The Mummy

[Aurora]

Next up in my series of Universal Movie Monsters is Lon Chaney Jr. as The Mummy.

[blamito]

iI think some higher contrasts would help this a little, it looks pretty flat right now because everything is grey or darker. Besides that , it looks really good.

[Aurora]

Where specifically would you suggest that I create more contrast?

[blamito]

Specifically, the hair is pretty flat and most of the face. If you made the High-lights a little lighter it would help to give the figure more mass.

[marco pedrana]

he is right, but the fact you've keeped so low key and that the hair is a tight mass it's the reason i like it instead: that's a mummy, its hair has melt and the feel of its skin is dry, putrid and black; the air has heavy and the room is satured of ancient dust. the background is like pergamin. beautiful again.
beautifully sculpted hand also.
my only dubt, but this is really unimportant, is on the face, all the part beneath the eyes; i don't know the reference you have used, but it seems to me that it's a little to full and alive, and there, yes, it could be because it's maybe kinda flat.

[Aurora]

Perhaps it is the scan, or just the way it appears on your specific moniter that is making it appear flat and monotone. The original is not like this. The highlights are the pure white of the paper as I drew AROUND them. Some of the highlights I pulled out afterwards, but 99% of them were never touched with the charcoal. Also the wet fixatif spray will sometimes carry a bit of grey into a highlight causing it to darken slightly.

As for the hair, I recall it all being a mass of greys, no highlights at all. Sometimes I will use my artistic license and draw, or not draw, things that aren't in the ref, including highlights. Sometimes even a photo can be decieveing. I lean on refs but when in doubt I'll take liberties and execute my own artistic judgement about how something should look.

Thanks for your interest!

[Aurora]

[QUOTE=marco pedrana]
beautifully sculpted hand.QUOTE]

Thank you for noticing. I spent 5 hours on the hand alone. In the ref, the hand was very blurry. I wanted to tighten it up and have it coming forward into the viewers face.

[mudcat]

Your charcoal monsters never fail to amaze me. The Creature's my favorite, but this one is simply fantastic (even if it's not Karloff's mummy ) Beautiful stuff Aurora. If you're ever in Houston, I'm gonna get you drunk just to try to convince you to sell these to me CHEAP!

[splicer]

Nice, freaked me out when I first saw it. I wouldn't change anything on it, especially since you say that the light values are much lighter then they appear on the screen. Nice nice.