In the early 1970's I was doing more work out of New York through my reps Neeley Mulvey Associates. Randy Mulvey sent me this great assignment, 35 illustrations for a Dracula story. I had done a few Dracula paperback book covers and had drawn a series of sample illustrations depicting Edgar Rice Burrough's stories which probably had a lot to do with Randy landing this assignment. It pays to do samples ! The book that the assignment was for was titled GREAT TALES OF HORROR AND SUSPENSE and was published by Galahad Books. Assignments like these were a welcome relief from the advertising work which usually were done under great pressure of tight deadlines. Of course, these particular illustrations had to be worked on between my regular advertising assignments, so there still was a certain amount of pressure involved. Pressure comes from all directions, not only deadlines but the pressure you put on yourself to try to do a great illustration.
These illustrations were ink line drawings with a color overlay. Above is the ink drawing and below is the drawing with the blue color overlay as it appeared in print. I shot reference photos in a local cemetery for this particular drawing.
This series of ink drawings were great fun to do. I rendered them using a crowquill pen and a brush using India ink on whatman hot-pressed illustration board
For models I used my illustrator friend Lou Perkowski for Dracula, just as I had done on the paperback Dracula book covers. I also used my wife Jeanne as well as some of my students from the art school where I was teaching.
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