Monstergram7 - Top 9

 Oh, boy! What a year 2021 was.

I Instagram tradition, here are the top 9 liked posts from my Instagram page/feed, monstergram7 to the year 2021. All of these received over 500 likes with the top 3 receiving over 1,000. 

#1 – Tigger, Christopher Robin and Pooh Bear in Toy Story mash-up cosplay as Woody, Andy and Buzz Lightyear. There must have been a confluence of things going on in the world for such a strong response from folks. I don’t think I could engineer anything to repeat it. As you can see by the tag dropped in the photo, this was an idea pitched to me during one one my What Shall I Draw Today? (WSIDT) sessions. Posted January 24, 2021, receiving 3,840 likes (by 12/32/2021). 

#2 – A mash-up of the ever poplar Mystery, Inc. gang from the Scooby-doo shows (Fred, Shaggy, Daphne, Scooby-Doo and Velma) as the gang from Cowboy Bebop. Posted Scoob-Doo mash-ups generally attract likes on my Instagram. This was the reverse mash-up of the #5 entry on this list that was done a couple o month before. Posted June 12, 2021, receiving 2,516 likes.

#3 – A cross-over featuring Joe Gardner from Disney/Pixar Soul and Roger Radcliffe from Walt Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Two guys in a jazzy jam on pianos with animal pals. Pianos being very large things, the trick was finding a composition to minimize the instruments and hopefully keep the focus on Joe and Roger. Posted February 21, 2021, receiving 1,923 likes.

#4 – My 6 page announcement of me taking a social media break for the last 2 months in 2021. I was surprised by the messages that came in most in the vein of supporting my action to attend to may mental health. I was thankful for it all, but I never declared that was what I was doing. I just needed the time to focus on my holiday stuff and some personal projects. Posted October 23, 2021, receiving 750 likes.

#5 – The reverse Scooby-Doo/Cowboy Bebop mash-up this time featuring the Bebop crew (Jet, Spike, Faye, Ein and Ed) cast as the Mystery, Inc. gang. This was my best inspired-by-but-not-copying anime style. This one isn't a WSIDT suggestion, but something that fell into place with the realization that the crew compliment aligned as well as it does. Posted April 24, 2021, receiving 708 likes.

#6 – A 6 page preview and announcement of the Disneyland Art drop. The Art Drop was a scavenger hunt of sorts in which I hid pieces of art for folks to find. I conducted the Art Drop in the theme park the day after its 66th birthday. The final piece were fully colored as shown in subsequent postings. Posted July 15, 2021, receiving 690 likes.

#7 – A WSIDT mash-up of the Wanda-Vision family (Wanda, Vision, Billy and Tommy) as Mary Poppins, Bert and kids. A pleasant enough face, but not my best Elizabeth Olsen caricature. Posted April 21, 2021, receiving 669 likes.

#8 – A cross-over of Lucille Ball’s Lucy Ricardo and Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff. Hey look, another Wanda-Vision mashup! The 1950’s themed premier episode of the Marvel series sure did inspire a lot of nostalgia. People back in 1950’s American Television seemed to frequently have guests over dinners. Posted January 24, 2021, receiving 661 likes.

#9 – A cross over of Wanda and Vision in circa 1955 Disneyland. Hey look, another Wanda-Vision mash-up! 1955, of course, was the year that Walt Disney first opened Disneyland to the public. I intentionally muted the color palette, to suggest the black and white first episode of the series. Posted February 21, 2021, receiving 637 likes.

BONUS

 

#10 – A cross-over of Han Solo, Leia and their young son Ben enjoying time in Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. This was part of the Walt Disney World’s 50th anniversary special edition of What Shall I Draw Today? Occurring over a span of 16 days in October, I draw Disney Parks themed mixed up suggestions in a Disneyland autograph book (I didn’t plan ahead enough to order a WDW themed autograph book). I wonder if there was something unsatisfying about how the Star Wars franchise totally skipped seeing what this family was like, enough that fans want to see it depicted in art like this? Posted October 10, 2021, receiving 624 likes.

#11 – A mash-up of the Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) in a Mystery Machine (Scooby-Doo) paint job.  This was follow-up to a previous mashup that replaced Scooby-Doo characters in one of the original posters for the 1977 movie. The poster didn't have the Falcon, but only X-Wings and TIE fighters, but a short in-comments discussion got me wondering what was the Star Wars equivalent to the Mystery Machine. Posted July 24, 2021, receiving 560 likes.

