Despite wanting to put pencil to paper, it’s been a few weeks since I’ve drawn anything. I’ts been on my mind, but life/work has been busier than usual lately, so I haven’t had much of a chance. In the interim, I was able to finish up a subscriber thank you post and one on website stats, but I was traveling and didn’t have any art supplies with me. I really felt like I was on a roll in March, so I was worried I might have lost some of that progress. I wanted to get a sort of “warm up” sketch going… but what to draw?
Lately, I’ve been seeing commercials/commentary about an Andre the Giant documentary. Growing up, I only knew a bit about his wrestling career. But, I was a huge fan of his character in the Princess Bride. I first saw Princess Bride as a kid, and have probably seen it about 500 times since. Anyway, this Andre the Giant documentary naturally got me thinking about the Princess Bride again. I watched a few YouTube interviews about Andre; many of the actors seemed to regard him as one of the kindest people they’d ever met. I also watched the movie again, and tried to read the book, which I couldn’t get into. The book was too different from the movie, which has that special brand of perfection shaped from childhood memories.
Well, what better subject for a sketch? My favorite characters in the movie were Fezzik and Inigo, two of the kidnappers and most memorable characters (impressive feat, considering the movie is pretty much all memorable characters). There are so many memorable lines, but I always got a kick out of Fezzik and Ingo rhyming on the boat:
I decided to go with something from that scene. I think it turned out decently, although it’s no masterpiece. Fezzik looks pretty much like Andre the Giant, and Inigo Montoya looks basically like Mandy Patinkin; not exact interpretations, but close enough to be recognizable. You’ll notice in this drawing, I actually made an attempt at some scenery! I was feeling bold as I got into it…but once I started coloring in the water, I panicked. It was sort of funny in hindsight. My brain was screaming, “OH NO, STOP, ABANDON SHIP, IT’S NOT WORKING OUT!” So yeah, I completely chickened out.
I actually remembered to take a bunch of progression photos as I went through this drawing. I think it might be a record number; I took pictures at eight different stages! So, this progression .gif (below) is probably one of the more effective ones. In the early sketches, you can see the outlines of Fezzik and Inigo; Ingo was a more confident and detailed outline, so I thought it would turn out the best. I felt like Fezzik was too simple at first, and didn’t know if he would work out. But, I think the final result ended up with Fezzik looking a bit better. Strange how it flipped (from my perspective, anyway)! Fezzik looks solid, but Inigo looks a little off.
That’s all for this sketch! Next on deck will be the “subscriber thanks giveaway” I mentioned a couple weeks ago. I’ve been procrastinating on that one for a couple reasons; first, I originally had it in mind as a thank you milestone at 300 subscribers, but I’m still not quite there (292 today). But second, the entry process isn’t as easy as I’d hoped. I’m going to use Gleam (probably) because it’s popular, but I wanted something that would automatically detect if you’re a subscriber…I haven’t found that functionality anywhere.
So, that will be coming soon – hope to see you then!
Note on the .gifs: I wish I could credit the originator(s), but I have no clue where I got them. Normally, I like to do that…but sometimes I just can’t remember. Sorry! I’ll just credit Rob Reiner and William Goldman I guess.