I DREW THAT- Vanity/Fairest

 

I’ve created a piece of art entitled, “Vanity/Fairest” for the Disney Parks’ galleries. It wasn’t until last month when I saw with my own eyes prints of it for sale in Disneyland’s Disneyana store.

The theme that I was asked to create against was a piece featuring a Disney princess and her villainous counterpart.

 The concept that I had was to have the Queen at the top of a tall panel as a looming malevolent element with Princess Snow White in the lower part as a colorful, lively element that a staves off the darkness. However, as I was exploring layout options, a lot of what I was doing just looked like iterations of the movie posters for Disney’s live action Snow White.

There are Art Deco elements in the piece. My best efforts to pull it away from the typical movie poster look was to make it about contrasts. The Queen is in a monochromatic scheme, rendered alone as an up-lit 1940’s Hollywood portrait. The princess is in full, bright colors, the full character in Alphonse Mucha inspired pose with animal friends (a bunny and blue bird).

The original piece is mixed media (water color, color pencil and ink). The original has been sold, and prints are available in two sizes. 
 

I DREW THAT: Zazzle x D23 2026

 

A selection of items are available on Zazzle featuring the exclusive character art that I created for D23 now splashed across their 2026 everything; or perhaps they’re on the D23 site offered through Zazzle. The Print-On-Demand platform features Mickey, Miss Piggy, the Mad Hatter and The Sun Bonnets on shirts, drink ware and other items. I don’t know how long these have been available. 

I don’t know if other characters are waiting in the wings to be featured on merchandize. I also don’t know if these are D23 Gold Member Exclusive items. All I can say is order it while you can and keep an eye open for more in the future.

https://d23.com/shop/

D23 Character Collage Tote Bag

This large page with sold er straps features 8 pieces of my character art: the Mad Hatter, Dory, Daisy Duck, Lightning McQueen, Kermit the Frog, the Sun Bonnets, Pua and Cruella DeVil with the D23 logo in the center square. It appears to have the same design printed on the reverse.

Character Tee-Shirts 

Mickey Mouse, Miss Piggy, the Mad Hatter and the Sun Bonnets are available with character art printed on the fronts of shirts. Shirts are offered in a variety of colors.

The same selection of character art are available with the art printed on the backs and the D23 logo printed on the fronts on the upper-left chest.

Mickey 2-Sided Hoodie

This hoodie features Mickey Mouse printed on the back and the D23 logo on the front, upper-left chest. The hoodie is zippered in the front with hoodie drawstrings and 2 pockets.

Mickey Hat

The classic dad hat is available in a variety of colors. Is is contracted with 100% cotton bio-washed chino twill for a soft, worn feel.

Character Insulated Tumblers

Here are a selection of three characters: Mickey Mouse, Miss Piggy and the Mad Hatter. The tumblers stainless Steel construction holding 20 oz.

D23 Character Mugs

Mickey Mouse, Miss Piggy, the Mad Hatter and the Sun Bonnets are printed on two-sides of a coffee mug. The handle and inside of the mug are colored to compliment the art. The mugs are available in two sizes.

I DREW THAT- D23 Gold Member 2026 Branding

 

It’s a remarkable honor to have contributed this year to D23 look. D23, the official Disney fan club changes its branding look in subtle ways that still engages its fan community. The branding applies across most of the elements that reach the fans including membership cards, display banners, and not the least of which pins. I drew as many as 17 pieces of character art for the D23 group. We’ll see as the year progress which of them pop up and in what variety of uses.

 

A lot of the character choices in the mix give nods to significant anniversaries celebrated by the many characters, movies and theme park icons that Disney is famous for. 

 

Among the items in the Gold Member gift kit are a members card and certificate, a commemorative Mickey Mouse pin celebrating “Thru the Mirror” 1936 short, collectible magnet featuring Pluto, $25 event discount and D23 Disney Lorcana card.

This year, higher level membership offer additional premium gifts including a a few items featuring some of my art: a 10-piece pin set and a RSVLTS x Disney Shirt.

Here, I share 14 of the characters that I created for D23.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (No. 1)
Mickey Mouse (Thru the Mirror, 1936, 90yr)
Cruella De Vil (One Hundred and One Dalmatians, 1961, 65yr)
Pluto the pup 

Daisy Duck
Pua (Moana, 2016, 10yr)
Mad Hatter (Alice in Wonderland, 1961, 65yr)
James P. “Sulley” Sullivan (Monsters, Inc., 2001, 25)

Dory (Finding Dory, 2016, 10yr)
Sun Bonnets (Country Bear Jamboree, 1971, 55yr)
Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog (The Great Muppet Caper, 1981, 45yr)

Lightning McQueen (Cars, 2006, 20yr)
Mickey Mouse (No.2) (Thru the Mirror, 1930, 90yr)

 The style that D23 had me apply to the characters is an extension of what I’ve been doing on my ongoing series of sticky note sketches. I describer it as something honoring 1930’s newspaper clip art or “Monopoly Man” art. It incorporates bold line work and clear silhouettes. It sometimes has rubber-hose arms and legs. It never fusses with making sure shapes are closed off to define spaces to drop in color.

