Inspiration: Psuedopod

The Nightmare Planter

Monkey + Seal have recently taken to listening to podcasts, which seem to be the best thing since sliced bread. One of which, has been helpful to get Monkey in the creepy, haunting mood that is suitable for painting a crap-load (a scientific unit of measurement), of monster paintings for his upcoming show. That podcast is Pseudopod.


Pseudopod is a weekly horror podcast, and thus far it's been pretty damn good. You can download them via itunes, which Monkey then listens to while he paints, while he's on the bus, walking between the Monkey + Seal cave and Big Umbrella Studios.

Listening to podcasts is great for us, as instead of listening to music on the way to work, or while painting, we can expose ourselves to new inspirations and ideas. Granted, we lose a bit in the transition back and forth when we're trying to paint and listen at the same time (see our post on the myths of multitasking to see what we mean), but overall it's really great.

So far most of the stories have been pretty awesome, and it's nice to be exposed to new writers of horror. The host's closing notes after the story are always interesting, tying in the theme of the story with real life and his own experiences. It's good storytelling and definitely worth a download or two or twenty.

So for all you fans of the creepy and dark, the supernatural and horrific, go check out the Pseudopod! You won't be disappointed.

Process: Painting "Alone in the Dark"

Monkey here today, for a quick run-down of my process while painting a very recent piece, which I call "Alone in the Dark." In the photo above, the weird blue light coming diagonally across the upper left is just a lens flare.

So for a figurative piece where I want to really convey a specific emotion, I shoot reference. While others might be masters of expressions without reference, I am not, so I got our digital camera, a little work lamp, a sheet of blue acetate, some masking tape, a black cloth, and asked for the assistance of an awesome model, Seal.

If you don't have someone else you can ask to model, you can always do it yourself. I must admit, it is much easier to work with someone else. If you can't afford to pay someone, ask other artists if they might need a model of their own, and do a trade-sie.


So the above photo is primarily the one I worked off of. I like the hand positions in this photo, but I wasn't completely sold on her head position. I skimmed through some other photos I had snapped in our little 10-minute photo shoot, and after doing some Photoshop work, adjusting the levels, adding a very transparent gradient of aqua, I ended up with this:

With this as my reference, I started to paint. I paint with acrylics, and I like using Liquitex Heavy Body acrylics. For this painting, I used my usual palette set-up, which consists of:

titanium white, unbleached titanium (lazy painter's warm white), mars black, yellow oxide, cadmium yellow light hue, burnt umber, cadmium red medium hue, alizarin crimson hue permanent, cerulean blue, ultramarine blue (green shade), veridian hue permanent, and dioxazine purple. I will sometimes add extra colors to the palette if I need a large quantity of a certain color that I don't want to mix (I also keep a tube of magenta and an aqua handy), but usually I just stick with these colors and mix everything.

I also got a tube of ivory black to warm up the black since I was doing a cool light, but you can just as well mix some alizarin into your black to warm it up a bit if you stick with mars black.

I did a direct drawing onto the canvas using watered-down burnt umber. I mainly went for general proportions and gesture at this point. So you can see, I didn't quite hit that target on my first go, but since acrylics dry fast and you can paint over stuff, I decided to fix it later and just start painting.

I laid in a dark black for the shadowy background and mixed up a nice green to really push the creepy atmosphere and emphasize the unearthly lighting situation (which is also coming from below, which you don't see very often and adds to the creep-factor).

I also laid in a green underpainting where the flesh would be. Why? Because I like the effect of laying down a blue-green in my portraits and then layering fleshtones on top, especially if you're putting them in green light.

I then blocked in the lights and darks of the shirt, using a thin black wash to fill in the shirt, as I didn't want to lose the form of the shirt too early, while I was still figuring out the folds and construction and form. If I was a crazier painter, I could probably have gone with some opaque black, but I didn't want to push it, so I took it easy. I hit the light parts with green, since that's the color of the light.

The next step was to paint over the green with some unbleached titanium mixed with a bit of cad red light and yellow oxide. I also added the shadows on the skin, and took a bit of time to carve out the shape of the hand.


