Art by Eli Lobo

Leroux's Erik

1 October 2024

On September 14, 2024, I became obsessed with The Phantom of the Opera. A few days after watching the 2004 movie I listened to Tony Walker's reading of the 1911 De Mattos translation of the novel by Gaston Leroux. After that, I really wanted to try drawing the Erik from the book. I gave him a red cape instead of a black cape because I didn't want to overuse the black, and I think he likes red. The red cape and the clawed hands are from the 1988 cartoon, and the red signature is from the 1925 silent film. I actually used this awesome cosplay by Sylent-Fantome as a reference for his face. If it wasn't already obvious, I'm hopelessly in love with Erik. Here is the sketch. Now that I have seen a lot more illustrations of Erik, I'm probably going to redraw him another time. I love Greg Hildebrandt's illustrations, and his Red Death was actually what initially sparked my interest in all this when I first saw it a year or two ago. Fun fact: I botched my own signature on this.