Popeye Smug
watercolor on 9×12” paper
I spent almost a complete day trying to figure out a Popeye painting so I figured I’d post all of my sketches from the morning, and go through what I wanted to do and talk about how I had to settle for something flatter.
So this originally came up as a thought for Long Beach Art League’s ‘Mysteries of the Sea’ exhibit. I was just going to try to paint some waves, but a Popeye song from the Altman movie came on my random liked songs and I was inspired to do some Popeye.
Now the way I originally pictured it was a kraken(?) or a giant octopus holding Popeye, Olive Oyl, Bluto, and a can of spinach. The can of spinach would be crushed open, and spinach falling into Popeye’s mouth.
I had a really hard time getting everything fit onto a 9×12 and just couldn’t really juggle the perspective, depth, and storytelling I wanted in the 12~ hours I had to finish this.
Here are screenshots of all the references I was using for perspectives, or just character re-design.
I also wanted to do a Mike Mignola coloring/lighting but it was too complicated to do in the time I had.
I looked up Doc Oct, and x-men Sentinel fights looking for tentacles that were grabbing humans but I couldn’t really find anything.
I really liked the perspective of that Spiderman/Doc Oc fight above the city and I tried recreating it but it wasn’t really working. I knew I wanted everyone’s face toward the viewer. I just didn’t have the time the put everything together the way I wanted. I showed all of my sketches to my wife, and she liked the one with Popeye standing in front of a picture. I was just going to use the little sketch but it doesn’t read well.
I decided to just go for it and what came about came together in about 45 minutes. Then I mounted it to a cradle and framed it and let it dry over night before delivering it for exhibition on Saturday morning.
‘Popeye Smug’ hanging in the Long Beach Public Library
The picture was added behind Popeye because I really wanted to paint Olive Oyl. I then added the window with the Kraken creeping in to give a sort of nod to the original idea.