#12 – A WSIDT mash-up of Jawas (Star Wars) and droids and robots, R2-D2 (Star Wars, of course), V.I.N.CENT. (The Black Hole) and WALL-E. Here I experiment with a art-deco-ish 1920’s cartoon style, just for fun. It's interesting that here are 3 different body shapes for the mechanical characters: cylinder, sphere and cube. Posted September 20, 2021, receiving 558 likes.

What I Drew Sunday, June 27th - Top 3

During last Sunday’s “What Shall I Draw Today?” an eight-hour session reserved for drawing other folks’ suggestions, I managed to create 8 sketches.
Here are the top 3 liked pieces from Sunday:

#1 - “The Family Circus” newspaper strip with Wanda, Vision, Billy and Tommy: suggestion by @nikkistar5394

These character are naturally from the Marvel Studios Disney-Plus series “WandaVision.” 

The Family Circus is the long running newspaper comic created by Bil Keane.

As a general note, what I did not realize when I had embarked on the day’s theme of “comics” is that I would very likely have to emulate the comic tone, humor and style of other artists. It’s a challenge that I enjoy, and in fact, it is a challenge that I did more often as I learned about art and popular artistic media such as newspaper comic strips. The standard layout of The Family Circus daily comic is to have the art bound in a circular frame with caption. One of the basic sources of humor for the comic is the world view of the family’s four kids shaped by the misunderstanding resulting from lack of experience.
 

WandaVision used the conceit of Wanda using her magic to structure her life as a television, family situation-comedy. Since part of that features all of the people around Wanda being unaware of being on a T.V. show, then maybe Billy and Tommy’s comments would be speculative about living on a once-a-week T.V. show. Is that irony?

Drawing the quartet sitting down watching television had never been a consideration. I gravitated to an outdoor scene. Having the twins playing with Avengers action figures was intentionally an additional infusion of “Marvel” that any ironic commentary. Which isn’t to say that the dolls that they’re holding aren’t intentionally representative of other Marvel/Disney-Plus content: The Falcon (a.k.a. Captain America) and the Winter Soldier, Loki, and The Black Widow movie. I was only after placing the Iron Man doll on the ground to fill the space, that it dawned on me that effectively his story was complete and the comic’s subtext was was about New stories versus the old. You’d think that I had planned it that way.


#2 - Wednesday Addams: suggestion by @alltookayleigh

As the first sketch comic of the day, I chose to emulate Charles Addams comic, The Addams Family. I struggled with the imagery of Wednesday with a huge axe, only in so far as how I could make that funny.

Time being short, I looked up movie quotes from the 1991 live-action movie featuring a young Christina Ricci playing Wednesday Addams. Is it Wednesday’s best line in the movie? It is certainly up there. It does require some context. One at least has to have knowledge of “Girl Scout Cookies.”

I changed the scene setup from what is depicted in the movie. In the movie, Wednesday and brother Pugsley are running a old-time lemonade stand and are approach by the Girl Scout who has boxes of Girl Scout cookies in hand. I stripped out the lemonade and Pugsley to the basic elements.

Arguably, the better worded caption could be, “Are your cookies made from real girl scouts?”

The raven and spider were added because I thought it needed more macabre elements.


#3 - Donald Duck meeting Howard the Duck: suggestion by @akoymdf

The meeting of two ducks, one from family-friendly Disney and the other the subversive opposite of that. Early Donald was quite the rascally-child who took short cuts whenever possible if he couldn’t first not opt out of doing a task in the first place. I thought that even that version would contrast greatly against a world-weary duck from another world/universe (I don’t really know which).

I also opted to contain the scene onto a smaller collector card. This actually meant that I was unwilling to invest in drawing a lot of supporting props and/or backgrounds. The conflict ended up having Howard complaint about something about Donald or Donald’s world. Enter Disneyland and its iconic Sleeping Beauty Castle. It may well be that I can’t go a whole WSIDT day with out drawing something about a Disney Park.

2x hidden Mickeys. (One is teeny tiny)

Here are the rest of the 5 drawn on Sunday:

The Rocketeer!

suggestion by @evanblasor

Calvin as Loki the trickster who loves chaos

 suggestion by @oliviamn14

Jessica Jones and Batman in a bar (because they are both moody detectives who are orphans)

suggestion by @ani8tor57

Snoopy as Krypto the Wonder Dog

 suggestion by @jonmpeterson

Static Shock

 suggestion by Abigail R.



All of these and more original piece of art will be for sale at my next comic convention showing, which, I guess, will be in 2022.

The next WSIDT session is happening in July 25th.

Thank you to everyone who pitched their fun drawing suggestions. Thank you for following my blog and/or Instagram (@Monstergram7) and/or Monster Enterprises Facebook page. Thank you for liking.

 

All: Black ink and color pencil.

