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.

6,500+ Followers on Instagram

 https://youtu.be/dwvRXUsdfjM

My Instagram feed, @monstergram7, has recently surpassed 6.5k followers. To mark this milestone, I present this stop-motion video of me creating a little piece of art to commemorate the achievement. The featured quintet is Little Tuffy and the Tuf Gurlz.

From left to right: Cat, Monica, Little Tuffy, Barbara and Maui-Anne. These thrill seeking surf girls appear in supplemental comics within my self-published comic book Unstoppable Tuff-Girl.

 

6,500 thank yous to everyone following my Instagram. 

Bonus: pictures of my quite low-tech film set up for my stop-motion drawing demonstration.

Like a bridge, a yard stick is suspended about 20cm (about 8 in.) over the drawing surface between two book easels. At the top is an LED portable light to help fill the room’s overhead lighting.

My cel phone/digital camera strapped to the yard stick with a simple rubber band. Ready to film the drawing process.

monstergram7 Hits 5,000 Followers on Instagram

The apparent math here is that the more I draw and share on Instagram, then the more followers I get. I’m sure that there are other factors involved, but other than my winter, spring and summer sessions of What Shall I Draw Today?, that’s all I do.

About two-weeks ago, my Instagram feed, @monstergram7, surpassed the 5,000 followers milestone. In honor of the event, and it being a nice round number, I video recorded a three-part drawing demonstration of the above Supergirl art. If you’re curious of my process and have 36-minutes, then you can watch the magic happen at normal speed.

I recommend that you turn off the audio. I don’t speak during the videos and I’m probably breathing too close to the microphone.

Enjoy.

Watch me SKETCH!

https://youtu.be/qEsquQWWkxc

Watch me INK!

https://youtu.be/ZnfEq8hkObs

Watch me COLOR!

https://youtu.be/FEXlHwlcvqE

monstergram7 Hits 4,500+ Followers on Instagram

To mark the recent event of my Instagram feed surpassing 4,500 followers, I drew Tuff-Girl and her dog Wichita celebrating that same event. She just happened to be dressed in semi-western attire. The construction sketch and inking was caught in a time-lapse video (above).

Follow me on Instagram: @monstergram7

Hitting 4,000+ July 2018

Hitting 3,800+ January 2018

Hitting 3,000+ August 2017

Hitting 2,500+ April 2017

Hitting 2,000+ November 2016

Art vs Artist - 2019

Here’s something that happens on Instagram: “Art versus Artist.” At its most basic, it’s an image of the artist surround by samples of that artist’s work. Where I could find hard rules about sampling the works, I chose my personal representative favorites from 2018. So, is this the 2018 edition (the year of the pool of stuff posted) or the 2019 edition (the year that these have been curated)?

As my favorite eight pieces, this differs from the “Top Nine” a.k.a. “Best Nine” posts of 2018. The latter determined by a simple counting of likes.

(clock-wise from top-right)

STAN LEE TRIBUTE - This represents my caricature/ portrait work.

CHEF SKUNK - This represents funny animal comics. The character is Nick from the long on-hiatus strip Tags from the a new one created for my 2018 Christmas card.

LIFE DRAWING with MARKERS - From one of the sessions done later in the year, chosen because I think it demonstrates better mastery of “highlighter art” than sessions earlier in the year.

YELLOW RABBIT - Another funny animal. She’s Hilarity from the short lived Cartoon Monday strip.

MICKEY - A rare example of my digital (Photoshop) painting.

BUNNY the BIRTHDAY SQUIRREL - I can’t drawing Bunny for every birthday notice that pops up on Facebook, for example, but I do draw him fairly frequently.

BELLE and the PRINCE as a HOGWARTS STUDENTS - Here’s a mash-up idea that was suggested for one of my “What Shall I Draw Today?” sessions.

TUFF-GIRL - Of course, I need to shamelessly promotion my adventure comic, Unstoppable Tuff-Girl, with the title character and with her pup, Wichita. This piece was created as the marketing image for last year’s WonderCon comic book convention showing.

Check out my Instagram feed @monstergram7

monstergram7 Hits 4,000 Followers in Instagram

Commemorating surpassing 4,000 followers on my Instagram feed, @monstergram7.

Why not do so featuring Shazam whose trailer was dropped this Comic Con weekend?

monstergram7 Hits 3,800 Followers

Having quickly blown past the 3,500 Instagram followers milestone during the holidays, I take a few minutes in the less hectic January 2018 to celebrate 3,800 followers with a sketch of Hilary Rabbit. And I recorded the sketching process with a time-lapse video.

THANK YOU for following my Instagram feed and this blog, monotonae!

https://www.instagram.com/monstergram7/

Hilarity Rabbit (some times Hilarity Hare) is a character from my failed comic strip, Cartoon Mondays. Cartoon Mondays was supposed to scratch my cartoonist’s itch when I hired on at Cartoon Network’s marketing/ licensing group. The style inspiration was classic 1950-60’s Hanna Barbera, the Huckleberry Hound and Top Cat era.

I frequently miss the H&B mark by adding a lot of shading, a lot of details and a lot of hash marks. But that discrepancy sits well enough with me, since the drawings lack the benefit of animation.

