for like 3 years, Ike shows up, starts making progress and they give the command back over the the British?….?…..?! " Operation Market garden was a disaster (of course) and was probably responsible for the Russians closing on on Berlin the same time we were, and thus beginning the cold war. THANKS ENGLAND.

Anyways...Those where the first two Krampus illustrations I ever did.

Since then I've done one or two a year and made prints out of them. Here's a few of my favorites.

There's some of these prints at my online store, and so is the original artwork from one or two ( coupon code -STEEMIT - gets you a nice discount.) www.arseniclullabies.com/store

OR you can pay me here with steem...just contact me below or on discord. I usually throw in some small bonus. For instance, last time I sent something out...I accidentally put my samsung tablet in the package...It's on it's way to England right now...hmmm...perhaps I shouldn't have bitched about England since I'm going to hope Steve is good enough to send it back to me. So...you probably won't get something as good as a tablet when you order, but you'll get a little something for being a Steemian...because I like it here.

After having done a bunch of Krampus illustrations and having them for sale online and at Comic-cons and having people grab them up and ask "do you have a Krampus story in the book?" and having to answer "no"...or sometimes lying and saying yes to get their sweet sweet money (I'm kidding...but the thought did cross my mind, it's not like they aren't going to enjoy the book anyway), I came up with one. Well I actually came up with two, but the first one was going to be like ten pages...I rarely have the attention span to draw the same character for more than 6 pages in a row. The story I'm going to show you soon is, in my opinion, funnier by just a little...and a hell of a lot shorter. Stay tuned for that!

#comics

Later.