'When Marion met Norman'
I love horror movies, and Halloween is the perfect time to watch a good shocker. This inspired me to do this drawing, taken from unconnected stills from the classic Hitchcock movie 'Psycho' (1960). This is still one of my favourite movies, and remains genuinely disturbing, especially the last few minutes when the audience can hear the mad thoughts of Norman Bates. I don't really think I've captured Janet Leigh at all but Anthony Perkins is just about recognisable. I used two stills from the film, which was conveniently made in black and white with plenty of good strong contrasts. I used carbon pencil for the background, applied with a brush as carbon dust then blended with a tissue, the figures are all in graphite pencil. This was well out of my comfort zone as I don't normally do people, let alone people who are supposed to be recognisable. But it was quite enjoyable to do and I'm really liking the moody effect you can achieve with carbon pencil
For those who might be interested (but why would you be?) - in the original Robert Bloch novel of 'Psycho', Marion was named Mary and Norman was a fat older man with glasses. A bit of useless information for Halloween...
1 comment:
I recognized this pair right away. You really do a credible job at recreating likenesses here. If you like horror flicks, I stumbled on an 1949 black and white film called Queen of Spades. The shots are all dramatically lit, and I thought as I watched it that many would make great paintings.
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