Bill Murray as Peter Venkman

This drawing has been a long time coming. Back when I had done the drawing of Ray from “Ghostbusters,” I had wanted to also do this scene from the film. It’s when Bill Murray as Peter Venkman gets attacked by the ghost of Slimer. Iconic! I finally decided it was time to give it a shot and it was a fun project to say the least. Definitely happy to work on this one and get it done. I had started it the evening of October 23rd, 2009 and worked on it for about eight or so separate evenings, around two to four hours each session.

This drawing was done with the usual grades of pencil on a piece of Bristol board paper. I used 4H to lay it out and then stuff like 3H, H, HB, 2B, 3B, 4B, 5B and 6B. Finally, I used my preferred Ebony Jet Black pencil to get the blacks blacker — especially with the gloves. It was completed the morning of November 24, 2009.

Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey

Whew! This was a project. I started drawing this particular one on June 23, 2006. I worked on it a bit every few nights (I took progress shots with my cell phone camera. I may try to get those up on here sometime), but ultimately lost the drive and urge to finish it about a month later. Around December, I decided to try to finish it in time to give to Amy for Christmas. I’d begun drawing it with the goal of filling a void on our bedroom wall where a 16×20 photo from our wedding hung on one side of the room and nothing was in that spot on the other side. This drawing ended up being bigger than usual – 14×17 to be exact (which is frustrating because they don’t make 14×17 frames OR 16×20 frames matted to 14×17).

As I drew this, it became more and more clear I was running out of reference and not paper, so I sought out other shots from this scene from Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (one of my favorite “edited” movies from Clean Films, and oddly enough, the scene this photo is from is not in the version I watch… I guess because it looks like she’s just in her bra here or something? Not really sure), and basically used some artistic license to fill in portions of the left and bottom of the drawing. I ended up filling the page, only to be able to find an 11×14 mat for a 16×20 frame on Christmas Eve when I had finally finished the picture the night before (Ironically, December 23). I gave it to Amy that night and found a local place to cut the mat wider a few days later. Anyway, the inspiration for drawing them came after watching the film again and just really feeling for the characters. It’s a great film about relationships and this has definitely quickly become one of my favorite drawings (although it kind of bugs me how light this looks in comparison to some other drawings).

Dan Aykroyd as Ray Stantz

“Venkman! Venkmaaaaan!”

This portrait of Dan Akroyd from his role as Ray Stanz in Ghostbusters marked my return to portraits in 2004. It’s the first finished drawing I started probably since the Jim Caviezel sketch. While some drawings rested unfinished in a pad somewhere (including Harpo Marx, which thankfully I finished in 2005 and Harrison Ford as Han Solo from Star Wars…….. which I still haven’t finished!), it felt good to get this one finished.

I used a wide variety of pencils for this one, like the others, and used regular acid-free drawing paper. Oh, and for the record: Smoking isn’t cool. This is just a classic shot of Ray from the movie and the photo inspired me to replicate it.

The only memory I have of drawing this one was actually when I visited my old college NCC one night with a college friend of mine who had been taking classes there, but had broken their foot or something and needed a ride to the library. I just sat and worked on the Ray drawing while they did research. Funny the weird random things we remember…

Jim Carrey as ‘The Grinch’ (Colored Pencil)

I started this colored pencil drawing of Jim Carrey as The Grinch (2000) during my last semester of college at Northampton Community College in 2000. I remember often just sitting in the school’s cafeteria working on it. I found it a challenge to try to capture the color of the real image from the movie using just colored pencils. I’d done some realistic drawings with colored pencil before – mainly for college – but nothing like this. I’d finished most of the drawing by the end of the year or in early 2001, but I never finished the background. It wasn’t until I relocated it in early 2004 that I actually took a couple pencils to the background, finished it, and cropped the image. So, although this should have made it to this site much sooner than it did, here’s The Grinch…

Colored pencil was a fun medium to use here, but certainly much more challenging than regular pencil. I like the outcome here a lot, too. I started a drawing in colored pencil of Scrat from the movie “Ice Age” years ago that I just simply never finished.

Mark Ruffalo and Reese Witherspoon

For Christmas, 2004, I drew that picture from “Serendipity” for my wife Amy as one of her gifts. I was honestly shocked at how much she loved it. When I asked her why she liked that picture over others I’d done for her in the past, it was because I’d captured such a happy moment. When I realized that, despite drawing two scenes before from movies she absolutely loved, I’d naively picked two serious moments from them (and they were “Titanic” and “City Of Angels” to make matters worse).

