Some Kind of Love

Norma Jeane, 9x12 grey marker and sumi brushpen sketch

Here's a warm-up sketch I did last night before settling into a few hours of work. I think I'd mentioned before that Marilyn Monroe is very difficult for me to draw, so I like to take up the task as a challenge every now and again.

Perhaps I've also had this type of bombshell visual on my mind because I just spent the last two weeks watching the first season of the spectacular series Mad Men. I've never been so delighted and saddened in all my life! If you haven't seen it, and you like the things you see on this blog, I strongly recommend it. And, if you happen to have AMC, can I please move in with you for Season Two?

Though, further back in the month, Marilyn may also have been on my mind after reading The Misfit's Bobby Steele write recently in The Villager on why 'Die Yuppie Scum' is hate speech.

----------------
Now playing: The Misfits - Some Kind Of Love
via FoxyTunes

NY Int'l Children's Film Fest

My daughter's short film pick from this weekend's NYICFF.

OSCARS livesketching

For another year, I've sketched The Oscars. A tremendously difficult thing to do, I assure you, as you need to doodle quickly, but are distracted by the awe, glamor, and sometimes ridiculousness of Hollywood. My biggest weakness comes from being unable to weep during the acceptance speeches. I draw through tears!

Anyway, with the exception of a couple ladies, I thought all the gowns and ensembles were beautiful. It seems most actors wanted to play it a little conservative and the only real faux pas came from tragic up-do's. My favorite, Marion Cotillard, looked stunning from head to toe in Jean Paul Gaultier.

Frantic (1988)

Dr. Richard Walker (Harrison Ford) and Michelle (Emmanuelle Siegner)
6 x 9 sketch, blue pencil, grey marker, sumi brushpen on Cachet sketchpaper

It's not entirely surprising that a film like ''Frantic,'' which opens today at the Beekman and other theaters, eventually involves this guileless tourist with drug smugglers and international terrorists, with the more colorful fringes of Parisian nightlife, with a long-legged girl wearing black-leather motorcycle regalia. These, after all, can be almost standard ingredients for a story of intrigue. What's more unusual is the precise, understated way in which Mr. Polanski pieces the tale together, so that even the craziest development follows more or less sensibly from whatever precedes it.

NY Times Movie Review

By JANET MASLIN

Published: February 26, 1988

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)

Maggie Pollit (Elizabeth Taylor)
8 x 5 sketch, pencil, watercolor, sumi brush pen on moleskine watercolor paper

"You know what I feel like? I feel all the time like a cat on a hot tin roof."

A Very Long Engagement (2004)

Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a miracle worker, a filmmaker whose soaring visuals and passionate intensity are artfully blended in this stunning film of Sebastian Japrisot's World War I-era novel. Jeunet reunites with his Amelie star, Audrey Tautou, in a film as harsh as Amelie was ethereal. Tautou, an actress of magical gifts, is deeply affecting as Mathilde, a Frenchwoman who refuses to believe her sweet, slender fiancee, Manech (Gaspard Ulliel), is one of five soldiers killed in the trenches after being convicted of self-mutilation to avoid duty. She spends the war trying to track him down. It's unfair to reduce a dense plot, loaded with characters and incidents, to a quick summation, but the film is best met head-on. Just sit back and behold as Jeunet the visionary and Tautou the force of nature take you to hell and back with this epic love story. It's an emotional powerhouse.

--Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

How amazing this beautiful film is... so perfect in its execution of weaving a gorgeously complex set of actions with narrative under such brilliantly charming and despicable characters! I love movies that leave you with a sense of wonderment and light, in spite of the harshness of life. Oh, Jean-Pierre Jeunet! Le sigh!

Watching it, I was reminded of two of my favorite places, The Imperial War Museum in London and Vosges here in SoHo. And other things, romantic notions, that are impossible to link to...

