GROSS ANATOMY (part 2)

Welcome to the second installment of Gross Anatomy!

This time we'll take a look at the evolution of my recent drawing for notorious Northwest grindcrüe Bung! This image will soon appear as the cover of their brilliantly titled full-length debut cd, Nervegas and Masturbation, on Mainstay Recordings. Great album title aside, these guys were a pleasure to work with! They paid in advance, turned me loose to come up with something sick, and didn't bust my balls when I fell behind schedule. In return, I nearly melted my eyes off to give them something really special for their new recording. Without further ado...

Whoa! What the fuck?? If you look closely, you'll see that this autistic hieroglyphic contains all the compositional elements that will unfold in the final drawing. This visual short-hand will orient me later so I don't get lost in the vortex of the ballpoint. I did some research into nervegas and discovered what nasty effects it has on the central nervous system. I could've gone the accurate route and depicted the violent nausea, diarrhea, and respiratory collapse that characterizes actual phosphoric acid poisoning. But I decided on a more disturbing "venereal horror" assault...

Now I've transfered the basic concept onto illustration board and begun to flesh out the details with pencil. My working title for this drawing is 'Castration Ritual'. I threw the wavy lettering at the bottom just to indicate the psychedelic freak-out vibe I'm going for...

Many hours later and I've really worked over the details and texture. This is a raw scan of the finished art, drawn entirely with ballpoint pen. The original is about 15" X 15" so you can probably imagine how much time went into this. I like the way the monster bursting out of the vaginal chest wound turned out. It's a meticulous and tricky task to keep this kind of detail from turning into a muddy puddle of ballpoint ink, but I think I pulled it off. I ended up using this awesome font from a popular 60's concert poster. The darker color red & black around the edges is watercolor. That is "bleed" that will likely be cropped from the final image once we format it and add the logo. I've found over the years that cheap ballpoint ink tends to turn yellow around the edges of the paper. I suspect it has something to do with the naturally occuring oils on your fingertips. Since this drawing went right to the edges of the paper, I used paint around the border to prevent discoloration. In the end, I'm very pleased with this one! Nervegas & masturbation is the new sodomy & lust!

Click on the images above to get a closer look at the detail!
Until next time...careful with that gun and don't eat the brown acid!