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So a while back I posted the first “work in progress” for the Al Swearengen picture I’ve been working on.

Truthfully, I haven’t really been working on it at all. The first WIP I posted was over a month ago and I think I’ve maybe worked on it for a total of fifteen minutes since then. Then today I was feeling pretty lazy so I put on the commentary track for Hostel Part 2 and started working on it again.

I ended up doing what I originally planned to do before, which is starting off with the really dark pencils (a 5B) and using that almost exclusively. I’ve only used a 2B on a few little places (his eyelashes, some of the hair in his sideburns) because it’s got a finer tip (mechanical pencil) and I could get a little tighter with the details.

There’s still a fair bit left to do. Lots of blending and detail work. Mostly what I’ve got here is I’ve laid down most of my dark areas and started blending them out to create gradients, and then I’ve added a few different layers of lines for the hair and blended them all together and then added more and blended those until I’ve got a decent amount of different levels of shadows and things. Then I started in with the eraser and picked out highlights and stray hairs and things. I’ve been (trying at least) working mostly left to right, but I got caught up in working on his forehead and nose when there’s still a lot left to do on the left side.

Not to mention that damned pinstripe suit that I’ve been pretending that I’m not going to have to do. It’s going to be a serious challenge.

One thing that’s kind of cool is that because I’ve been working so dark, I didn’t do anything to the picture in photoshop. Usually the finished result is much lighter looking (I guess because it’s pencil rather than like, charcoal or pastel or something) than I’d like, so I usually dick around with the levels in photoshop and darken it up. It always looks better that way. But this time, I just scanned it, pasted the two halves together (the pictures are usually bigger than my scanner and I’ve got to scan them in sections) and save it. So the picture here is a pretty acurate representation of the actual piece, which makes me feel better and less like a phony.

If you’re interested, just for comparisons sake, here’s what it would look like if I’d adjusted the levels and made it black and white it in photoshop.

It does look a little better that way, but I’m digging the fact that I don’t need to do that this time.

So I’ve finally gotten around to starting that Al Swearengen picture I talked about forever ago.

So far it’s just the basic outline. Next comes filling in the darker areas on the left side. I usually stick pretty much exclusively with the 2B mechanical pencil and then go in later and do a few darker spots with a 6B or something. But I think this time I’m actually going to start right in with the darker stuff and then work my way lighter. It’s worth a shot.

here’s the source image:

Dicking around in photoshop…

and sans-silly photoshop filters…

So I was thinking about it…

I could make a Stand movie almost exclusively using the cast of Deadwood. I totally could.

The main question to tackle would be who would I get to play Flagg… Ian McShane or Powers Booth?

They’d both be great for different reasons. They’re both intimidating as hell. They’re both funny, in a kind of scary way, not sure if you should be laughing with him or not sort of way. Powers Booth has that kind of classic southern badass quality to him that sometimes seems appropriate for Flagg. Ian McShane has a kind of almost unhuman evil and creepy look to him that is also quite appropriate. Powers Booth has a voice that could rip the sky apart if used correctly. Ian McShane has eyes that could stare at you and send you screaming, insane off into the desert. They both look good in boots.

I’d probably have to go with Ian.

Keith Carradine (Wild Bill) would have to play Stu Redman. Brad Dourif (Doc Cochran)  would be the only choice for Lloyd, Flagg’s right hand man. Tim Olyphant (Seth) would play Larry Underwood. Molly Parker (Alma Garret) would play Franie Goldsmith. William Sanderson (E.B. Farnum) would play The Trashcan Man. Gerald McRaney (George Hearst) would play that judge. Brian Cox could play Glen Bateman. Sarah Paulson (the chick that played Alma’s badass backstabbing assistant) would play Nadine Cross. Robin Weigert (Calamity Jane) would have to play that lesbian chick, Dayna, who impaled herself on a broken window in Flagg’s office. W. Earl Brown (Dan) would play Tom Cullen. John Hawkes (Sol Star) would play Nick Andros.

There’s still no one for Mother Abigail and Harold Lauder… mostly because there aren’t any wicked old black chicks or young teenage boys on Deadwood to my knowledge. And I still haven’t used Powers Booth or Paula Malcomson (Trixie) or Kim Dickens (Joanie Stubbs)

But yeah, it could almost be done. I think I covered the major characters.

Oh… btw, I’m back from Disneyland.

Yeah, so remember a while back when I was trying to figure out how Iambic Pentameter worked? I was (still am really) fascinated with the dialog on Deadwood, and apparently much of it is written this way.

I think I’ve got basically the idea… It’s taken a few weeks, or even months.

So I went to work on my dialog. I got almost a page in and stopped it. I was like “FUCK THIS SHIT!” and then closed it.

Fuck that. It’s fucking harder than I thought!

It’s like tying a knot in my pecker! It’s like punching myself in the nut sack!

So no more iambic pentameter.

All of my dialog sounded like this:

“Eat hearty, for tonight we dine IN HELL!”

In other words, it came across as gay.

Deadwood can do it, I fucking can not.