The Misfits (1961)

Perce Howland (Montgomery Clift)
8 x 5 sketch, watercolor on moleskine watercolor paper

"With John Huston directing a cast of Hollywood icons, including Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, in a haunting screenplay by Arthur Miller, THE MISFITS was one of the most anticipated films of 1961. But difficult shooting locations, an unruly director, a crumbling marriage, an aging leading man, and an unstable leading lady made the behind-the-scenes story of the film's production anything but ideal."

From PBS' Great Performances: The Making of THE MISFITS

Roslyn Taber (Marilyn Monroe)
5.5 x 5 sketch, grey marker and watercolor on sketchpaper

To say that I am obsessed with this movie is putting it mildly. Ever since I saw the Magnum Photos, learned the history of the film alongside the tragic players, well, it's beauty and sadness has just grabbed my heart and hasn't let go.

Paper Moon (1973)

Addie Loggins (Tatum O'Neal)
sketch, sumi brushpen and grey marker

The year is 1936. Orphaned Addie Loggins (Tatum O'Neal, in her film debut) is left in the care of unethical travelling Bible salesman Moses Pray (Ryan O'Neal, Tatum's dad), who may or may not be her father. En route to Addie's relatives, Moses learns that the 9-year-old is quite a handful: she smokes, cusses, and is almost as devious and manipulative as he is.

--From the NY Times Movies Overview, which includes more film info and a link to a 1973 poor review.

Addie Loggins (Tatum O'Neal) and Moses Pray (Ryan O'Neal)
sketch, sumi brushpen and grey marker

This might be one of the nicest, most perfect movies I've seen in a long time. It came as a recommendation from a friend and by the title and somber pictures I'd seen of it before, I expected my Sunday night to require a box of kleenex to sop up a great heartache. I was told to not worry, that it's a comedy and that I'd love it.

And, it does start out in a sorrowful way, a very young girl attending the lonely funeral of her mother. But, something about the leading man picking his way across the cemetery, stooping to swipe some flowers off another headstone, then standing stiffly at the grave site... was just peculiarly funny. The road didn't end there, it continues on and on with amazing laughs and hilarity at the situations the two oddball characters find themselves in. Often with even odder folk.

Trixie Delight (Madeline Khan), pencil and sumi brushpen sketch
Addie Loggins (Tatum O'Neal) sumi brushpen and grey marker sketch

Moses: I got scruples too, you know. You know what that is? Scruples?

Addie Loggins: No, I don't know what it is, but if you got 'em, it's a sure bet they belong to somebody else!

Addie Loggins (Tatum O'Neal) sumi brushpen and grey marker sketch

But, my friend lied to me. I did cry... there are moments where you feel so much for Addie. So capable, but still a little girl. So, I maybe ended up using only a quarter box of kleenex...

Chinatown (1974)

For those who have not seen this incredible film, I leave you with a synopsis from Channel 4:

In 1930s Los Angeles, cop-turned-private eye JJ Gittes (Nicholson) makes a living from sleazy divorce cases, and is called upon to investigate the private life of Hollis Mulwray, the head of the Department of Water and Power. It seems like straightforward adultery - but Gittes is in way over his head before he's even started.

Mulwray is murdered. After Gittes encounters Mulwray's beautiful wife Evelyn (Faye Dunaway) and her domineering father Noah Cross (John Huston), he thinks he knows what's going on - except with each new piece of 'evidence' his theories are disproved. In Polanski's L.A, nothing is what it seems, everyone lies, and corruption infects every aspect of public and private life.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Atticus (Gregory Peck) and Scout (Mary Badham)
pencil and watercolor on moleskine watercolor paper

This film is an incredible adaptation of the book, of the same title, by Harper Lee. It's rare for a movie to accurately adapt a book, every reader envisions stories in their own way. But, the astounding cast gives a performance that's so grand and perfect that the author has for many years denied further performance in television or on stage for the production. And, it's no wonder, Gregory Peck is an amazing Atticus and the children seem cut from the pages from which their characters were created.

To Kill a Mockingbird is actually my favorite book (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith sometimes rivals it and I've often said that I think it was Lee's inspiration). Over the summer, a good friend took me to see a very good stage production of it in Stratford, Ontario where we wept with great love and sadness in our balcony seats.