This piece, I believe, represents the first time that I really had to assign color to Hilarity. So I went with Top Cat inspired yellow with, again, additional non- H&B details of shading and modeling. Obviously there’s something about Hilarity that appeals to me that she lives on past the short-lived comic strip in sketch books and doodles like this. Maybe she’ll hop in to something in my future work.

As seen on Instagram.

What Shall I Draw January 28th?

Here we go again with the first What Shall I Draw Today? session of 2018 happening this approaching Sunday!

Check out the WSIDT tab above for details, schedules and answers to  Frequently Asked Questions.
However, simply, this is a time where I draw other folk’s suggestions posted at any of the following:

• Instagram:  @monstergram7

• Facebook:  @I’m a fan of Bryan Mon #BryanMon

• Blog:  monotonae.blogspot.com (this thing here) in the comments.


See you Sunday.

What Shall I Draw Today?

Sunday, January 28th, 2018

Eastern Standard Time:  12pm noon - 8 pm

Pacific Standard Time:  9am - 5pm

“Dizzy”
Black ink and color pencil on Bristol Board.
6.35 cm x 8.89 cm (2.50 in. x 3.50 in.).

Princess Powered

Much of this I’ve covered in the previous post “Earth’s Mightiest Princesses” (Oct. 29, 2017). However, the only one of the five parts of the series to receive a Top 9 position features Tiana as Captain America.

I began with the center piece which 1) partly addresses the What Shall I Draw Today? suggestion of the mash-up, 2) compositionally it is balanced enough to stand on its own, and 3) leaves me the out, should I choose, to never followup with drawing all of the mash-ups.

Working from a rough list of mash-up that I developed, here I go expanding on the idea. I’m sticking with the official Disney Princess list of 11 girls.

Naturally, I followed through with the panel to the left of center, fulfilling the official 11 Disney Princesses of the franchise. I also attempted to use Avengers members depicted in the Marvel Cinematic Universe of films.

Now, I’ve gone and done it and embarked on the expansion panels, going beyond the franchise’s 11 princesses to include some of the popular modern princesses. Elsa, of course, is weather controlling Thor, and the Avengers must have a thunder god/ goddess. I’ve also had to expand my Avenger choices to those from the comics having run out of those translated to screen.

And I finalize it all with some of the “lost girls”: Atlantis: The Lost Empire’s Princess Kida, The Black Cauldron’s Princess Eilonwy, Enchanted’s Princess Giselle and Peter Pan’s Princess Tiger Lily. If you eliminate the princesses from the various animal kingdoms of Disney and Pixar animated features, i.e. Faline (Bambi),  Nala (The Lion King) and Atta and Dot (A Bug’s Life), it leaves Ariel’s sisters, Nancy (Enchanted) and arguably Meg (Hercules) as unrepresented “lost girls.” But then, if Mulan can be a princess then...

Oh well, I'll leave that for another time.

ANNA, ARIEL, AURORA, BELLE, CINDERLLA, EILONWY, ELSA, JASMINE, KIDA, MOANA, MULAN, POCAHONTAS, TIANA, TIGER LILY, RAPUNZEL, SNOW WHITE, VANELLOPE © and TM Disney. MERIDA © and TM Disney/ Pixar. ANT-MAN, BLACK PANTHER, BLACK WIDOW, CAPTAIN AMERICA, CAPTAIN MARVEL, FALCON, HAWKEYE, HELLCAT, HULK, IRON-MAN, MANTIS, QUICKSILVER, SCARLET WITCH, THOR, TIGRA, VISION, WAR MACHINE, WASP and WONDERMAN © and TM Marvel Comics.

monstergram7 Best 9 of 2017

Here are the best/ top 9 liked posts in  2017 on my Instagram feed, @monstergram7, as tallied and posted on said Instagram in early December (because I wasn’t expecting the stats to change over the holidays).

Read more about each of the nine on the following blog posts:

Mulan & Mushu

Jack Sparrow (as a woman)

Aurora

Remy meets Winston

Princess/ Avengers mash-up

Pocahontas

Lilo, Nani and Stitch

Harry, Ron and Hermoine

Harley Quinn

Thank you for following and liking.

Bryan

Lilo-Go-Round

The Disney animated feature Lilo and Stitch celebrated it’s 15th anniversary last year!

I drew this in response. Thinking that Lilo’s big sister Nani doesn’t receive her fair share of the product spotlight, I made sure that she was involved.

With a lot these sketches, there hangs a “maybe one day” as in “maybe one day I’ll throw color on this.” For now I’m busy with other things.

Black ink and carmine red pencil on paper.
21.6 cm x 27.9 cm (8.50 in. x 11.00 in.)

LILO, NANI and STITCH © and TM Disney.

A Drawer of Aurora

In this sketchbook drawing of the Princess Aurora, I wanted to capture some of the design elements that legendary Disney animator and Imagineer Marc Davis put into his designs of the Princess. Perhaps most Disney fans haven’t picked this up when they visit the Parks and Disney Stores and see Aurora on sweat shirt and etc., but as a Consumer Products staff artist, I’m not called upon to draw Aurora like Mr. Davis did, but to go with a more flowing style and a fantastic, puffy skirt (glitter optional). For better or for worse.

That said, I feel that every once and while, it’s good to go back to the original stuff, if a bit humbling.

Ink and red pencil on paper.
15.24 cm x 22.23 cm (6.00 in. x 8.75 in.).

AURORA © and TM Disney.