What does a monster take to school? BIG.

An A2 version of 'what does a monster take to school?' for an exhibition I'm going to be part of in October (On Essence at the Rag Factory, London. 7th - 10th October. Private view on the friday, all the cool kids will be there). I plan to show a couple of other object pictures along with this which I may post up here in the near future. That's just one big drawing on a big piece of paper, no photoshop involved. I think I've got the urge to draw the possessions of monsters out of my system now and I promise I'll draw something different.

Walking the frog and other sketches

Other things a monster might take to school.

Colours are a bit odd again from substandard scanning.

What does a monster have in its packed lunch?

And finally for today, the answer to the above question and a few more monsters. 

The challenges of teacher design.

It's been distressingly difficult to come up with a teacher for my monster class. After having gone through a copious selection of ridiculous and terrible versions my best effort can be seen below. She's based on how I remember my year 4 teacher, Mrs Gillum, who wore pearls and had large eccentric glasses. I think she might have been Scottish. My version's come out more Dame Edna with pointy teeth than Mrs Gillum and I'm not sure how much I like that. She also may be a bit too near retirement age. I think more work is required but I'd welcome any opinions. Also, for reasons I don't understand when I scan ink washes at the moment the colour comes out completely different to how it is in the real world, much more than is usual. I've messed with the settings but it hasn't helped so if anyone has any tips on how to tame a scanner please do share.

Eurgh, trebuchet.

Class photo

Now that I have a selection of monsters I decided they needed a recognisable cultural structure to inhabit. Recently I've spent a bit of time at the wonderful Carlton Hill Primary School in Brighton under the supervision of the brilliant, generous and beautiful Mrs Cloke so I decided upon a primary school as my establishment of choice (yeah, that's what I was doing hanging about your classroom). As a result of this train of thought, here's the first inklings of class 3.

 Also, I'm devastated to see that my font of choice has been removed from the options. I'm having to use trebuchet instead, it's such a hard life.

Very very rough sketches of monsters.

It's only very early days for these chaps so they've got a long way to go development wise but I felt it's time to launch these monsters on the world. They've only outlines and very rough.