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

What I Drew for Disneyland’s Birthday - Day 2

The Space Man and Space Girl
Tomorrowland, Disneyland.

3x hidden Mickeys.

 

“Cats on a Caterpillar”
Heimlich’s Chew Chew Train,
Disney California Adventure park,
featuring Figaro, Marie, Lucifer, Rajah and Cheshire Cat.

2x hidden Mickeys.

 

Hercules and Megara take in a modern day taste of home at
the Italy Pavilion, Epcot.

1x hidden Mickey.

Easter Egg: Lady and Tramp strolling in the background.

 

“Mando” the Mandalorian and “child” on a wild ride.
Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Disneyland.

1x hidden Mickey.

Note: The judge’s pose was fudged for the layout.

 

Bre’r Rabbit hands over ownership of
the mountain to Tiana.
Splash Mountain, Disneyland.

3x hidden Mickeys.

 

You have until 5:00pm EDT (2:00pm PDT) July 3rd to pitch Disney Parks themes sketch suggestions to be considered for my last day sketch of the day - here in the comments.

Go. Do it.

The suggestion box  for July 3 is now closed.

Typhoon Lagoon at 30

The Walt Disney World water park, Typhoon Lagoon, marks its 30th anniversary today.

Before a Google image search resulted in a scant few images of this red-orange alligator, I was only familiar with the blue-green mascot for Blizzard Beach. In saying so, I reveal that this is the first time that I’ve drawn the surfing reptile, and I’ll probably not have any reason in the future to drawn him again. At least not in the next 10 years before the 40th anniversary.

The differences in the sketch/ construction stage and the inked stage don’t reveal much beyond the shading decisions made on the inked stage. The hidden Mickey is a bit more pronounced in the sketch however.

The drawing was done nearly a full month before the digital coloring stage. Despite it not being a relatively long amount of passed time, it’s enough that I can’t recall if positioning the surfboard curving off the enveloping circle was intentional creating a sort of “9” shape. I think that I just pushed the surf-gator down and right to clear room for the park’s stranded boat icon. Intentional or not the result is that it connects the two, leading the eye from the surfboard counter-clockwise around the circle to the boat and “30” water spout.

What I Drew Sunday - May 27th

11 little sketches in 8+ hours.

Sir Hiss from Robin Hood.

Pucca.

The Incredibles meet Deadpool.

Dr. Teeth as Doctor Strange.

Sheila from the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon.

Supergirl and Wonder Woman.

The Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler.

A mother hen and her baby chicks dressed up.

Peridot from Steven Universe (Peanuts stylized)

The Muppets playing a game of soccer.

Hepzibah of the Starjammers.

The top 3 coming up.

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.

Needs Salt

I can always count on a bounty of interesting ideas to flow through my What Shall I Draw Today? session. For example this one: Remy from Disney/ Pixar’s Ratatouille meets Winston from the Disney short Feast. It’s all about food, right?

Artist’s tip: you can always unify disparate styled things in a different other style. Meaning, you need not try to recreate Winston to look like he’s in Remy’s CGI world, nor vice-versa.

So what has Remy cooked up that interests Winston so much? It’s a meat ball, but fancy meatball. It’s quick and easy story telling. I try not to overthink things in a WSIDT session.

Black ink and color pencil on Bristol Board.
17.78 cm x 12.70 cm (7.00 in. x 5.00 in.).

REMY © and TM Disney/ Pixar. WINSTON © and TM Disney.

What I Drew Sunday – September 24th

Here are the top 3 liked pieces of the 13 I drew during the Sunday session of “What Shall I Draw Today?”

#1 – Rafiki and Zazu (Disney’s The Lion King): suggestions by @elijones94

#2 – Gadget (Chip n’ Dale’s Rescue Rangers): suggestion by @lunitca

#3 – Merlin and Wart (Disney’s The Sword in the Stone as squirrels): suggestion by @art3mis8182

Yes, it’s Disney across the board!

And here’s the whole set of 13:

You can check out them all on my Instagram feed: @monstergram7

All of these drawings  are going into the hopper of original art for sale that I have at the few comic convention appearances.

Thank you to everyone who pitched drawing suggestions.
Thank you for following and liking.

“Leftover” suggestions may yet be drawn in the next few weeks. I may even pick from the suggestions taken since January of this year.


The next official WSIDT session will be held January of next year.


All drawings black ink and color pencil on Bristol Board.
“Rafiki and Zazu” 12.70 cm x 17.78 cm (5.00 in. x 7.00 in.).
“Gadget” 6.35 cm x 8.89 cm (2.50 in. x 3.50 in.).
“Merlin and Wart” 17.78 cm x 12.70 cm (7.00 in. x 5.00 in.).

Commission Report - Heroes Convention 2017

Here are some of the commission sketches that I did way back at this year’s June Heroes Convention held in Charlotte, North Carolina:

A couple of Disney girls 

(true to my brand):

Moana
Black ink and color pencil on Bristol Board.
22.86 cm x 30.48 cm (9.00 in. x 12.00 in.)

Belle (Live action with gold paint accents)
Black ink and color pencil on Bristol Board.
22.86 cm x 30.48 cm (9.00 in. x 12.00 in.)

Some things from 

Movies and Television:

Clara Oswald (Doctor Who)
Black ink and color pencil on paper in sketchbook.
8.26 cm x 13.97 cm (3.25 in. x 5.50 in.).

Superman and Lois (Superman, 1978)
Black ink and color pencil on Bristol Board.
22.86 cm x 30.48 cm (9.00 in. x 12.00 in.)

Princess Leia (Star Wars)
Black ink and color pencil on Bristol Board.
27.94 cm x 43.18 cm (11.00 in. x 17.00 in.)

 COMIC BOOK stuff!!!

(Naturally)

Black Knight
Black ink and color pencil on Bristol Board.
22.86 cm x 30.48 cm (9.00 in. x 12.00 in.)

Magik (Illyana Rasputin)
Black ink and color pencil on Bristol Board.
22.86 cm x 30.48 cm (9.00 in. x 12.00 in.)

Supergirl
Black ink and color pencil on paper comic book cover.
16.83 cm x 26.04 cm (6.625 in. x 10.25 in.)

Black Widow
Black ink and color pencil on paper in sketchbook.
23.50 cm x 29.21 cm (9.25 in. x 11.50 in.).

Black Widow vs. Winter Soldier
Color pencil and black ink on Bristol Board.
8.89 cm x  6.35 cm (3.50 in. x 2.50 in.)

Black Canary
Black ink and color pencil on Bristol Board.
22.86 cm x 30.48 cm (9.00 in. x 12.00 in.)

Rogue
Black ink and color pencil on Bristol Board.
22.86 cm x 30.48 cm (9.00 in. x 12.00 in.)

Kitty Pryde/ Shadow
Black ink and color pencil on Bristol Board.
22.86 cm x 30.48 cm (9.00 in. x 12.00 in.)

The Flash
Black ink and color pencil on paper in sketchbook.
20.32 cm x 29.21 cm (8.00 in. x 11.50 in.).

and

an octopus

Black ink and color pencil on paper in sketchbook.
15.88 cm x 20.32 cm (6.25 in. x 8.00 in.).