Monster Mania Artist Commentary - That New Logo Smell

When I started working on the Monster Mania series, I wasn’t expecting the series to continue beyond the first 10 drawings. I just wanted to draw some cool monsters for a Halloween themed art exhibition. I also never intended for the original Monster Mania logo to be anything more than a cool type treatment on a promotional flyer. It was just a tiny little graphic on a postcard that I quickly cobbled together in Adobe Photoshop. 

It took me a few years, but I finally got around to designing a new Monster Mania logo. The new logo takes some inspiration from the original logo. I kept the big googly eye and the drippy / scratchy text for Mania. I wanted the logo to have the same vibe as the original Garbage Pail Kids Logo and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles logo from the original 1987 animated series. I wanted the new Monster Mania logo to invoke that same feeling. I was trying to capture the joyful weirdness of my childhood. I also took some inspiration from Matthew Allison’s logo treatments for Cankor. Matthew Allison is a big influence on my work in general. I also took inspiration from the Monster Mania drawings themselves. The yellow background is meant to mimic the backgrounds I use in my drawings. I wanted the logo to be fun and chaotic and messy. 







Popular posts from this blog

Monster Mania Artist Commentary - Coloring Technique

Image
I have a strict set of rules that I follow when creating a Monster Mania drawing but those restrictions still leave plenty of room to experiment and evolve. The most notable change has been my approach to coloring the drawings.  The early drawings were colored in a more painterly style, and I used a variety of watercolor and chalk brushes to color the drawings. I would start by laying a foundation of splatters and drips and textures, creating an abstract painting that served as both a background and an underpainting for the drawing. I would then proceed to color the line art using flat colors. Then I would use chalk brushes to paint the shading and highlights. I would often play with opacity levels and layer effects to allow bits and pieces of the abstract underpainting to show. The end result was messy and haphazard like a real painting.  In 2018, Clip Studio Paint became available on the iPad, and I started doing the majority of my inking and coloring on my iPad. The iPad ch...
Read more

Monster Mania Artist Commentary - Angry Poo

Image
I'm a serious artist that draws silly things. I draw vomit and snot and warts and pimples and poo. I’m amused by the idea of spending untold hours painstakingly drawing anthropomorphic turd creatures and other ridiculous things. I could drip paint like Jackson Pollock or cut paper like Kara Walker or paint portraits like Alice Neel, but instead of doing any of those things, I choose to draw an angry turd monster fighting a horde of vicious corn kernels. I draw silly things because it is fun to draw silly things. Creating art should be a joyous experience. 
Read more

Monster Mania Artist Commentary - My Tumor Face

Image
Several of the drawings in the Monster Mania series fall into the category of body horror and a few of the drawings are self portraits. This one happens to be both.  The pandemic super charged my hypochondriac tendencies and I started imagining all of the fun and interesting ways my body could betray me. I started drawing self portraits depicting tumors and pimples and other gross things growing on my body. I’m also obsessed with the idea of conjoined twins and tumors with creepy little faces. I blame David Cronenberg and John Carpenter.  This drawing was really fun to draw. I always aim for creepy and gross and a little bit cartoonish. I think the more successful drawings are the ones that hit that trifecta. 
Read more