Monster Mania Artist Commentary - Tilt Union

In October 2016, Brad Ruder invited me to be the guest artist for a Print Session at Tilt Union. The Print Sessions were a series of screen printing classes where the students hand-screen-printed artwork created by the guest artist. For my print session, I created illustrations of the Bride of Frankenstein and Frankenstein's Monster. 

My version of the Bride was heavily influenced by Tim Burton. My Bride is a mix of the Martian Girl, Sally Shock and Emily the Corpse Bride. The colors were inspired by Beetlejuice. I gave my Bride the traditional beehive hairstyle with the white lightning bolt streaks, but I also added a Tim Burton spiral to break up the black space. The hair takes up a third of the image, and I wanted to make that space a little more fun and interesting. I ended up repeating the spiral shapes throughout the drawing. I also made the hair really frazzled like an electrocuted cartoon character. I also added some lightning in the background. The treatment is similar to the abstract backgrounds I use for the Monster Mania drawings. 

The drawing of Frankenstein's Monster takes some inspiration from Frank Miller’s “Sin City” art. Frankenstein’s Monster is always fun to draw because he is a composite creature made up of different body parts from various corpses, stitched together. You can mix and match his body parts like a Mr. Potato Head to get different results. You can play with the design, and it can still be recognizable as Frankenstein’s Monster. I’ve drawn the Frankenstein’s Monster several times, and I draw him differently every time. 

In many ways, these illustrations are the prototypes for the Monster Mania series. 





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