Drawing monsters.
Volume 1
Start by drawing the part that is scariest. This is what
differentiates a monster from a non-monster.
Some possibilities:
Claws
Fangs
Eyes
Feathers
Closet Door
You get the idea.
Here is an example of a monster for advanced drawers only.
Fangs (and Claws)
Most scary things are made up of basic geometric shapes –
triangles, ovals, rectangles and so forth. So make that shape first. The
easiest way to do this is to find something in your immediate vicinity that has
that shape, put it on top of your piece of paper, and draw a line around it with
your pencil.
For example, a piece of pizza is somewhat triangular. So put
a piece of pizza on top of your paper, and draw a line around it. And you have
a fang shape. Sort of. However this fang shape might be as large as your piece
of paper. Which could be an advantage, because a fang that large is REALLY
scary, compared to a teeny tiny fang, the size of a piece of candy corn, which
is also triangular.
Some fangs are kind of curved. I have had pretty good luck
drawing around a toothpaste tube (after bending it a little) for this type of
fang. The cap of the toothpaste tube can represent the root of the fang. As if
you had extracted the fang. Although an extracted fang is not nearly as scary
as an intact fang, to me, anyway. BUT, if you drew an extracted fang, you could
get your pair of pliers out of the basement tool box, and draw a line around
them on the piece of paper, next to the fang. Then color the pliers silver, if
you have a silver crayon, and make some blood spots in random places on the paper.
You can use food coloring straight out of the bottle for the blood spots. Now
THERE is a scary picture. An extracted fang AND a pair of pliers. To me,
anyway.
Everything I just said about fangs goes for claws. Except
drawing claws is boring, because you have to keep doing it and doing it even
when you think you’re tired of it because you have probably only drawn about
three claws at that point, and you need a lot more than three. Like eight,
anyway. So if you HAVE to draw claws, remember you are going to need to fit at
least eight on the piece of paper, and don’t fill the whole sheet up with the
first claw.
Eyeballs
Jar lids, cups and plates are good to help you draw
eyeballs. You can draw around the jar lid, move it over, and draw around it
again. Voila! Eyeballs!
Similar to fangs, the larger the eyeball, the scarier. Case
in point. Remember the fairy tale about the dogs with eyes as large as teacups,
dinner plates and so on?
If that is not enough to convince you that larger eyeballs
are scarier than small eyeballs, just think about eyeballs the size of grape
seeds. How scary is that? Not. At all.
So if you are going to draw eyeballs make them large. Now,
another thing that makes eyeballs scary, to me anyway, is how close they are.
Like, if they are right in my face, THAT is REALLY SCARY. I am not sure how you
are going to draw this, unless you want to carry your monster picture around
with you, and when you ask “do you want to see a really scary monster?” and
your friend says “yes” then shove the picture in his or her face.
You could draw some fangs inside the eyeballs (see Drawing Monsters: advanced techniques,
volume 2). That’s about all for eyeballs.
Feathers
I just put feathers in because I had an aunt who was afraid
of feathers. If you are afraid of feathers, anything with feathers on it is a
monster. I’m not afraid of feathers anymore, and I never was afraid of
feathers, except on owls, which is a different situation entirely. So you might
be afraid of something that HAS feathers on it, but not actually afraid of the
feathers. But you still might need to draw the feathers, if they are part of
the monster you are drawing.
Feathers take waaaaaay too long to draw. They are like tree
leaves, or bricks that way. So here is an idea, but I haven’t tried it yet. You
know how you see a feather sometimes, all by itself? Like on the sidewalk, or
in the parking lot. Well, keep a little plastic bag in your pocket and start
collecting feathers. Ask your friends to collect feathers for you too. Pretty
soon, you will have a whole bunch of feathers, and you can just glue them on
your drawing. Lots easier than drawing them. And here’s even an easier idea.
Just find one feather. Put it in the Xerox machine and make a hundred copies of
it. Cut them out and glue them on your picture. And here is even an easier
idea. Don’t be afraid of things with feathers. Then they aren’t monsters
anymore, and you won’t have to draw them. Case in point. I stopped drawing owls
a long time ago.
Closet doors
Super easy. That’s a rectangle. Put a book on top of your
piece of paper. Draw around the book. Take the book off. There is the door. If the
closet door that is hiding the monster has a handle, that is the hard part.
It is SO hard to draw around a very small round thing. It is
easier to put one drop of glue on the door, where you want the handle to be.
Then put a cheerio or a small button or an eye from a stuffed animal (oooh,
extra scary!) on the glue. If you get the button from your shirt, don’t cut
this off the part of your shirt that is going to show, cut a button off one of
the sleeves and then roll it up to hide where you cut it off. If you use a
cheerio, you should draw a line around the cheerio after the glue dries. It is
very hard, but worth the precaution. Then, if a mouse eats the cheerio, you
will still have a door handle.
Why even bring up closet doors, you may ask? Even though I
never had a monster in my closet, some of my friends did in theirs. If you are
one of those people, I am including this section so you can draw your monster
too.
You might need to figure out if the closet door is part of the
monster, or separate from it. You can find out by opening and closing the door.
The real closet door, not your drawing. Does the monster go away when you open
the door and look in the closet? That might mean that the door is the monster.
But if the monster is still there when you open the door, that means you need
to draw what is in the closet. (Drawing
Monsters: professional tips and shortcuts, volume 3). There are many angles
to this closet door monster business. I don’t claim to have answers to any of
them because, as I said, my closet didn’t have monsters.
3 Easy Suggestions to
save you 100% frustration while drawing monsters
1- Erasing more than five times in the same spot on your
paper will make a hole in the paper.
2- All monsters are scarier in the dark, so it is tempting
to use black to color everything dark. Careful. If you do color everything
black, you will wind up with a plain old sheet of black paper. This may sound
scary, but it does not look like any kind of monster. Don’t do it, no matter
how good it sounds at the time.
3- Draw big. Tiny monsters are not scary. They will cause
you to do suggestions 1 and 2 which will wreck the drawing.
That’s all. So go draw a monster, and don’t forget to have
fun!