“WandaVision Family Circus”: on Bristol Board, 12.70 cm x 17.78 cm (5.00 in. x 7.00 in.)
“Wednesday”: on watercolor paper, 12.70 cm x 17.78 cm (5.00 in. x 7.00 in.)
“Donald and Howard”: on Bristol Board, 8.89 cm x 6.35 cm  (3.50 in. x 2.50 in.)

What I Drew Sunday, February 21st - Top 3

For the first themed edition of “What Shall I Draw Today?” in 2021, the drawings resolved around Disney, and Pixar and the Muppets. The Disney day theme happened to be the top as voted in a quick poll on Instagram.

Here are the top 3 liked pieces from Sunday:

#1 - Joe and Roger Piano Players: original suggestion by @ani8tor57

Just a couple of piano players. The sister suggestion pitched by the same person had paired Joe and Schroeder from Peanuts. Of course this combination of Joe Gardner (Pixar’s Soul) and Roger Radcliffe (Walt Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians) is more Disney.

Could I have depicted Joe and Roger sitting on the same bench? Yes, and that could have been a way to economize the space with only a single upright piano.

I opted to have back to back pianos, allowing for the instruments to match the personalities of the players. As I have mentioned in past WSIDT summaries, all of the drawings done on the WSIDT days are done with little or no preparation. From choosing the suggested idea, I dive into the drawing as quickly as possible often taking the first layout decisions as they come. Also in the interest of making quick drawings, I make decisions to cheat layouts and creatively crop and simplify to eliminate unnecessary details.

Here I cheated the characters’ positions by having both lean around to make eye contact. Conveniently, With Roger in front, he conceals a good part of both pianos. The camera angle is set low so that I don’t have to draw pain keys, and the image tightly cropped to show just enough to display that they are playing pianos and not, perhaps, sitting at writing desks.

It’s always fun to incorporate a supporting character or two, and here the cat and a puppy fill the need nicely. Again, the layout is such that the image need not be full of dalmatian puppies.

I wonder what kind of jazz duet they’re playing that Joe is playing the high part and Roger the low part.


#2 - Melody Sleeping on Max: suggestion by @nikkistar5394

It wasn’t immediately clear to me who Melody and Max were. That’s where an internet search revealed these two Disney characters from The Little Mermaid franchise.

Looking at it now, Max may be a bit too small.

While not having first-hand knowledge of how a baby might sleep on a furry member of the family, I am confident that I must have seen something similar in a movie or on television. The sea-shell shaped gown is directly taken from still of The Little Mermaid 2.


#3 - Wanda and Vision at Disneyland: original suggestion by @ray.anna2018

This idea was one of the few incorporating a Disney theme park. At the time of this WSIDT session, the Disney+ series had just released the seventh episode. Even so, the first two black-and-white 1950s era episodes are still potent as defining imagery for the series. Another bit of imagery that is strongly associated with the WandaVision series is the classic vacuum tube television screen. When drawing a scene with two or more characters and other background features and/or properties, I lightly mark margins around the card. This time, that action naturally mimicked tracing the outline of a televisions screen.

For every “at Disneyland” suggestion that I draw, I try to select background elements that are 1) iconic 2) easy to draw. To that end, I’ll chose a distinct skyline and devise a way to not draw crowds. Here, Wanda and Vision are strolling through Town Square past the Main Street Train Station. Cropping as a medium two-shot with a low positioned camera point of view crops out room for surrounding crowds.

The suggestion also included that it be 1950s era. With Main Street being one of the least changed parts of the California park, I incorporated the 1955/56 styled popcorn box.

The slightly muted colors is also an attempt to evoke the era.



Here are the rest of the 9 drawn on Sunday:

Kermit (Hercules) and Miss Piggy (Megara)

Suggestion by @craftsgineer

Sisu meets Mushu
Suggestion by @zhukong24

Emma Stone as Cruella
Suggestion by Kinzey F

Mrs. Potts at the Mad Hatter’s tea party
Suggestion by @jonmpeterson

Burrito from The Flying Gauchito
Suggestion by Abigail R.

Gaston showing his son Gil how to shoot
Suggestion by @harishas.art

All of these and more original pieces of art will be for sale in future convention shows.

The next WSIDT session is happening in March 28, 2021. 

For the year’s schedule, click on the WSIDT tab above.

Thank you to everyone who pitched their fun drawing suggestions.

Thank you for following my blog and/or Instagram (@Monstergram7) and/or Monster Enterprises Facebook page. 

Thank you for liking.

All: Black ink and color pencil on Bristol Board.

