I grew up with an older brother who’d become obsessed with animation thanks, in large part, to the work of Ray Harryhausen, the stop-motion animation master who passed away last week at the age of 92. Harryhausen’s influence extended to me, and last week I decided to pay tribute to the man by doing something I hadn’t done much in recent years.

I decided to try a detailed pencil sketch of one of his creations. I had to run around the house to find a good pencil, and I just sketched this on printer paper on a clipboard while staring intently at the computer monitor.

Here’s the scene from the movie that inspired this sketch…

It came out okay. I’m still not happy with part of it, but it’s not bad for my first actual pencil sketch in ages. I scanned it and tried to do a digital painting over it, but they didn’t really improve on the sketch. You can see a couple of tries at painting it after the jump, and you can click all the images to enlarge them. This humble little sketch of The Cyclops from “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad” is my tribute to Ray Harryhausen, who inspired so many artists, animators and dreamers.

Digital oil painting

Digital Impasto