Though I loved it and this film, I think I'd very much like to see a newer version brought to screen... and in my wildest dreams, I'd love to do a graphic novel adaption.


Tom Robinson (Brock Peters) and Boo Radley (Robert Duval)
watercolor and sumi brushpen on sketchpaper


Cal (Estelle Stevens), Jem (Philip Alford), and Scout (Mary Badham)
grey marker and watercolor on sketchpaper

The Prince and the Showgirl (1957)

This is referenced from a still in that WB Anniversary book I keep sketching from and is also a part of a continuing, occasional, challenge for myself to 1) watercolor; and 2) sketch Marilyn Monroe.

She's an elusive subject, as everything ever written about her has stated. There are many elements to her that I'd like to capture: to make her bombshell blonde sexy, while retaining the charming sweetness of her. Plus, every feature of hers seems so perfectly set, that even the slightest mistake or alteration makes the drawing look like an image of a cheap Hollywood Marilyn impersonator. As seen below, in some sketching I did of her when I first started this art exercise some time ago.



I can at least take some pride in that I've come a bit of way since then...

Blade Runner (1982)

It rained this past Friday night when a friend and I went to see Blade Runner - The Final Cut at The Ziegfeld.

To say it's made a meaningful impression on my entertainment tastes is putting it mildly. I think I first saw it when I was ten, when it seemed to air every weekend at my best friend's house on Showtime or HBO. We'd pile pillows on the floor, pull a blanket up to our necks and be whisked away to another world. This would become a double-feature ritual when we discovered Alien.

Years later, a VHS copy would become a permanent fixture in my VCR during teen parties when we'd mute the volume, keep the Blade Runner running, as we listened to mix tapes (Peter Murphy, Siouxsie, Joy Division, Smiths, Nine Inch Nails, etc.) Then in 1992, and an apartment of my own behind The Hi-Pointe Theatre, I saw the re-release with my then boyfriend.

I was excited, of course, to see the movie on the screen again. But, it'd been fifteen years since I saw it last... I grew increasingly happy as we ate dinner, picked up our tickets, bought popcorn, and sat in our seats. Then the red curtains pulled away for the screen and I held my breath.

I may love it more now than at any other time. The restoration is incredible, the print is gorgeous and the 'fixes' are a nice and loving attention to detail that's made it that much richer. Despite having seen it more times than I can count, I'm still moved. The moral values of the themes remain thoughtful, insightful, and relevant-- slavery, corporatism, and technology. (However, with some years behind me, I find myself somewhat disturbed by the romantic relationship of Deckard and Rachel, but I need to digest that one a bit more.)

In any case, I'm so very glad to have seen it, it's a grand version and an important film.

-----
NOTE: These Blade Runner sketches here were done in grey marker and brush pen. I've recently been posting sketches on the subject of films as an art exercise. They are meant to be done quickly and are done in ink only.

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway are an exciting way to start off a day when you've nothing but office drudgery to do and half the city's gone for the holiday.

Once the boring work is done this morning, I'll be jumping onto tightening the pencil work for a one-page editorial piece my art director's just approved. As with the last few commercial jobs I've had, the direction of the image is going to be done "comics" style. I'm immensely excited about it since I'm hoping to make it verrry rrromantic.

My inspiration for the color work comes from the blog Today's Inspiration's post on Mac Conner. Interestingly, it accompanies thoughts on my eternal struggle: comics work versus commercial-- Mac Conner in Context

Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood, originally uploaded by spookoo.

Sketches of Clint from a WB film reference book.

Someone told me recently that one of the many reasons that it took so long for THE UNFORGIVEN to be filmed was that Clint felt he wasn't "good enough" for the part he wanted to act. Apparently he waited ten years, felt ready, and went on to shoot the film in just thirty-nine days...

DARK PASSAGE (1947)

DARK PASSAGE (1947), originally uploaded by spookoo.

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.