So the above photo is taken after about 3 hours of work. I paint fairly fast, thanks to a Quick Studies class I took at Academy, but I had to slow down a bit since I hadn't attempted to do anything even remotely realistic in a while, and sort of forgot what I had learned.

Tthis next photo was taken after about another 3 hours of work. What did I do in these three hours to go from weird chalk-lady to a decent approximation of a scared Eve?


Well, I spent a good two hours or so really studying the folds and buttons on her shirt. For some reason, I get a kick out of painting collared shirts on people, so I ended up devoting a bit too much time to the clothing, but it turned out pretty swell.

I also slowly painted, and repainted, and repainted again Eve's face, working to smoothly blend and capture all the subtle colors that are in her face in the reference photo. I also had a bunch of facial proportions all wrong, so I repainted her nose about three times. The first time it was too small, then it was too low and big, and then it was too high, and then I figured it wasn't worth it to go for a perfect likeness and decided that the nose looked proportional and real to the painting and that was that.

I also took time to start painting the hands. I then realized, while painting, that something seemed funny, and somehow during the painting process I stopped using the photo reference, and fudged the hands quite a bit. After carving a bit away, repositioning some fingers, and generally undoing a lot of the preliminary mistakes I had made, I repainted the fingers.

And after another hour or two, I decided I was finished. During those last few hours, I pulled out some highlights on her hair, softened a lot of the cast shadows on her face, sculpted the eyes a bit more, rendered the lips, added a bit of detail to the hands, and repainted her neck so that the anatomy worked a bit better.



Ta-da! So after about 50 minutes of reference shooting and prep work, and about 9-11 hours of painting, the finished product is here. I saw the painting starting to take a pulp-horror paperback book look early on, and decided that I would try to keep it in that vein as opposed to going for ultra-realism (which I find I just don't have the patience for).

Oh yeah! By the way, I also use Golden brand Acrylic Glazing Liquid (Satin) to thin my paints if I want to sort of glaze over dried paint to smooth transitions or tint parts certain colors. I used a lot of medium while painting the hands and face, due to the high concentration of blood vessels close to the surface of the skin. Due to the green light literally going through the skin, hitting the red blood, and bouncing back, you get this weird mixture of cool pinks and warm greens, with strange transitions in-between.

I hope you learned something from this process post, and feel free to ask any specific questions in the comments. While this isn't the style I'm currently working in, it is nice to bust out a creepy painting that flexes some of my classical realism training that I got in school, and also balances my work so it's also more fun to bust out and do my regular sweaty monsters. Woo!

Let loose

Sometimes you just need to go ahead and draw whatever comes to mind. In our case, we decided to do some collaborative drawings one night and this came out. We were both drawing on the same sheet of bristol at the same time, and somehow this managed to come out. Monkey then digitally colored it, and here you go.

More importantly, we often hold these rigid rules in our head that dictate how/what/when we should draw, or paint, or do anything. Sometimes you need to just throw it all to the wind and let something weird come out.

If anything, you can tell that we had a lot of fun doing this piece, and we hope to do many more like this. We're not going to worry how the art comes out - as long as we're creating and having fun doing it, that's what it's all about. Keep loose and who knows, something awesome could come out!

Gotta Do What You Love

Creepy? Disturbing? Monkey hopes so.

Monkey here:

After a long talk with Seal late Saturday night, I came to the realization about two things - I am extremely lucky to have a strong support system in place (ie Seal + friends), and that I've been unconsciously preventing myself from doing the type of art that I really want to do.

From an early age I've always been fascinated and enthralled by monsters. I had a huge book (similar to the size of my collegiate calculus textbook) about nearly every film monster that graced the screen until the mid-80's. I was reading Stephen King at 7, and the illustrations from the Scary Stories trilogy haunted my dreams.

Even to this day, great horror films are some of my favorite films ever. 28 Days Later and Let the Right One In are masterpieces. I also have a place in my heart for films like Aliens, Tremors, Predator, The Fly (1986 version), and tons of B-movie horror flicks. I do take offense to some of the more recent slasher/torture-porn films in the last decade, but for the most part, no matter how bad a horror movie is, if I have the time, I'll watch it.

