GRAPHIC VIOLENCE: ARTIST SEAN PRYOR ON ILLUSTRATING SLIPKNOT

When I got the word from design director Josh about needing an image for Revolver’s reviews section, the first thing I did was to think of a good composition, so I sat down and began to very roughly sketch out some thumbnails for the piece.

STEP 1 : THUMBNAILS
One thing I had to keep in mind while working out what went where was what Josh wanted, which was the band (Slipknot) disemboweling somebody in an environment that resonated with the movie Hostel. You know, gore, gore, gore, something I had no qualms about doing. The purpose of the thumbnail sketches were to be able to get a feel for the space given and what I could do with it, so as I said before, they’re so crude that a majority of the time they’re not legible. I showed the sketches to Josh, since I had two (I always feel it to be a wise idea to come up with an alternative idea for the image, just in case the first idea doesn’t fly), the other (see below, bottom) being Slipknot doing a sacrifice ritual in the circular logo that they have. He decided to go with the Hostel-type design. Once that was out of the way, I could get started on the piece itself.

STEP 2: RESEARCH
Since I don’t really follow Slipknot, I had to do more research than usual to be able to invoke the concepts that drive the band to the best of my ability. Along with getting the pictures of the band in their new threads and masks from Josh, I also looked up the circle that they have for one of their logos. It was one of the main aspects of the thumbnail sketch that wasn’t accepted, so I still wanted to have it in the final art. I then found some photos from the first Hostel film, as well as renting the second one, to get an idea of the type of atmosphere in the movie. Along with visual reference I was also able to listen to Slipknot’s single, “All Hope Is Gone,” off the new album of the same name. In the chorus, one of the lines goes, “We have seen the fall of the elite,” so I figured it would be an interesting idea to have the person that the band is disemboweling actually be a member of the elite class of this society. Since that is a topic that piques my curiosity anyways, I figured that the best candidate for slaughter would be David Rockefeller, so I found some photos of him as well. As Revolver artist “Ghoulish” Gary said in the last blog, Google really is your friend.

STEP 3: PENCILS
Once I was finished with researching, I got straight into putting pencil to paper. What I usually do is replicate the composition of the thumbnail on Bristol board with pencil. I start out by making sure the shapes of the figures, as well as the shapes of the setting, fit coherently in the dimensions of the picture. This step was especially important for this piece, since there are nine guys in the band, as well as Rockefeller on the table. Once that was finished, I fleshed out the figures by drawing in the shapes that make up the human body (head, chest, shoulders, etc.). I also always make sure to get the perspective points in the picture (i.e. the way the bricks are drawn and how the table is viewed at eye level). Once those aspects of the drawing are finished, I go in and draw the masks and the clothing and gore, tightening the line work so that the inking process won’t take as much time. I added the circle logo that the band has in the background to give it more of a ritualistic feel, to make it look like they were sacrificing the elite for the sake of hope. I also carefully placed where the blacks of the shadows are going to be, since the use/lack of black in a piece more often then not has an effect on the atmosphere of the art.

STEP 4: INKS
Inking the art is one of my favorite parts of making illustrations. I almost always ink with a small watercolor brush, usually a No. 2 brush. I keep two brushes handy, one for the inks and one for the pro-white. Pro-white is like white-out but for India Ink, a very useful tool for mess-ups. Although there isn’t as much constructing in the inking process, I usually have to put a lot of focus and concentration into it to make sure that the weight and contour of the lines is exactly what I want it to be. With inks, I finalize the textures of parts of the piece, whether it is the wood on the table or the leather on Clown’s mask.

STEP 5: COLORS
Like Gary, I use a Wacom Intuos Tablet to color most of my illustrations. It truly is an amazing piece of technology and I highly recommend it to any artist who works on the computer. What I do is scan the inks, open the file in Photoshop, and use a tool called Levels in Photoshop to make the black and white of the image starker and get rid of all the excess pencil marks. Once that’s done, I lay down large blocks of color so I can get an idea of what colors will go where and what colors will bounce off each other well or work well together. After I have a flat color on everything in the piece of art, I go in and start adding detail. For this piece specifically I experimented with a lot of color textures for the masks, the bricks on the wall, the wood in the table, and the gore, to give it a grimy feel. I spent a lot of time on the gore, since I felt the best way to show all the gore was in vivid color. I wanted to make the wall look really grimy, too, so I put a lot of stains and rocky texture in it, to give it the feel of being in a sacrificial dungeon. Once the colors were done, I saved it and sent it on its way to Josh, and we all lived happily ever after.

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to read this. See you in the Twilight Zone!
Sean