CLINTON HOUSE MUSEUM AQUISITION

Recently my original painting Illuminaries used as DVD cover art for the 2012 documentary film Up Among the Hills was acquired by the historic Clinton House Museum and will soon be on display as part of their permanent collection.  It's an honor to have work showcased in such an historic museum and first home of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, our 42nd president and first lady.  Special thanks to museum director Kate Johnson.  I'll have photos of the permanent exhibit soon.  

Up Among the Hills was narrated by Bill Clinton and directed by Larry Foley.  Prints of downtown Fayetteville used in the film's time-lapse production are also available for purchase in the museum gift shop. For museum hours, admission and location please visit them on the web at clintonhousemuseum.org.

To access past Up Among the Hills related posts check out my BLOG ARCHIVE.  The documentary is available for purchase at AMAZON.  

TRAVEL SKETCHBOOK: GERMANY / AUSTRIA / ENGLAND 

If you happened to notice in my last post featuring a drawing from the silent film London After Midnight, the background isn't London.  I'm really not geographically impaired.  I drew Lon Chaney and then found an old sketch from a trip to Munich, Germany and digitally stitched it into the background.  I've been to London but I didn't have time to render Big Ben or Westminster Abbey at the time so that was my solution.  I fill a lot of sketchbooks with pages like this image on the right.  The travel sketch I used is of an equestrian statue of King Ludwig I in Munich, Germany.  The figure at the top of the sketchbook is an old friend of mine on a train in Austria. 

Be sure to check out some other sketchbook posts from MACEDONIA and GREECE.   

HAPPY HALLOWEEN: MORE CLASSIC HORROR FILM INSPIRED DRAWINGS 

Long before the Stephen Summer's 1999 film The Mummy starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz there was the 1932 film directed by Karl Freund and starring Boris Karloff as a reanimated mummy stalking a woman believed to be his past love interest... reincarnated.  The film was inspired by the Curse of the Pharaohs and the 1922 archaeological discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb led by Howard Carter.  This expedition brought about the modern era of Egyptology as well as Egypt inspired horror.  

Although images of Karloff wrapped in bandages have become iconic in the actual film he only appears in this make-up for only a few minutes.  

Five years after a wealthy man supposedly commits suicide his estate is overrun by ghoulish individuals.  This is the synopsis of the 1927 silent film Lodon After Midnight directed by Tod Browning and starring Lon Chaney and is one of the most sought after of lost films.  The last known copy of the film was destroyed in an MGM vault fire in 1967. Since then reconstructed versions of the film using still photographs have surfaced but the original film in its entirety may be lost forever.   

To access some past Halloween posts, check out my BLOG ARCHIVE.