 

monstergram7 - Top 3 January 2022

 

The monotonae blog has been a current-works portfolio. It has also been neglected for quite a while. At the end of 2022, I thought that I would at least do some sort of Top 9 or 10 liked postings from my instagram account, monstergram7. There are phone apps that will filter that kind of thing, but for reasons I didn’t like the results, not the least of which is the inclusion of the 2021 “Top 9” post. I felt that the pool ought to be limited to the original posts. So in brute force manner in went back through my posts to see what the top 10 were, and in the process I could determine the tops by each month.

And now here I am, beginning a month by month accounting of the top 3.

#1- Cinderella’s Broken Coach (ballpoint pen ink on paper napkin). 

I had drawn this in a Carl’s Jr. one morning while waiting out work being done on my car, so the vehicle repair theme was at the forefront of my mind. Playing around with stylizing the Disney princess is a frequent part of my 9-to-5 job.

 

#2- World Pictographic Icons from a D23 Map (digital). 

This square of 3 is just one of many that features the pictographs that I designed to embellish a map for the D23 Disney Fan Club. The map that I had created is just the backing board for the real prize- a set of enamel pins each representing a different Disney resort plus the Disney Cruise Line. The inspiration for the style was Rolly Crump’s animals for “it’s a small world” attraction that compliments Mary Blair’s  fanciful designs.

#3- Poppy Jean, Tiger (black ink and color pencil on paper).

Poppy is another of my attempts to develop a pin-up/cheesecake character design in my own style, whatever that is. Many successful artists can be identified by how they draw and paint beautiful women: Dan DeCarlo, Frank Frazetta, Alberto Varga, Olivia Berardinis, and the list goes on. However, I get in my own way because so much of my 9-to-5 job is to be a style mimic, and not a style originator.

I think some time in 2021, I had drawn a loose princess character, which I thought could be the basis of that pin-up. Even now, I’ve not settled on a distinct design, but just to be contrarian, she’s keeping the glasses.

I had explored perhaps two dozen different names. I perhaps settled on “Poppy” because I frequent do my initial sketches with a Poppy Red Col-Erase color pencil. The second name, Jean came about because I liked the three syllable rhythm. It won out over Poppy Anne, Poppy Jo and several others.

The costume is a nod to the Lunar calendar Year of the Tiger for 2022.

Stiky-to-itivity

 

After a couple of years of the COVID pandemic induced work-at-home situation for my staff-character artist position at Disney, I earnestly returned to a semi-regular drive into the Disney Glendale campus work routine Spring of this year. The buildings were and had been throughout the year typically pretty empty. In May, I started making sketches on standard size 3-inch square sticky notes and posting them in the lobby of the building.

This fulfilled two things: 1) In an empty building, I felt that I could pretty much do what ever it was that pleased me (provided that work was being completed); 2) the sketches were things that I could share with regularity on social media like Instagram (@monstergram7) and with a group of Disney employees on Slack.

These sketches being neither assignments (for work or commissions) or those that I do for my “What Shall I Draw Today?” (in which I accept suggestions by social media followers,) I chose to keep simple in design and color. They are done mostly with a single color pencil and finished with available black pen ink. In the 7+ months, I had coaxed a couple of the interns to each make at least one sketch. Thanks to Zahra Merchant for a lovely Snow White interpretation. Thanks to Christine Lew for a jaunty King Louie take.

Assembled in the animated GIF above, I had made over 130 sticky note sketches.

Around October, I began to regularly take pictures of the wall as the number of stickies grew and shrank. My initial thoughts had dwelled between the extremes of “No one is taking any of these ‘FREE SKETCHES.’ I must be doing something wrong,” and “Somebody is taking my stuff (again labeled as ‘FREE SKETCHES.’ They’re ruining my gallery.” 

There were two occasions when several sketches disappeared in an afternoon. So curious. 

For my own kicks, the subjects that I sketches were mostly from lesser touted Disney films and television- not the Mickey Mouse and Princess things that stock the shelves of the Disney Store.

Another development were the emergence of two themed days. Wednesdays would become “It’s WED-nesday” and then “Today is WED-nesday” which featured something from the Disney theme parks, you know, from Imagineering formerly known as WED Enterprises. 

Fridays would become “Free Draw Friday” which may have already been a thing on social media like “Throwback Thursday.” Anyways, on Fridays I would draw non-Disney things and cheekily put them on the walls of the Disney building.

