A community undertaking where elementary students draw monsters and artists from around the world recreate them in their own style. These new versions are presented back to the kids in the hope that it encourages them to see where their imaginations and collaborations can lead them. It's such a wonderful project and I'm honored to have been a part of it this year.

The big reveal of 134 monster images happened today, August 5, 2019. Check out all the amazing contributions at The Monster Project and please consider supporting it by purchasing a book.

Below is my contribution and progression along with my chosen student’s work that inspired it all.

I tried my best to be faithful to the original drawing and colours. When I saw the speech bubble, I felt it might work well looking like it belonged in a comic book. This young artist sure has a great imagination! I hope she continues to create and come up with fantastic stories.

Update: I've been told that my artwork has been selected to be included in the 2019 Monster Project Art Book. With the amount of submissions, there were no guarantees so this was a nice surprise. I’m very much looking forward to receiving my copy.

It's been a while since I've posted something and so I thought I would share some closeups of a digital painting that I've been working on, both on and off during my moments of freedom between work and errands for the last few weeks. After watching the movie, Avatar - gorgeous movie, by the way - I was inspired to drop my study of anatomy and lighting for a while to do a piece just for fun! Little did I know that this would become a frustrating yet educational journey into exactly what I planned to avoid: anatomy of a creature (fashioned after a mix of animals) and an elf; and lighting (low light source, argh!). To make it unknowingly more difficult I thought, "Why not do it in greyscale and apply colour afterwards?" At this point I'm not entirely certain how I'm going to introduce colour or what colours I'm going to use but, hey, it's all part of the journey. I do think the piece is starting to come together though. :)

Chalk Full of Dreams