On November 15, 2005, in the middle of the night while she was working her usual graveyard shift at the hospital, I searched through some stills online from romantic films we’d seen till I selected this one from “Just Like Heaven.” While this moment in the film is a bittersweet moment, I’d hoped she would connect with it and feel it’s a warm image like the one I’d done for her before. I started the drawing around 3 AM and worked on it on and off for weeks up until December 23rd when I reluctantly decided it was done [enough]. So here you have it! The finished product is 9 x 12, drawn in varying degrees of graphite pencils on bristol board paper.

Kate Winslet… and Lloyd

This used to be one of my all-time favorite portrait drawings — mainly because it’s something different than anything I’d done before and I liked the outcome (which is rare). I just love the fact that Lloyd is just hanging out in the same “world” as us. By the way, that isn’t wine he’s holding. If you look closely, the bottle in his right hand is actually a 2 liter of Mountain Dew (only the best for Lloyd). I drew this picture of Kate Winslet in the Fall of 1998 riding off the Titanic phase that everyone, including myself, went through. I mainly just drew it for fun and for the uniqueness of it. As many of the others, I drew this one using Ebony pencil and various other weights of pencils.

I still kinda get a kick out of this drawing. I’ve never blended realism and cartoons quite like this again (should I?), but it was fun to do. I did, however, do a sketch of my wife Amy while we were dating, where she was kissing Lloyd on the cheek. It wasn’t quite a caricature of her, but it wasn’t as detailed as Kate is here either. Hmm…. maybe I should experiment with this more just for fun…

Leonardo DiCaprio (Pencil)

There were many reasons, originally, for a second Leonardo DiCaprio drawing. Although I don’t care for him much now, at the time, it sounded great for a… “sequel.” The first Leo drawing, the one I did for my cousin, was distributed to probably over 100 people and further. However, when I scanned it, my name on the sketch did not fit on the scanned image and I didn’t think much of it because I was only originally giving it to my aunt. Well, it was distributed locally in high school in Nazareth, PA and I signed each copy. But my mom’s aunt, who’s a teacher, had distributed copies all over Tom’s River, NJ. It wasn’t too much later that I learned that there were copies on a school library desk in Ohio! So, since my name is not on it and you never know who’s hands it may land into, I drew another, hopefully better, portrait of the ladies’ favorite, Mr. DiCaprio.

The second time around I used pencil, with the darks being done using an Ebony pencil. The lights were achieved with mostly a 2H, & the rest just a typical pencil.

Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack (Serendipity)

This shot is a scene from the 2001 film Serendipity in which Kate Beckinsale’s character (Sara) had been ice skating with John Cusack’s character (Jonathan) and when they both fall, they retreat to a park bench. As a result of the fall, Sara acquires a scrape on her arm which Jonathan applies a bandaid to and proceeds to tell her about a star constellation he finds in the freckles on her arm (and “connects the dots,” so to speak — which explains the pen he’s holding here in the photo). I started this picture somewhere around November or maybe even October, 2004 as a Christmas gift for my wife, Amy. At first, I wasn’t happy with it and intended to either scrap it altogether or finish it for Valentine’s Day. But I picked it back up shortly before Christmas and decided to finish it, but now had barely enough time to get it done. In the early hours of Christmas Eve, I sat down and watched Elf and Santa Clause 2 as I worked on it until I finally finished it at 6:23 AM on Christmas Eve morning. And as an example of my inability to accept any picture as truly being finished, I picked it back up hours before giving it to her on Christmas Eve (as I was framing it) and tried to rework some of it.

Tommy Lee Jones

This picture of Tommy Lee Jones originated in my “infamous” sketch book which became home to all of my high school portrait drawings. This one was made using only pencil, however, I used different shades, of course. But since Tommy Lee Jones has been one of my favorite actors for years, I just had to do a portrait of him. The source photo was found on the official website for 1998′s U.S. Marshals, for which he had the lead role.

Jackie Chan

After movies like Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon, Jackie Chan secured himself as one of my favorite actors. I’ve always liked his characters because he manages to be funny and amaze with his martial arts abilities. This drawing began as a doodle during my Contemporary Biology class in the Fall 2000 semester at Northampton Community College (my final semester there). Not my best, nor one of my favorites, it’s here cause some people like it. Oh well. This drawing is based on Jackie’s image on the Shanghai Noon movie poster