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"I
DUNNO, I'M MAKIN' IT UP AS I GO..."
 By
looking at this page, you can probably guess I'm a big Indiana Jones
nerd... Well, so be it. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK was a great source
of inspiration for me, and two of the artists who did the film's art
campaign -- Drew Struzan and the late, great Richard Amsel -- I've aspired
to emulate. (Struzan is widely reknown for his work on the Indiana Jones,
Star Wars, and Back to the Future series, while Amsel did the campaigns
for THE STING, FLASH GORDON, THE CHAMP, THE SHOOTIST, MURDER ON THE
ORIENT EXPRESS, THE DARK CRYSTAL, MAD MAX III, and countless TV Guide
covers.) As for me, I'm still working on it, though I think I'm improving.
 Fo r
this INDIANA JONES illustration, I'll coin the punchline Harrison Ford
used so well: "I don't know, I'm making it up as I go..."
That was a literal truth with this painting, made over the course of
about three years. I wanted to feature a "poster" design similiar
to that of Drew Struzan's work, but with closeups of the lead characters
and a surrounding montage of events from the movie. I sorted through
a variety of stills, selecting the two portraits of Harrison Ford and
Karen Allen that I thought would be perfect...That is, until I decided
to change my mind.
Here
you can see the original sketch of what
I had planned Indy & Marion to look like. Let me say here that
every good artist should take their time, plan carefully, and try
to have as thorough a sketch of the ENTIRE design as possible... But
I'm not that good an artist. I instead insisted on doing the closeup
portraits FIRST, under the impression that everything would go great
as I went along. Oh well. For Marion, I sketched out and started to
paint an alternate pose, but realized early on that I didn't like
it, and I opted for another photo reference.
 You
can also see the early preparations for Marion as she appeared in the
final painting. I covered the earlier painting with gesso, sketched
in the new face, and placed over a basic coat of acrylic color. From
there, I refine the portrait with more paint as well as colored pencil,
layer after layer. (At this point, I was still set on using the old
pose of Indy as shown...)
A
quite paintful process: covering all the work I had done on Indy's mug
with a layer of gesso. The gesso was sanded, and the new pose was sketched
in. Yet while I liked it much more, it caused another dilemma: it conflicted
with the smaller "montage" characters and scenes on the bottom.
They, too, therefore needed to be re-done.
 And
now the work began to take its completed form. A black border was painted
around the characters, as I wanted to incorporate an ancient-Egyptian
style "frame".
The background
sky was airbrushed in. For the smaller montage of characters, you can
see that the original idea here, too, differed from the final product:
Belloq is in a different pose, Toht has the same pose but is in a different
position, and there was the inclusion of an image from the truck chase.
 The
"Ark" in the background was loosely brushed in, so I could
have an idea as to how the color balance would look in relation to the
characters. But at this point, halfway into the painting, I admitted
to myself how much I hated Indy's pose. I tried to revise it over and
over, but realized that the only way to get it right was to start over,
from scratch.
 I
really wanted to keep the truck chase image, but it proved problematic
in relation to Indy's jacket. I started out on the border "frame"
by using a toothbrush to "flick" on specs of color for implying
stonework. I had also originally planned to include montage elements
on the TOP part of the frame (including a transparent plane flying over
the "red line/world map"), but as the border design became
more and more detailed, I decided not to overdo it.
Easily the
hardest part of the painting for me was the Ark. I spent a good month
on it. Getting the lighting and color right prior to airbrushing drove
me half mad.
  The
fire was NOT my original idea, either -- it was too similiar to what
Struzan did -- but I felt that it would be the best way to "marry"
the montage elements together.
I also wanted
to inject more color -- reds and yellows. This also required my adding
red and yellow highlights to the "stone carvings" on the frame
for a 3-D effect. (One person saw the image on the internet asked me,
"Where did you buy the frame?" So I guess it turned out alright.)
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