ERNEST SCARED STUPID

CLIENT: PRIVATE COMMISSION

"How 'bout a bumper sandwich, Boogerlips?" - Ernest P. Worrell

NOT FOR SALE

I always thought I was alone in being a huge fan of the Ernest movies. 
Maybe more so the character of Ernest and maybe even more so mainly Ernest Scared Stupid. Everyone I ever met couldnt care less about it/him, it seemed or just werent familiar at all. I laugh at every single thing he ever says to a debilitating degree. Jim Varney was a treasure. 

So when the opportunity arose to make a poster for one of my (still) all-time favorite childhood Halloween films I couldnt turn it down. A movie of this caliber would surely not see any kind of poster any time soon - if at all - and I wanted to be the one to tackle it. This poster has been in the works on and off for over a year, kind of working on it when I could kind of thing and I think it came together great in the end...needed the time. The concept isnt ground breaking by any means but I felt this poster was going to hold water all in how it was rendered.

I approached illustrating this poster a bit differently than anything else. This is a children's movie (albeit a quite terrifying one) from the 90s and I wanted to make it feel a little more surreal and exagerrated and fun. I did this entire poster in a digital painterly style using mostly brushes and very, very minimal keylines to keep things round, smooth and create more depth. I exagerrated forms and sought out a color palette I could see on a poster from that era. 

This was a huge learning curve for me as far as my tecnique goes. I've been finding myself slowly veering away from flat color and black keylines as of late and really enjoying the freedom and relaxed feeling that comes with playing with a more soft, painterly style. They're much more loose and forgiving. This approach is relatively new to me (other than a handful of pieces I painted in high school) and involved some trial and error which when working digitally, is quite merciful on your fuck ups. I also always held back on working with dithers in screenprinting for fear of poor printed results, really. Now that Ive become more comfortable working in dither/dissolve, I'm really enjoying this path and kind of throwing all caution to wind.

Couldnt be happier with how this came out. I feel like a kid when I look at it. This feels like something I would stare at in a Jumbo Video in the early 90's with my complimentary popcorn.

RIP Jim Varney. Thanks for all the laughs.

24"x36" SCREEN PRINT
W/ GLOW-IN-THE-DARK INKS
PRIVATE COMMISSION