Inspired by my two girls love for Pokemon and having just watched Detective Pokemon, I had the idea to create Pokemon characters of each of my girls and do some sketches of them.

The first one (left image) is “Ezzybear”which is my youngest, and is actually her nickname. I did a bear Pokemon who can harness power from the round chamber in her stomach, known as “the powerhouse” which is also a nickname for my daughter based on her short, strong, and powerful stature.

The second one, (right image) is my oldest, and I call this Pokemon, “Noodella”.  My oldest girl has a longer, skinnier stature, and a penchent for eating noodles of all kind, so her nickname, we call her is noodles. For this Pokemon, I made her entirely of noodles and her power is wrapping her opponent up or turning into a ball of noodles that can roll over her enemy.

This was the entire collection of sasquatch sketches I did last year, over the course of 2018. Most of these were very rough sketches and very gesture driven just to experiment with different poses, creature anatomy, and habitat, and establish some basic light and shadow. I am considering taking my favorite ones or favorite aspects from this collection and doing refined versions of them.

This is day 3’s progress on “Ashitaka vs The Boar Demon” from my fantasy art, Studio Ghibli inspired drawing series.  This might be my final touches but i focused on making the darks heavier and subtracted subtle lighting with an eraser. I added fidelity primarily to the boar including his mame. I also defined its tentacles and main body shape.  I still wanted this one to have a rougher sketchier  feel as compared to the previous cleaner more fine detail focused drawings from this same series.

More from my third Studio Ghibli inspired drawing, “Ashitaka vs the Boar Demon”. This drawing series is me taking scenes from the legendary animated movies and adding a dark, fantasy art twist to them. This movie “Princess Monanoke”, the first Ghibli movie I saw and my favorite is dark enough to stand on its own in a  fantasy art sense, so I wanted to do a more rough, gesture, and sketch feel. If I don’t put this away and move on, I will add some fidelity to the demon but will primarily focus on the light and dark transitions via subtractive erasing and hard sketched lines.

This is day one’s progress on my new drawing of “Ashitaka vs the Boar Demon” from my Studio Ghibli with a dark fantasy art twist, collection. This is the opening scene  from “Princess Mononoke” when the infected, demon possessed boars attacks the village and the young prince/warrior, Ashitaka is forced to defend his village and take the demon down with just his bow and arrows.

More progress on “No Face” from my newest collection of Studio Ghibli drawings with a dark, fantasy art twist.

This might be my final day for a bit on this one before moving on to the next one. Here I reinforced some shadows and added detail to the skin texture of the creature. Though many of these legendary animated films have a dark edge on their own, with this particular piece I wanted to take the spirit at its darkest moment when it had been luring the bathhouse workers with fake gold only to consume them in order to get closer to the protagonist, Sen. I wanted to capture the spirit in its angry, hideous form and to differentiate it from the way the movie depicted it, I emphasized a fleshy, oozing skin, almost alienlike.

I started on the second drawing from my Studio Ghibli with a dark, fantasy art twist, collection. This is day one’s progress on “No Face” from Spirited Away. This is the scene in which the spirit reveals his true self and explodes in menacing anger in order to get at Sin.

I may put this one away for awhile in order to get a fresh perspective on the finishing touches, but nevertheless this is progress from day 3 on my “Totoro” drawing from my Studio Ghibli series of drawing with a dark fantasy art twist. Here, I added darks and fidelity to everything along with subtractive eraser work to bring out the diffused lighting.

Day two progress on  my “Totoro” drawing from my Studio Ghibli inspired drawing series. I’m putting a darker, fantasy drawing twist on various scenes from the legendary animated films. For “Totoro”, I recreated the scene where May encounters a sleeping Totoro in the base of the large tree. I spent most of day two added heavy darks that anchor the creature to his slumber dwellings with components of light in the form of butterflies and flowers.

It’s my birthday and I decided to move on from my monster series of drawings and start on a new series inspired by the lengendary Studio Ghibli animated films. This is  day one of “Totoro”. The idea is to recreate scenes from the famous films but put a darker, more fantasy art twist on them.

This is progress on “The Creature From The Black Lagoon”, the fourth drawing from my monster collection. This is from day 2 on 1-4-19.

I addressed the creatures unresolved left hand by moving it from a horizontal and cropped position to pointing upward and to the left. This allowed for the webbed fingers to be revealed which is critical to showing the aquatic existence of this creature. On that same note, I more fully realized the other aquatic features of the monster such as the fins and gills.

For the rest of day 2’s progress I just fleshed out the entire composition by adding heavier lines and shadows and textures to reinforce a claustrophobic, lagoon  setting. I also added darker and heavier shading to the water that the creature is emerging from since it is the “black lagoon.”

After a few weeks break with the holidays I abandoned “The Wolfman” and began work on a new drawing for  my monster collection titled, “The Creature From The Black Lagoon”.  This is day one from 1/3/19.

As far as conceptual and compositional aspects of this piece, day one is a very basic process of laying out the entire composition and basic locations and shapes before filling in details and adding major lighting. I wanted to pay homage to one of the most forgotten monster and horror classics where a mysterious creature rises from the murky depths and attempts to rid its domicile of foreign invaders which in this case is a boat of humans, by creating a simple composition of the creature rising from the waters in the center, and reaching out toward the viewer. I am also trying to redeem myself from the mummy piece as far as perspective and having the creature reach toward the viewer, effectively. I am pleased with how the creature’s reaching right hand turned out thus far but the left hand, which is partially cut off in this picture, still needs resolution as far as placement, pose, and detail goes.