“Joe & Roger” and “Wanda & Vision” 17.78 cm  x 12.70 cm (7.00 in. x 5.00 in)
“Melody & Max” 8.89 cm x 6.35 cm (3.50 in. x 2.50 in.)

What I Drew Sunday, January 24th - Top 3

 During the inaugural session of “What Shall I Draw Today?” for 2021, I managed to produce eight little pieces of art from the nearly 40 suggestion submitted.

Here are the top 3 liked pieces from Sunday:

#1 - Christopher Robin as Andy, Tigger as Woody, and Pooh as Buzz Lightyear: suggestion by @akoymdf

The amount of “likes” received by this piece may have set a personal best for my Instagram channel.

On paper, it’s a simple Disney mashup: three Winnie the Pooh characters as Toy Story characters. It’s a boy playing with his toys. The boy is Christopher Robin as Andy complete with a red cowboy hat. Instead of a Triple-R Ranch logo tee-shirt, he wears something of a Space Rangers logo, so that he represents his dual interests of westerns and space adventures.

Were I left to make up the mashups, I would have swapped the roles to have Tigger as Buzz because he’s flashier and bouncier. Pooh would be Woody, the trusty and loyal one whose primacy as Andy’s favorite is challenged by the new comer.

With all the “likes,” I guess @akoymdf has better instincts on the casting.

If you’ve been following my IG enough to catch some of my past WSIDT sessions, the IG handle may be familiar.


#2 - Lucy Ricardo and Wanda & Chicken: suggestion by @oliviamn14 with Abigail R.

For future readers, this session happened the Sunday following the Disney Plus airing of the third episode of WandaVision. There were 5 suggestions involving Wanda or both Wanda and Vision. This is the one WandaVision related idea that I chose to draw on Sunday because the first episode draws inspiration from I Love Lucy as well as The Dick Van Dyke Show. It would be best to explore the cross-over idea now while the connection is still fresh. There also was a suggestion featuring a version of the comic book Scarlet Witch.

The chicken is from Abigail’s separate suggestion. The chicken became the trigger for the story.

Why is there a chicken?
Wanda magic-ed it up.
What does Lucy think about that?
Lucy is wondering where that chicken came from.
Why is a chicken surprising to Lucy?
A live chicken isn’t the chicken she was thinking of.
What’s out of place about a live chicken?
Lucy has a cook book, suggesting that she had a recipe requiring a store-bought chicken.

I could have rendered the piece as true-to-inspiration black & white, but people always respond to color more. Additionally, Lucy’s bright red hair and Wanda’s auburn hair make more comparisons between the two more obvious which was, in fact, an added point made in the full suggestion.

Both of their dresses are more neutral and cool in tone for added contrast to make their hair color stand out more.

The choice to depict them in a cartoony caricature, was initiated to allude to the animated opening titles of Bewitched. The style also made it easier and quicker to draw, which is important to me as I try to complete as many drawings in eight hours as I possibly can.


#3 - Redd the pirate and Captain Jack Sparrow: suggestion by @nikkistar5394

Redd, here, is the pirate in the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction. She has a different costume than Captain Redd who you once could meet at Disneyland and Magic Kingdom. I trust that you know of Captain Jack Sparrow.

The suggestion included the team-up back-to-back composition. Were this not the final drawing of the day, I might have drawn it on a larger card, and a large card might have allowed for a better caricature of Captain Jack.

The expressions and exchanges of gazes, I hope, suggests that they may be teaming up now, but either one could make a self-serving turn as any moment.

Pirates. Am I Right?


Here are the rest of the 8 drawn on Sunday:

Kamala Harris (Flora), Michelle Obama (Fauna), and Dr. Jill Biden (Merryweather)
suggestion by @motheroffreels

A bi-pedal Pumbaa in tux and tails
suggestion by @pumbaaguy

Pocahontas as a hula dancer
suggestion by @elijones94

Rey and Leia bonding over an afternoon tea
suggestion by @jesstothesmith

Wonder Woman (DC Future State) — Yara Flor
suggestion by @sdogg52

I am still saving all of my drawing for future sales at convention shows. Frustratingly, I can’t say when that will be.

The next WSIDT session is happening in February 21.

Thank you to everyone who pitched their fun drawing suggestions. Thank you for following my blog and/or Instagram (@Monstergram7) and/or Monster Enterprises Facebook page. Thank you for liking. 

All: Black ink and color pencil on Bristol Board.

“Pooh Story” and “Lucy and Wanda”: 17.78 cm  x 12.70 cm (7.00 in. x 5.00 in)
“Redd and Jack” 8.89 cm x 6.35 cm  (3.50 in. x 2.50 in.)

“Kamala, Michelle and Jill” on watercolor paper.