A Sassy Conspiracy

Happy belated valentines, folks. Hope you all did something fun ^_^

My darling boyfriend isn’t really into the whole Valentine’s thing but I wanted to make him a valentine anyway since I so rarely get to craft something just for him. The theme of the valentine probably makes more sense if you know us - we dress up as zombies a couple of times a year (zombie walks/halloween/whatever excuse we can find). I thought it would be cute then to do a zombie valentine ^_^  The idea grew into a triptych: the first, a zombie nurse (ala silent hill) to represent me; the middle, a heart; and the last, a zombie boy to represent him. Both zombies are reaching for each other and the heart - it must be love!

These are done on an illustration board - my first time using them, and they’re amazing for inks, I’m really impressed with how vibrant the colours came out, and how much abuse they could take. There are many layers of wash in the background but it didn’t damage the paper fibers in the least. Each measures 4×6″. The drawings are done using ink and brushtip markers and the backgrounds are a combination of inks and acrylic paints. I completed them as a single piece and then cut them at the end, so that the background would flow between the images.

The nurse is pretty self explanatory. What can I say, I love the ladies of Brookhaven Hospital, and its by far my favorite costume ever. I suppose one could argue zombie semantics and say that these are not true zombies (monsters, perhaps?) since they’re just murderous, sexy ghouls who have no need for brains, but whatever. Close enough. I added a blue wash to her skin at the end, which I’m really glad I did. I’m pretty happy with how her bloody hands turned out too. I am not a fan of drawing feet, hands and noses.

While I liked the concept of the heart as the central  image, in my head it came second to the zombie images, not exactly an afterthought, but I didn’t expect it to be as interesting as the other two images. In the end, its by far my favorite image. I’m not sure exactly why, but I really like it. I guess I just like anatomical images. I bought three colours of markers to do this with (sepia, a darkish green and grey) and I think that they really worked well with this drawing. I also love how the little flies look like hearts.

His zombie is wearing the God Save the Queen hat that Kim knit him for his birthday, and his Lucky Jeans. Zombies don’t really seem to be dexterous enough to be able to hold much beyond the body parts they’re consuming, so I couldn’t figure out how to include any juggling equipment into the image, which made it a challenge to make this very rotted zombie identifiable. I’m really pleased that he immediately picked up on both those details. He’s the goriest of the three images and, boy, was that fun to draw! he’s also got the little heart-flies (why do these amuse me so much?).

All three are framed and matted in the same frame.

Hahahah, and here i was thinking he didn’t like v-day but he crafted me up a completely adorable little valentine, too! its seriously cute. Maybe some day he’ll let me share it ;)