DRACULA BLOOD MOON RISING
by Neil Feigeles
Art sketched on Saturday, February 20, 2016. Hand drawn from scratch,
with Prismacolor pencils on 30 lb. 8 1/2” x 11” white paper
with Prismacolor pencils on 30 lb. 8 1/2” x 11” white paper
Bela Lugosi was, is and always will be Dracula for me and for the millions of people who've ever seen the film, pictures of him, or the multitude of illustrations done by others. As a kid growing up, loving movies, well any movies, but especially films from the 1940's and earlier, watching the old Universal horror classics on too many occasions has ingrained in me what a vampire looks like, how they act and why, especially as a kid I so wanted to grow up to become one. I know, a vampire? Well, the way Bela Lugosi transformed into him, the simple answer is yes. That said, I also wanted to become The Invisible man, The Werewolf and any one of the multitude of monsters that Hollywood gave us. Of course, when he gave up the mantle of the most famous vampire in history, and others replaced him, Christopher Lee, being my other favorite, he still remained the template of what a vampire looks and acts like. So much so, that when anyone plays the character, they usually are doing a bad version of what he originated in 1931
That said, sometimes capturing likenesses aren't as easy as others. And some sketches sometimes give us creative types, head-aches. To be honest, I almost stopped working on this illustration, on multiple occasions, I just wasn't happy with how it was coming together, and to put it nicely, When I started the drawing, I actually google searched Bela Lugosi as Dracula, under Images. and was surprised to see how many others had gotten the idea to draw him. Seemingly most of those all used the same reference of the man himself. Luckily when I had decided to do this sketch, as usual I didn't go with the first good image i found. I researched and found lots of options. So instead of taking what everyone else did (phew), I used a different photo as the main reference. Plus I used, several others combining them to create a new take on him, which was inspired by him.
And since this was a sketch and not done as a specific illustration, of Bela Lugosi, capturing his likeness wasn't really necessary. If it had been an assignment. I probably would have started from scratch. using this simply as my sketch to work out the kinks in it,
That said, because I used more then one picture to capture his likeness, to be perfectly honestly getting it to look like him, wasn't easy. And for the most part, I was more interested making the art work by the end then capturing his likeness. I see Bela Lugosi in the portrait, but I also see it as a portrait of the character, even if not the actor. Hence I titles the sketch, Dracula Blood Moon Rising, as opposed to using Bela's name in the title or sub.
I'll let you the viewer decide if in the end, the sketch works.
I scanned the art, in stages, though out its creation, to showcase this was done by hand. Basically after I get to a point, or I take a break. I scan the art at that stage. Also, you get to see it on your monitor, so Its like taking a step back giving me fresh perspective to the art. Gotta love modern technology.
Below, is a .gif,. showcasing all the stages of this sketch. Note, on this one, there's 11 scans.
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