This Tuesday is the first of more than 250 business/work days for 2023. 

Someone order more sticky notes.

What Shall I Draw June 26th through July 17th?

Breaking an almost six-month long sketching drought, “What Shall I Draw Today?” returns with a grand, 22-days long Disney Parks themed event!

What Shall I Draw Today?

Sunday, June 26th through

Sunday July 17th, 2022

From Sunday, June 26th through Sunday, July 17th, I will be taking other people’s suggestions as the inspiration for daily sketches. At any time during this event you may pitch your drawing suggestions on any on these social media platforms:

Instagram: @monstergram7 

Facebook: @Monster Enterprises

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

Suggestions may consist of two parts:

1) a favorite Disney character;

2) a favorite Disney Parks thing (attract, snack, parade, etc.)

Suggestions will be selected with the magic randomizer (blindly pulling slips of paper from a cup). Sketches may be drawn in a Disneyland autograph book, or on a collector card, or on a simple sticky note.

For As to your Qs, please click on the WSIDT tab above.

Mapplicable

 D23, The Official Disney Fan Club, has announced the 2022 D23 Gold Member Collector Set. It’s the exclusive gift that every new and renewing member receives.

For more information about the club, please go to the D23 site, naturally: https://d23.com

My contribution to the set, was a world map that is the backing board for the real prizes that are a seven-piece set of exclusively designed enamel pins. Each pin features one of the six Disney theme Park Resorts plus a seventh for the Disney Cruise Line. To be clear, another artist designed the pins.

All two-dimensional maps are necessarily stylized representations of three-dimensional features existing on a spherical globe. In this, I chose to build the land masses from circles and parts of circles and a few straight lines.

The characters and things iconography on the final piece of art are all blues, teals and purples so as not to compete with the pins. 

However, there were more colorful early versions.

conceptual sketches

Many of the animal elements are inspired by those found on the “it’s a small world” attraction: hippopotamus, tiger, penguin, llama, kangaroo, and goose. I think the animals for the attraction are more Rolly Crump designs inspired by Mary Blair’s stylization than purely coming from Blair’s work for the boat ride. Keying off of the style, I chose other animals and things as nods to other Disney things.

Sea Serpent - Disneyland’s defunct Submarine Voyage attraction

Parrot - Rosita from Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room, Adventureland

African Bull Elephant - Jungle Cruise attraction, Adventureland.

Polar Bear - Walt Disney’s White Wilderness (1958)

Big Horned Sheep - Grand Canyon diorama, part of Disneyland’s Railroad experience

Baobob Tree - Disney’s Animal Kingdom’s Kilimanjaro Safaris attraction

Steam Locomotive - Walt Disney’s love of trains

Baby Oyster - Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland

Moose - Disney’s Brother Bear

Aulani Resort and Spa main building

747 Jet Airplane - Intended align with the “travel” theme to embellish a title box that didn’t get included on the map

London Tower and Notré Dame Cathedral couldn’t fit on the map and were eliminated as candidates

I am pleasantly surprised to see that the D23 designers had taken the purple grid pattern I had created for the map’s oceans for the background and repurposed it for the collection’s passport cover. For this pattern, I was inspired by the tiles of the Mary Blair murals that once flanked the Tomorrowland corridor in Disneyland. In fact, the square tiles were cut from a larger pattern of waves and mixed up. It is possible that many of the tiles can be reassembled in a few continuous lines. That’s trivia, not a challenge.

conceptual sketches

early green & blue version

exploratory purple & yellow version

early red & purple version

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.

Scenes from my Work (at Home) Space

Today, November 18, anniversary of my Disney hire date. Technically, it’s a re-hire date, but all the same, I have been working continuously for Disney for eight years now.

Coincidentally, November 18 is also the anniversary of the premiere of the “Steamboat Willie,” and thus the so-called dual birthdays of Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse.

In past years, I have shared on this day via Facebook and/or Instagram photos of bits of my work space. However, I’m actually in the midst of a self-impose “social media” break. I’ve decided to step out of that break today and share here eight video conference call (a.k.a. Zoom) backgrounds that I have composed and used in the last year working at home.

Walt’s office,
The Walt Disney Studios, Burbank, CA.

New Orleans Square, Disneyland (1966).

Main Street Train Station, Disneyland.

The Animation Building, Northside,
The Walt Disney Studios, Burbank

Monstro, Storybook Land, Disneyland

Royal 21 Balcony (formerly the Disney Dream Suite)
(formally the Disney Gallery), New Orleans Square, Disneyland

Monsanto House of the Future, Disneyland (c. 1957)

The Disney Gallery Courtyard, 
New Orleans Square, Disneyland (c. 2007)

You should be able to click on the images to download.

I claim no rights to any of the images.