Here’s a creature slightly off my usual path. Something still in a humorous vein, but creepier. Enjoy!
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Character Designs Monsters Random Doodles Sketchbook
Category: Character Designs
What could possibly terrify a big, burly MONSTER? This is a question I ask myself often when doodling. This past summer I was sitting on the beach in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, when that very thought struck my mind. Together with the inspiration of the location, this sketch of a monster afraid of the water just emerged!
Well, it started as a sketch – today’s dose of monster was really just an ink sketch in my sketchbook drawn on the East coast, then it was colored here in California turning it into a genuine illustration. So, this piece is truly bi-coastal! Originally I was just going to splash some color on it in Photoshop, but as you can see, it blossomed into a full-fledged digital painting. Enjoy!
And if you happen to see any monsters on the beach, just know that they aren’t there to cause any trouble. They just want to have fun in the sand and surf, too!
This happy guy just popped out of a random doodling session in my sketchbook. So, I inked him, scanned him, and colored him in Photoshop so he could live on in his orangey badness.
Ever wonder what a short order cook in a monster world might look like? Whatever you do, DO NOT order the hash.
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Today’s monster of the day is a little dinosaur taken right from my sketchbook. I thought I’d leave some of the other miscellaneous critters around him so you can get a sense of what a page in my sketchbook might contain. Usually it’s where I get out a lot of bad drawings hoping to nail that one good one. This little guy just kind of leapt off the page.
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“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
– Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
A few months ago in a mental stupor, I was channel surfing the television. When my remote landed on an episode of America’s Got Talent, this fella happened to be on screen. He was an older gentleman, perhaps in his 70s, that just started wiggin’ out to disco music. He was truly a sight to behold, particularly with an I-can’t-believe-it expression on my face – not because he was the best disco dancer to ever boogie, mind you, but because he was a spectacle. After his segment was over, I instantly grabbed my sketchbook and did this drawing of the fella from memory.
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A few weeks back, my friend Allison Garwood (known to online comics fans as “Big Al, the gal”) experienced something that, as an artist, I fear all the time. She hurt her drawing hand. Something about torn ligaments. Not pretty. What does this mean to an artist? It means you have lost your ability to hold and control a pencil. That’s right, instantly you lose your opportunity to draw anything. This is never good when you have deadlines. Most of us do NOT have our hands insured by Lloyds of London, so we’re up a creek without a paddle. Come to think of it, if we had the paddle, we couldn’t hold it anyway.
Al is a cartoonist with a regular deadline. She started a web comic with GoComics.com not too long ago called “Haiku Ewe”, and she has built up a decent readership in that time. You don’t want to penalize the audience in a situation like this, so what does she do? She A. holds a contest for readers to submit to win a chance to draw the strip. (It’s the old “Tom Sawyer whitewashing a fence” ploy), and B. she invites her friends to help her out. I fall into the latter category.
So, I have stepped in to draw “Haiku Ewe” for a week. My five days of comics will run on July 20-24. I do have them done already, but I’ll slowly show you snippets here and there leading up to their debut on GoComics.com.
So, my first snippet for you – character sketches. I did a few doodles of her lamb in my own style just to get a little feel for how to approach the character. I hope you like them.
As I said, in the coming days leading up to my July 20-24 run, I’ll show you some of my “Haiku Ewe” artwork in various stages of the process. In the meantime, if you’d like to see Big Al’s “Haiku Ewe” comics as she regularly creates them, please CLICK HERE. Her concept is to write a fun haiku poem, and then she illustrates it with her lamb character.
The other day as I sat at my desk, I had the inspiration to doodle another Frankenstein head. True, I explored a few approaches to this character which I chronicled in detail here on this blog, but the possibilities are endless, and my fascination continues. Frankie just couldn’t be contained.
So I grabbed some scrap paper, and with a brown ink line and some quick, well-placed brush strokes of watercolor paint, this little guy has come to life!