Monster Island - Birds-eye View

This will be the first spread in my Monster Safari kids' book. This illustration will introduce readers to Monster Island from an aerial point of view. This is a graphite value study of the upcoming full-color spread. The next page in the book may contain a straight-down view, an illustrated map of the island, which will pinpoint exactly where our team encountered the various monsters on the island. Click on the image to enlarge it.

I hand-lettered the above text, but I might decide to typeset it. All of the monster pages (scroll down) are hand-lettered, but I might find that it would be more appropriate to typeset the introductory pages.

The next view that you will see of the above illustration will be the final full-color version. 

Have you seen my other blog, The Trowbridge Chronicles? It's a world away from Monster Island.

Two-Headed Zilch - How-to-Draw Page

               

The last beastie in our bestiary sketch book is perhaps the strangest, and certainly the rarest. We only saw one specimen of the Two-Headed Zilch during our time on the island. It was probably an anomaly, a one-of-a-kind creature. 

Watching the Zilch walk through the jungle was a hysterically funny sight. We had to stifle our guffaws so as not to scare him away. When one side of the Zilch is walking forward, the other side is backing up. What was most hilarious was watching them squabbled over who would walk forward. Whoever lost the argument was saddled with the inferior task of backing up as they lumbered through the jungle in search of food. I was sketching furiously while I laughed silently. 

They would begin with a back-and-forth struggle...forward, backward, forward, backward, and so on...until one would win the tug-of-war. He was then the leader, for the moment, until they would stop to nibble on a jungle morsel, then it would start all over again. 

You can see that there's a small space on each side of the creature where a talk balloon could be placed. But I'm in a bit of a quandary about what the creature will be saying. I'm open for suggestions for a very short bit of dialogue that would go in the talk balloon...one bit of dialogue from each side of the creature. If I'm able to use your suggested dialogue, I'll send you a signed copy of the book when it comes out.  

Now that all of the creatures are drawn, I will begin the final phase of the book, creating the full-color set-up illustrations and text, using the many reference sketches and photos that I took while I was on the island. The next image you see may be a bird's-eye view painting of the island and surrounding tropical sea. I have only a handful of pages to go before the book is complete. If you want to see all of the monsters in the book, simply scroll down.

In the foreground you can see the hint of a game trail which leads to a thick, dark and mysterious region of jungle, with a sharp peak in the distance. We called this peak the "Needle" for its sharp point (which we scaled later that day). It was in this dark jungle undergrowth on Monster Island that we spotted the Zilch.

Have you seen my other blog, The Trowbridge Chronicles? Check it out.

Snoot - How-to-Draw Page

The monster menagerie march continues, with the curious looking Snoot. Hey, don't blame me for the silly name, folks. My assistant named him the very moment we first spotted him slogging through the swamp on Monster Island. He was standing on a half-submerged log below a hanging branch with a segmented serpent draped over it, just as you see here. I grabbed my sketchbook and sketched him on the spot.

Each spread in the upcoming Monster Safari book will feature a full-page sketch of the monster (just as you see here) on the left side of the spread. The how-to-draw page will be on the opposite page. Though we discovered many more monsters during the course of our safari on the island than you will see in the book, I selected my favorite dirty dozen beasties for the book.

Here's a shot of me in the jungle on the island, taken by my assistant. This photo was taken just moments before we spotted the Snoot. You can see that the jungle is very dense and spooky, with lots of tangled vines and roots, and animal trails that lead to nowhere. I felt like I had just climbed into a Tarzan movie.

Have you seen my other blog, The Trowbridge Chronicles? Check it out.

Limbot - How-to-Draw Page

Ten monsters down...and two to go.  I'm on the home stretch with my monster how-to-draw pages.  After this I will write and illustrate the full-color introductory pages of the book.  There will be a bird's-eye view of Monster Island and some other descriptive art.

I'm in a rush to finish the book because the sooner I finish it, the more I will sell during this school year. I know the school year will be over before we know it. I'm happy about the topic I chose because I know that monsters never go out of style with elementary age kids. This will sell for years to come. They can't get enough of monsters, dragons and space creatures. Perhaps my next how-to-draw book will be a dragon book.

Have you seen my other blog, The Trowbridge Chronicles? Check it out.

Oregon Duck Going Long for a Pizza

Thought I would break the monster monotony with a Oregon Ducks pizza commerical. This was the only painting that I ever did for my Trowbridge Chronicles blog that was not a "Mrs. Trowbridge" painting. I cheated a couple years ago and posted this illustration that promoted the Ducks for a pizza company. Now I have this blog to post my own drawings, sketches and paintings. The next post will take us back to my Monster Safari book. Stay tuned.

Horned Toad - How-to-Draw Page

If you're just tuning in, I'm in the middle of creating a how-to-draw kids' book, called Monster Safari. I'm displaying each spread on this blog as I create it. It's good to be on the downside with about three more monster pages to go, plus a couple of full-color set-up spreads. Scroll down to see all the previous pages. 

It's not moving along as fast as I'd like it to since I can only work on it late nights (as I am now), early mornings and weekends. But I'm enjoying the process. I've created many kids books over the years, yet it's always a kick to release a new one.

The book will be available as an e-book as well as traditional. I also plan to bring these Little Beasties to YouTube in the form on how-to-draw tutorials for kids, after I'm finished with the book.

Check out my other blog, The Trowbridge Chronicles. It's totally different from this one.

Beakapoo - How-to-Draw Page

It takes patience to create a kids' book on the side. I wish I could work on it full-time and move through it quickly. But this is my late-night, early morning project. I'm pecking away at it as I can squeeze it in between my regular projects. But it's been fun to watch it steadily grow from week to week. It should be out for at least some of the school assembly programs that I have coming up this year.

I have written and/or illustrated many books over the years. But this will be my first ebook, hopefully the first of many. 

For this monster I wondered what a big beak with legs would look like. Now I know.

Have you seen my other blog, The Trowbridge Chronicles? Check it out.