Wednesday 16 April 2014

King Kong

After confusion (see last post) of trying to sort my ideas out, I decided to give my brain a rest and do something completely different, on the side, just for fun. It came to me in the shower, like a flash.

KING KONG. Oh sure, it's been done before, but not MY King Kong. (The 1930s film, not the 70s or 2000s remakes, clearly.)

I love the film. Who doesn't?

When I finished this in the screenprinting workshop, everyone was a bit 'meh'. But I think they thought I'd copied the image from somewhere. I didn't copy it, I made it from scratch. It went through this laborious process, a mix of drawing, photocopying, and very basic photo software trickery, detailed here for your pleasure...


Here he is, from the 1933 film. He looks rather scary. I know it was a kind of horror film, but it doesn't really do justice to the pathos of character.

(Can I take a moment to say, biplanes, giant gorillas, Empire State Building, New York skyline, half naked fainting woman - they knew how to construct a killer scene back in 1933.)

Fay Wray. I think this was the actress' name, I forget the character. Wasn't she gorgeous?

I drew Fay.

I drew the Empire State building from a photo on the internet.

 I drew a gorilla climbing a tree, from a photo on the internet.
I put them altogether, by a cunning combination of scissors and computer software.


I inked them in, (as demonstrated by Le Gun artistes, who draw then ink their work. I like working with brush and ink.)

At the screenprinting workshops, we exposed our images onto screens with photo sensitive emulsion and then printed them on fabric.

And voila... the mighty King Kong, on fabric.




Fay got lost on the bag.  My excuse is, I'm not very good at this.

 Printed him a bit too low on the tshirt. Never mind, it was a first effort.







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