However, when it comes to art, I've been struggling with the notion that I have to make art that really touches people on a deeper level. I felt like I needed to really say something; to inspire or empower. I wanted to make a difference in the world through art. And until recently, I thought that this was in stark contrast to the horrific material that I was really longing to create.

Eve helped me realize that I was creating the dreaded false dichotomy - I was making it an either-or situation when that really wasn't the case. I could paint monsters and demons and still say something meaningful, or still reach people at an emotional level. I thought I needed to be more clever or funny or wise than everyone else through my work, when really I just want to paint a bunch of scary monsters.

Whether or not the work I produce in the future has lots of symbolism, metaphors, and deep social commentary doesn't really matter. Eve pointed out that horror and tragedy are art forms that are centuries old - people still liked them for a reason. These pieces can act as a catharsis for the audience, allowing them to feel horror, fear, and sorrow without really having to go through the terrible acts that cause it. The viewers can feel relieved after the film is over, thinking "I'm glad that wasn't me," and can be thankful for what they do have.

Additionally, I've decided that changing the world through art doesn't necessarily mean inspiring the next generation of leaders through my artwork per se. I can sell t-shirts with my designs on them to raise money for charities. I can donate paintings to charities for auctions, and teach classes for underprivileged youth. There is lots and lots to be done, it's just a matter of finding my own way to do it.

I've realized that the hardest thing is releasing the rhino. It takes looking at it from a new perspective, and not getting boxed into the way that you think things have to be. I can just draw child-eating mothers and swamp beasts and demonic cults sacrificing towns and still be able to make a positive change on the world. I've found that your own mind tends to be your biggest prison, and it's all about figuring out what key fits to let yourself free.

I hope my story will help in some way..if anything, if you're dealing with your own personal cages and dichotomies and thoughts on what your art should be or what you think the world wants - you're not alone.

In the end, you have to create for yourself.


Thanks to Eve and everyone else who has been really supportive in my pursuit of art. I realize how lucky I am and I hope that everyone can find that support for your work. Keep on keeping on, and we can all change the world together.

Saturday Process: The monster lady

Today's process post is by Monkey, who will take you through a coloring of a illustration of some monster lady (who is holding a fish).

Hi everyone! So today I decided to work a bit more details than I usually do in terms of my pencils/linework. I started out in my sketchbook with a HB pencil, and roughed out this drawing. I then had Eve add something, and she chose to just add a little fish. Honestly, I was hoping she would do an environment for the character (since she's amazing and I'm not as experienced as she is), but I got a cute fish, so I'll take it.
After scanning the pencil drawing in, I then proceeded to multiple the drawing layer, and create a new painting layer underneath. I then started in blocking in color, not worrying too much about light and darks (as I took care of the basic lighting via pencil), and more about overall color harmony. Everything is a bit pastel-like at this stage, as I don't want to get too saturated yet, and since I'm dealing with a triad (yellow hair, blue jeans, pinky (ie red) skin and lips), I have to be careful not to make it clash too much.
Next, I throw in a gray gradient to give it a sense of a light source, which has to match with the light source that I first indicated by the shading of the character. I also decide to give her green eyes and blood-soaked red lips.

I want to give the illustration a bit of a mood, so I decide that the values are all waaaay too high key (ie. all the values are really light) and thus I play around with contrast, brightness, and levels to bring it down quite a bit. I add some blood splatters to her shirt, fish, and teeth.



Next, unfortunately, comes the "and then you suddenly have a cake" part, as I got a bit carried away fixing things and I forgot to take more intermediate steps of the painting. At this point, I realized that with the way I lighted the monster's body, her shadow should have been going behind her, not in front of her. Thus, I had to correct that, make a lot of the values darker, I threw in some wood textures behind her for a background, created a plane change where the wall hits the ground, added an overhead lamppost (outside of the picture plane), and hid more of her body in shadow.


So there you are, from pencil sketch to sort of a finish. In reality, I need to either move the light source over (to justify why so much of her face is lit up), or make more of her face and body darker. Also, the value change from light to shadow on her feet, leg, and arms could be made more apparent in order to really put the rest of her body in the shadows. Well, an artist's job is never really done - generally you just run out of time, motivation, energy, inspiration, or money, and that's when you call it a day.

Hope this was helpful and interesting, and thanks for reading!