How I Made This: The Night of the Hunter Illustrated Poster

Every one of my posters begins with the source material. It was the summer of 2022 and I was on Criterion looking for my next great watch. I love Guillermo Del Toro and had stumbled upon a quick talk with him speaking on his favorite films. He mentioned The Spirit of the Beehive (which I’d just watched and loved) and The Night of the Hunter. The Criterion editors showed cinematic clips of the thriller and I was hooked. I watched the film and was never the same. Just like Del Toro, I was mesmerized by so many shots that held depth, weight, symbolism and eeriness that felt advanced for its time.

The first shot that scared my pants off. Was this really made in 1955?

Further into the film, the orphaned children are running from the fiendish Reverend, played, of course, by Robert Mitchum. During this creepy escape, the children are rowing away from the Reverend and Laughton frames the scene so that the children look like they are entering a spider’s web. I knew I had a visual I wanted to pursue. Not only was it a perfect point of high tension, I also knew that huntsmen spiders are a large, carnivorous species of spider that would serve to deliver both creepy atmosphere and dynamic shapes. The spider, in this case, would be the Reverend’s tattooed hands.

The iconic and intense escape scene.

The Illustration

I began with a sketch, just plotting everything out. I thought about where the hands would go, where the kids would go, and where the text would go. I really wanted to see what it would look like with the web as the text, and so that was a bit part of sketching it out to see if it would work together on paper as well as I’d envisioned it.

A dinky sketch, but it had to be done!

If there are two things I love drawing, they are hands and foliage. I didn’t go crazy here getting all the details perfect (that is not what I do in my sketches). I save the best for the pencil drawings. After rewatching the scene, I noticed it didn’t really matter what foliage I chose, so long as the scale would convey that the boat and children were smaller, like insects trapped in the web. The hands, I knew had to be large and dominant to match the boogie man’s in the film. In this sketch phase, I played a little with the creepiness of the hands—should they be menacing and realistic or flowy and uncanny? In the next stage, the pencil phase, that’s where I decided on the former rather than the latter.

A video of the detailed preliminary sketch I did for The Night of the Hunter.

Since I knew the titles would be the most important part, I began from the center of the piece (on 18”x24” cold-pressed paper). I placed the center of the web in the center of the paper and began free-flow drawing potential letter placement with a light pencil stroke. Then I moved onto the hands, followed by the children in the boat. The foliage was the very last part that I drew and I opted for ferns because they’re beautiful, make for great coverage, and I love them.

The breath-holding line work begins.

I knew the challenge of this piece would be making the lettering legible, so I had to outline the broader parts of the text first. I also wanted to be free enough later on to fill in with matte black India ink so I outlined with a staedtler pen (probably .01) and using thicker pens to fill any small parts. I made a decision to add stars, too.

After the line work comes the watercolor. Watercolor is a lot more forgiving; you can layer on and take off as needed. I achieved really great shadows on the hands and then moved onto the rest of the piece.

Tattoos are done in pen, while the hands were painted in watercolor washes

Background was done in careful India ink washes with a watercolor brush.

Some days I would feel like really going in on the black background, while others felt like a watercolor day. I chipped away at the piece like this for the better part of two months. In the final stage (Photoshop), I punched up the white web lettering, thickening it as needed, and added Charles Laughton’s credits.

The final poster in all her glory.

I truly love this piece. Whenever I look at it, I still see the elements I love to draw—the hands and foliage. I think it really shows in the amount of depth I was able to bring to both with just watercolor.

The Night of the Hunter Illustrated Film Poster is available for purchase here. Sold out? Email me!